Kent State: An American Tragedy by Brian VanDeMark

Author:Brian VanDeMark [VanDeMark, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Wars & Conflicts, Vietnam War, United States, State & Local, Midwest (IA; IL; IN; KS; MI; MN; MO; ND; NE; OH; SD; WI), Modern, 20th Century, General, Social Science, Activism & Social Justice
ISBN: 9781324066255
Google: 4izXEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1324066253
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2024-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

Hard-hat workers confront antiwar demonstrators, New York City, May 8, 1970.

When the hard hats reached Federal Hall, they set upon protestors, who screamed, “Mother-fucking fascists!” Fists and lead pipes started to fly. Policemen in baby-blue helmets looked on impassively from Federal Hall’s marble steps as broad-shouldered tradesmen savagely punched and kicked student protestors. When an elderly woman near the steps shouted at a worker to stop kicking a young man on the ground, she was knocked down and spat on. The hard hats chased youths through the canyons of the Financial District in a wild melee that left more than seventy people seriously injured.

Encouraged by the crowd and the pointedly disinterested police, the hard hats then stormed City Hall, where liberal Republican mayor John Lindsay had ordered the flag lowered to half-mast in honor of the four killed at Kent State. One group of rampaging hard hats headed for the mayor’s office to force city employees to raise the flag back up. The other group headed for nearby Pace College. Shouting “Kill those long-haired bastards!,” they stormed into a campus building with a huge white banner draped out of a window that read “VIETNAM? CAMBODIA? KENT STATE? WHAT NEXT?,” smashed windows with crowbars, overturned desks, and clubbed any student they could get their hands on. As students fled in panic, the hard hats grabbed two professors, whom they beat with their fists. The wail of ambulances continued long after the hard hats had disbanded for celebrations and back slapping. Nixon later invited the riot’s organizer, construction trade union leader William Brennan, to the White House, where Brennan gifted the smiling president with a hard hat. Brennan was later appointed secretary of Labor.

Polls revealed that 40 percent of Americans sympathized with the hard hats compared with 24 percent who took the side of the antiwar protestors, though a significant 23 percent supported neither. But when asked if it was right or wrong for the hard hats to attack the antiwar protestors, the public thought it wrong by a margin of 53 percent to 31 percent.

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