50 years ago: Vietnam protesters recall fight against "never-ending war"

May 15—MANKATO — Nearly 50 years to the day since anti-war demonstrators shut down access points to Mankato, Bruce Carlson remembers what it felt like to get maced.

"It burned my eyes, and some friends of mine took me down to the river and washed my eyes out," he said. "I was wearing glasses at the time so I didn't get a real bad dose of it, but it was enough to get me off the highway."

Carlson, a 22-year-old college student at what was then called Mankato State, was among an estimated 3,000-strong crowd marching from campus to the downtown area to show their dissatisfaction with the Vietnam War on May 9, 1972. Demonstrators occupied the Main Street and North Star bridges, along with Highway 169 in North Mankato before law enforcement officers used tear gas to clear the thoroughfares.

Anti-war activism was commonplace on campus in the years leading up to May 9, but the march and street occupations reached a scale unseen in Mankato protests before and since.

"By 1972 there were a lot of people involved and coming together," Carlson said. "It was quite a movement. You felt the momentum. It felt like we were going to change the world."

A day earlier, President Richard Nixon had ordered the mining of North Vietnamese harbors. To Americans opposed to the conflict, it was the latest escalation in what seemed like a never-ending war.

Activists quickly mobilized after Nixon's announcement, descending on the student union to plan the next day's march. Many students slept in the union overnight before heading out the next day to occupy the bridges and highway.

Howard and Mary Ward were students at the time and recall a group gathering on the college's upper campus. The couple didn't consider themselves active in the anti-war movement, but they were sympathetic to the cause and marched down to the intersection of Front and Main streets.

He was 23 at the time and had just gotten out of the Army in 1971. His military service didn't include deployment to Vietnam, but he knew people who had been killed and wounded in action.

"I for one was certainly not protesting against the soldiers who served over there; I think it was honorable they answered the call and I myself had spent two years in the Army at the time," he said. "I was protesting the fact it was a never-ending war and no one could tell us really why we were fighting."

Mary Ward was 21 and studying in the nursing program. She remembers the "massive group" they joined on the march, eventually sitting down alongside Howard to listen to speakers at Front and Main streets.

They weren't on the bridges at the time. Word had passed through the crowd about the shutdown, however, and Howard Ward described the demonstrations as a way for young people to let out anger against a senseless war.

Day after day people were seeing news reports about U.S. soldiers and dying, Mary Ward said. As long as the war continued there were fears that more men would face the draft.

"When you start hearing that every single day and you know your friends are getting drafted, I think it did hit you," she said.

Carlson was of draft age at the time. The main reason he got involved in anti-war activism was his staunch belief against U.S. involvement in the war.

"I wanted to do whatever I could to help end the war," he said.

Marchers started heading toward downtown around 1 p.m. and planned to occupy the planned areas until 6 p.m. By 3 p.m., State Patrol troopers brought in college President James Nickerson to call off the students.

Nickerson pleaded with the students to leave before police forcibly removed them, according to an account written by David Phelps in the book "Out of Chaos." Phelps was the editor at the Reporter student newspaper in 1972.

After reaching a police-imposed deadline around 5:20 p.m., law enforcement deployed fake tear gas before resorting to actual tear gas. Some demonstrators, including Carlson, dispersed, while others responded by throwing cans and rocks.

Traffic resumed and the students marched back up toward campus. The Wards didn't recall when exactly they left the scene, but they knew they weren't near the clashes.

Despite being maced, Carlson said he felt law enforcement handled the demonstration fairly well. There were reported injuries among demonstrators, but nothing approaching the 1970 incidents at Kent State, where National Guardsmen killed four student protesters, or Jackson State, where police killed two student protesters.

Even with the killings on other campuses and many bomb threats on Mankato's campus during those years, the former students said they don't remember feeling fearful at the time. If anything, Carlson said the Kent State and Jackson State incidents made him more determined to do his part to bring the war to an end.

With fewer routes to get in and out of Mankato back then, the road shutdowns did cause frustration among motorists. The Reporter's coverage of the demonstration included information about one motorist breaking a man's leg by driving through the crowd.

As Mary Ward looked back on the day, she wondered whether stopping traffic on the bridges was an effective way to get the message out.

Another student at the time, Lucian Smith, is quoted in the Reporter as telling the demonstrators "you're pissing off the wrong people." A Vietnam veteran, he went on to say he didn't favor Nixon's policies, but opposed how the marchers were targeting their message toward people who had no control over the policies.

"They have nothing to say, just like you have nothing to say, about the war policy," he was quoted as saying in the Reporter's May 10, 1972 edition.

Once activists regrouped back on campus, they organized a silent march for May 10 as a contrast to May 9's chaos. About 5,000 students marched through downtown in silence, "almost like a funeral march," student organizer Scott Hagebak told the Free Press in 2012.

Hagebak and fellow student organizer Mark Halverson said both demonstrations held equal meaning to them — they've both since passed away. Only one of the demonstrations, the May 9 shutdowns, garnered national media attention.

The U.S. ended its direct involvement in Vietnam about nine months later in January 1973, eight years after it entered the war.

Reflecting on what that day and era were like, Carlson described it as a time of turmoil for Mankato and the country. Yet it was satisfying to be part of it, he said, because the demonstrators were standing up for what they believed in.

"I felt like it was a noble cause and needed doing," he said. "I thought it was an immoral war."

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