Each week The Extraordinary Times catches up with good friends in the historical community. This week, it’s been a pleasure catching up with Dr. Curt Ellison, emeritus Director of Miami University Appalachian Studies and the Michael J. Colligan History Project. Curt is also professor emeritus of history and American studies at Miami University, author of Country Music Culture: From Hard Times to Heaven, and editor of Donald Davidson’s The Big Ballad Jamboree, and Miami University, 1809-2009: Bicentennial Perspectives. He was recently interviewed on WVXU 91.7, reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the April 1970 Vietnam War protest which culminated in the student-led occupation of Miami’s ROTC building (link opens to WVXU interview):
https://tinyurl.com/ufpotap * How have you been getting along during this time of social distancing? I’ve added FaceBook friends, done online research, watched Ohio’s governor and public health director on TV, and hoped for a gradual, safe, return to “normal.” * In your recent WVXU interview, you describe the parallels between the tragic events of May 1970 at Kent State and the less well-known events of April 15, 1970 at Miami. What were the key similarities and differences? On April 15, 1970, a year of Vietnam anti-war and anti-draft protest at Miami erupted in student occupation of Miami’s ROTC building, Rowan Hall. Miami’s administration responded by suspending a reported 176 students, who, upon refusing to leave Rowan Hall, were arrested by Ohio Highway Patrol. Seventeen law enforcement agencies were on campus responding to the occupation, many of them unaccustomed to students, and few with coordinated communication. Confrontations emerged, and both tear gas and police dogs were deployed for crowd control. An increasingly chaotic scene spread across campus, and into the town of Oxford. Governor James Rhodes dispatched a battalion of 700 National Guard to a Nike Missile Base near Oxford the day after the sit-in, but President Phillip Shriver is credited with preventing them from being ordered to campus. They did not enter the town. In days following a long night of disturbances, students first called for a strike to boycott classes, then engaged in a “flush-in,” an act of resistance that opened faucets and flushed toilets in residence halls, draining the Oxford water tower. That turned public sentiment against students, and the scene at Miami calmed. Then on May 4, in a similar protest, the National Guard killed four students at Kent State. Miami had foreshadowed what would happen at Kent, but fortunately for Miami, the National Guard did not come on campus and no one was killed. * How did the legacy of Kent State affect the Miami University community? Two days after the killings at Kent State, Dr. Shriver, fearing violence, closed all Miami campuses and sent students home. During ensuing ten days, a few student leaders remained on campus to negotiate with Miami administrators. When Miami reopened May 17, liberalizations of both academic and student life policies were announced, including allowing courses to be taken for credit/no-credit, placing students on Miami governing bodies, and allowing male/female visitation in residence halls. Then in July, 1970, a new Vice President for Academic Affairs, David G. Brown, joined an administration that had previously consisted solely of the WWII generation. This 37-year-old academic leader guided a variety of changes that would lay groundwork for the kinds of undergraduate teaching, student engagement with professors, and student life programs that Miami has featured since that time, and celebrates today as a “Public Ivy.” The occupation of Rowan Hall was one of the turning points of Miami history, because of the way Miami responded afterward, and in following years, to create a different kind of campus than had previously existed. * Where were you in 1970 when these events took place, and what do you recall? I interviewed at Miami in January of 1970, and that month was hired to direct the American Studies Program. In April I was at the University of Minnesota completing a doctoral dissertation. In July, when I arrived in Oxford, I found it a different place than when I had interviewed. This was visible in the American Studies Program, where many students who were political activists in January were caught in the April turmoil, and did not return in the fall. That was also true of some young faculty who had worked with the program. So, with new colleagues also hired in 1970, we set about rebuilding. For fifty years I’ve been fascinated by what happened between the time I was hired at Miami and the time I arrived. While working on the Miami Stories Oral History Project for Miami’s 2009 bicentennial, I learned that many former students, faculty, staff and administrators remember that time quite vividly, and not all agree about either what happened or who bears responsibility for it. * How would you compare today’s polarized political landscape to the turbulence of 1970? Events at Miami in the spring of 1970, and at universities across the United States, left a traumatic imprint on the historical memory of those who were involved in them. There was deep, maybe irreconcilable, polarization of political opinion leading up to those situations, and politicians who, hoping to gain power and influence, inflamed opinion for political gain. Getting out of Vietnam was a costly process for the nation that left scars. I hope we can escape today’s landscape with less long-term damage. * Any other projects? I’ve been fortunate to collaborate with Fred Bartenstein recently in editing a forthcoming book from the University of Illinois Press, Industrial Strength Bluegrass: Southwestern Ohio’s Musical Legacy, to be released in January, 2021. It’s part of a larger project on the history of bluegrass music in the Miami Valley, a tradition that emerged here as one result of Appalachian migration for 20th c. industrial work. The larger project was initiated at Miami University Regionals, and has featured public presentations and musical programs as well as research and writing.
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AuthorMatthew Smith, PhD (History). Public Programs at Miami University Regionals. Historian of Appalachia, the Ohio Valley, & the early American republic. Archives
February 2024
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