###

In today’s episode of Humboldt Outdoors, local documentarian Ray Olson takes us back to the anti-Vietnam War movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s — a period that sparked mass demonstrations and student strikes across the country, including the largest student protest ever held on the Humboldt State campus. 

“In this very plaza, almost 60 years ago, 3,000 to 4,000 students and faculty gathered for the largest one-day political protest in the history of this campus, among the largest ever to occur in Humboldt County,” Olson explains in the video above. “At the time, this was known as Sequoia Plaza on the campus of what was then known as Humboldt State College. Today, we’re going to journey back to that charged moment in time … and meet some of the students who stood on this very ground and raised their voices against the Vietnam War.”

Olson speaks with some of the Humboldt State College students who “became the stewards of change” and led the local anti-war movement, including former state senator Wesley Chesbro, local author Katy Tahja and Zach Zwerdling, founder of the Zwerdling Law Firm. 

Nationwide protests erupted in early 1970 after the United States invaded Cambodia, and increased dramatically after Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire at a Kent State University protest in Ohio, killing four students. The day after the shooting, Humboldt State students filled the Sequoia Theatre (what is now Van Duzer Theatre) to figure out how to take meaningful action.

Chesbro | Screenshot

“I remember that energy,” Chesbro recalls. “There was just a really powerful sense that we had to do something, that we couldn’t just sit by and watch. That led to a student body president Bill Richardson calling for a campus meeting … and it was packed. There was an hours-long discussion about what to do, and there was an agreement to call a rally for the next day to try to bring the student body together.”

“Not only were we very aware that we were at risk of being asked to go fight the war, but now the war was actually coming home and coming to us,” he added. “That was really the spark that began the discussion and a rapid series of events that led to the student strike at Humboldt State.”

The big protest took place on May 6, 1970. Click “play” on the video above for the full story.

###

PREVIOUS HUMBOLDT OUTDOORS: