Hess: The Anathema of Giving a Damn
It is hard to imagine that a mere 45 years ago, our nation experienced some of the largest protests in its history. In the wake of the United States’ decision to invade Cambodia and the National Guard’s murder of four student protestors at Kent State University, more than four million high school and college students took to the streets. Many were peaceful protests, but student strikes shut down campuses nationwide, dozens of Reserve Officers’ Training Corps building were set ablaze and the National Guard was called onto more than 20 campuses. The violence and chaos of the general strike prompted fears within the Nixon administration of an outright insurrection amongst American students. Ray Price, Nixon’s chief speechwriter at the time, recalled the Washington demonstrations saying, “That’s not student protest, that’s civil war.”