The 1970 Student Strike at the University of Maryland College Park
“30 Days in May” is a two-part video about the student strike at the University of Maryland College Park in May 1970 in reaction to President Richard Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State University by Ohio National Guardsmen.
Part one is a 2023 panel discussion held at the Hornbake Library at UMD College Park by five participants in the strike who give their perspective and insights 53 years later. Part two is a narrated chronology of the strike that uses photographs and ephemera of the activities that occurred.
Panelists at the 2023 discussion of the 1970 student strike.
The panel discussion features former students with divergent viewpoints and includes Richard Fox who gained a revolutionary perspective during the period; Mark Woodard, who was the president of the UMD College Park Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chapter that continued after the 1969 split in the organization; Linda Zwobota who became active after learning of the Tiger Cages where the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese government held prisoners; Barbara Myers who was swept up in a vengeful mass arrest by police of customers at a donut shop during the strike; and Craig Simpson who was one of those who threw rocks and bottles at police in retaliation for the police brutality he witnessed.
National Guard General Edwin Warfield (partially visible on left) addresses several thousand students during the strike. He was greeted with chants of “Pigs off campus!”
Part II–the chronology–begins with the April 1970 protests against the firing of two popular professors that resulted in 87 arrests during a building takeover on campus. When President Richard Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia on April 30, 1970, the committee leading the activity against the faculty firings and the student arrests called a rally against Nixon’s actions at McKeldin Library. Several thousand students gathered and quickly marched on the campus Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) offices and trashed them.
From there they seized nearby U.S. Route One and when police moved to clear the road using brutal tactics, the students responded by tossing objects at police. Tear gas followed as the police tried to suppress the demonstrations. In the coming days the National Guard would be called in, martial law imposed with a curfew and bans on gatherings, and arrests that were resisted by thousands of students. As many as 10,000 students participated in some of the activities. The protests didn’t end until the spring semester was over with the National Guard occupying the campus and posting guardsmen in the larger classrooms as the few students who took final exams finished out their classes.
The video is produced by Washington Area Spark and runs two hours and five minutes (2:05).
