Anti-Vietnam Protests in The South? (war, influence, general, 60's)

[Electric Blue]

What was the anti-war movement like in the south? On college campuses? In general?

[Grandstander]

I had personal experiences with it at two colleges, Florida State which I attended, and the University of Florida where I spent a great many weekends visiting friends.

Of the two, UoF had the far more serious protests and a couple of times things got out of hand and protests were broken up by the police using tear gas, which isn't very pleasant I discovered. Things never reached the point where the university had to be shut down or anything which might be described as a riot took place, but there were some minor battles with police, minor injuries, and of course lots and lots of rhetoric.

The protest movement at FSU never advanced beyond the high comedy stage. I started there in 1970 and the campus revolutionary movement was led by this tall, skinny guy called "Radical Jack." Jack had this odd side to side motion when he walked and you'd see him walking around campus with a bunch of people following him, making fun of his stride.

The first rally of any sort to take place after I enrolled was the "Marines Off Campus!" protest staged on a Friday night. I showed up just to watch, I thought the cause rather thick headed and misdirected. I was very much against the Vietnam War, but all one had to do to avoid the hideous influence of Marine recruiters on campus was to not go to their office and not join the Marines.

It was the usual hyperbolic rhetoric and emotionalism as one speaker after the next got up and satisfied his or her ego with passionate speeches. A half dozen guys got carried away and broke into Bryan Hall where the Marine recruiting office was, and trashed things a bit. They were arrested, fined 25 bucks each for trespassing and released.

So naturally the next rally was "Free The Bryan Hall Six!" which wasn't protesting the Vietnam War, nor protesting Marine recruitment on campus, but rather protesting the treatment received by those six protesters from the previous rally. During this rally a couple of guys set fire to some bushes on Landis Green, they got arrested, charged with destruction of public property and fined 40 bucks each.

So naturally the next rally was "Free The Landis Green Two!"...then a candlelight vigil for the Tully Gym Five or something like that...

It just kept going downhill from there. It was a protest movement which devoted all of its time to protesting the way that protesters were treated.

They were widely, and justly regarded, as a campus joke.

[texdav]

I went to college in Texas and really it wasn't much here at elast. I think perhaps its the society itself really as we were still pretty tradtional. Most hated the war but few protested no more than they did Korea.But certainly other factors influence the change we saw starting in the mid 60's of drugs and crime rates that built to peak in the early 70's.World was never the same after that and biggest change I have seen at 65 now.