Fifty five years ago, on April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon addressed the nation via television and radio to announce that the United States was expanding the Vietnam War by invading Cambodia. This resulted in a nationwide outpouring of antiwar protests on school campuses. The protests began on May 1st, and three days later four students were shot and killed by Ohio National Guardsmen at a protest on the campus of Kent State University. This led to student strikes that shut down hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools around the country, as people gathered together to protest in various ways. The shooting of Kent State students also prompted Neil Young to write the song "Ohio," which quickly became a protest anthem. On May 15th, two Black students were killed when the police opened fire on a protest at Jackson State College, an HBCU in Mississippi.
At Cal State Hayward, as it was then known, some students produced a newsletter they named Strike News, "serving the greater Cal State community." The University Archives has six issues of this newsletter, all from May of 1970, that have been digitized and can be viewed online in the Digital Archives repository (Please note that this digital repository is a shared platform that contains materials from various CSUs, and it is a work in progress.). Not much information is available about these newsletters beyond what can be gleaned from reading them, but they provide a fascinating snapshot of how some CSU Hayward students responded to troubling current events during a turbulent time at the dawn of the 1970s.
All 6 issues of Strike News in the Digital Archives repository
