Alex Paone

Peace and Peace Building

The Anti-War Peace Movement through History.
In my case study I plan to trace the antiwar movement
from the Civil War to the Kent State demonstration and
shootings in 1970. I will also discuss the involvement and
influence of the Students for a Democratic Society and the
Weather Underground.
The New York City Draft Riots took place from July 1316, 1863. On July 13th thousands of protestors marched to a
draft office in New York City, interfered with the lottery and
set the building on fire to protest the draft during the Civil
War. Although the majority of the protesters were Irish many
people blamed black people and mobs chased black men,
some were hanged and burned. At the end of the riots 119
people had been killed.
During World War 1, the American United Church
groups organized liberal organizations and socialists to
protest Americas decision to enter the war.

During World War1, a soldier named Kerr Eby (18891946) was a painter trying to prevent war and used his art to
become the influence to attempt to prevent war and
violence. Ebys enlisted in World War 1 after becoming
unable to win a contract as an artist and was assigned to the
40th Engineers, Artillery Brigade, Camouflage Division. His
division was sent to the front to help protect the troops and
which meant he saw a lot of action during his tour.
Throughout his time on the battlefield, Ebys kept up with his
art and started to sketch the violence images of war and
eventually created a book, filled with his famous drawings
depicting the awful carnage of war. When he published his
book it was called War and he also wrote an essay
summarizing his hatred for war and his opinion of its
uselessness and viciousness. Ebys lithograph Where Do
We Go? depicted soldiers, some wounded, walking through
the rain to fight another battle. To those who gave their
lives for an idea, the men who never came back is a famous
saying from this lithograph.

Moving down the timeline, the Americans were divided

about the United States involvement in World War2 until he
Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. An antiwar movement that
was not a peace movement was created and called The
Mothers Crusade Against World War 2. The group was active
from 1939 through 1945 and millions of women belonged to
it. The mothers movement was against American
involvement in World War 2.The mothers published
newsletters and raised money to support anti-war
candidates for political office.
The students for a democracy society (SDS) which
started in 1960 and make left. Its members were mainly
college students who were motivated by social injustices
such as Civil Rights and the Vietnam War. The national
demonstration against Americas approach in Vietnam was
led by a small group of students from the SDS. In April of
1965, Students for a Democratic Society organized a
gathering of fifteen thousand people at the Washington
Monument in Washington D.C, the capital. The SDS president
Paul Potter gave a fiery speech, he stated that American was

not doing a good job of promoting justice and equality at

home and he was critical of the Americans policies overseas.
What kind of a system is it, he asked, as quoted in Farbers
The Age of Great Dreams, that disenfranchises people in
the South, leaves millions upon millions of people throughout
the country impoverished an excluded from the mainstream
and promise of American society, that creates faceless and
terrible bureaucracies and makes those the place where
people spend their lives and do their work, that consistently
puts material values before human valuesand still persists
in calling itself free and still persists in finding itself fit to
police the world? Potters words set the tone for an antiwar
movement that grew in size and intensity in the years that
followed.(S.Pendergast, T.Pednergast,p.137-139) They felt
strongly that the US should immediately withdraw from
Vietnam. The SDS became the largest radical student group
in the US. In 1968 the SDS received national attention when
they staged a huge anti-war demonstration at Columbia
University occupying many buildings on campus.

The Weather Underground was an American radical

group and it started at the University of Michigan. In the
Weather Underground Documentary the member decide
their organization and what they call Necessity for building
underground They described their priorities, many of their
important issues of concern were segregation, equal rights,
open housing, and the Vietnam War. One member describes
growing up in the age of the atomic bomb as an incentive
to fight injustice. They describe Malcolm X as an influence,
violence is as American as cherry pie. Many of its members
were leaders of SDS and werent working and the
weathermen were more violent in their demonstrations. In
1960 almost half of the America population was under 16
years of age. In 1970, three weather man were killed when
they were finishing up their bomb to set to explode on an air
base.
In 1970 the Weather Underground issued a
"Declaration of War against the United States government.
They were responsible for bombings of banks and
government building, including the United States Capitol and

the Department of State Facility. Four weatherman robbed an

armored car and three people were killed.
On May 4th 1970, students began assembling at the
center commons in Kent State, the group was calm. This was
place where students frequently gathered for rallies and
meetings. There was a victory bell on the center commons.
Students were ringing the bell as a signal for others to
gather there. There were about 2000 people demonstrating.
The weekend before had been turbulent on campus with
several protests, at one students had burned the ROTC
building and the Ohio National Guard had been stationed on
campus. Students were more upset because of their
presence. There was an order banning outdoor
demonstrations.
Late morning, the Ohio National Guard commander with
a bullhorn ordered people to leave at once. The group
taunted the guardsmen, the general in charge commanded
the more than eighteen guardsmen to fire tear gas to
separate the crowd. The tear gas did not work well cause of
the wind. The guardsmen went into the crowd with loaded

weapons to break up the assembly forcing students to move

in different directions. 18 soldiers and the Armored Cavalry
Regiment followed the demonstrators up Blanket Hill as they
were leaving and students threw rocks at the soldiers.
Twenty-eight guardsmen fired a volley of 61 rounds into the
crowd of students in the parking lot, some shot into the air,
some admitted aiming directly at certain students. The rifle
fire lasted for 13 seconds (Presidents Commission on
Campus Unrest, 1970). Four Kent State students were killed,
and nine were wounded.(C.Barbato, p.3)
Additional soldiers fired at the students killing four
students, who were only throwing rocks. The students were
protesting that president Nixon was sending troops into
Cambodia, expanding the war zone and possibly meaning
more men would be drafted.
President Nixon appointed a panel to investigate the
incident. The Commission found the killings inexcusable as
did the FBI. But the State of Ohio placed blame elsewhere. It
indicted some of the protesters on second degree riot
charges.( ) The National Guard was never charged or found

to be liable. Student Activism decreased in the United States

after Kent State.
Antiwar activism in its earliest days started with
members of churches that believed and taught peace such
as the Amish and Mennonites. Later there were pacifists,
people who did not agree with certain wars and people did
not want to go to war. After Vietnam the antiwar movement
declined.

Work Cited

Semas, Phillip W. "Students Journalists of 1970 Return to Kent

State 30 Years After." N.p., 12 May 2000. Web.

Lembcke, Jerry. "The Times, They Changed." Chronicle of Higher

Education, 30 Apr. 2010. Web.

Broadhurst, Christopher J. "We Didn't Fire a Shot, We Didn't Burn

a Building: The Student Reaction at North Carolina State University to
the Kent State Shootings, May 1970." North Carolina Historical Review,
July 2010. Web.

Barbato, Carole A. "Embracing Their Memories": Accounts Of Loss

And May 4, 1970." Journal Of Loss & Trauma 8.2 (2003): 73-98.
Academic Search Elite. Web. 16 Dec. 2014.

Fincke, Gary. The Pagoda Sightlines. Literary Review 38.2

(1995): 197-204. Academic Search Elite. Web. 16 Dec 2014.

Hornblower, Margot. Weather Underground. Terrorism:

Essential Primary Sources. Ed. K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth
Lerner. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 54-57. U.S History in Context. Web. 16 Dec
2014.