Nixonland: America's Second Civil War and the Divisive Legacy of Richard Nixon 1965-72

by Rick Perlstein

Friday, the next morning, was not quite a typical spring day on the campus of the second-biggest public university in Ohio. It was Derby Day. Every May 1, Kent State frat brothers wore silly hats, and sorority sisters chased them down to plant kisses. This year the squealing “coeds” gave chase near the field where black students were staging a rally—angry young Mau Maus in dashikis with a bullhorn threatening to shut down the school they called Kenya unless five thousand black students were added to the student body “with no complaint that black high school students aren’t prepared for college work.” Kent was a nervous campus, on pins and needles over a yearlong movement to get rid of ROTC. All over town, walls and sidewalks were covered with graffiti: FREE BOBBY. FREE HUEY. U.S. OUT OF CAMBODIA. However, the townies in the Ohio college towns of Columbus, Athens, and Oxford were jealous of Kent. Their schools were even less peaceful. At Ohio State, the National Guard was patrolling the campus. At noon the Victory Bell on the commons was tolled by a group of history graduate students for a ritual interment of the Constitution: “It is now our task to see that it is resurrected in its original form.” One attendee was a Bronze Star–winning infantryman. He announced, “I’m so disgusted with the behavior of my country in invading Cambodia that I’m going to burn my discharge papers.” About three hundred students witnessed the ceremony.