While volunteering at the Boulder History Museum, I've been lucky enough to help out with several of their exhibit installations and breakdowns. At the moment I'm working with a small group of people to help them research for their next exhibit, 1968 in America. This is a traveling exhibit that is coming to the museum, but they wanted to supplement it with local history of information and artifacts from Boulder in 1968.
As most know, the late '60s and early '70s were a very important time for America and the rest of the world. With Boulder being the college town that it is, the home of the University of Colorado. There was a lot of political protesting and riots being produced by students of CU.
Probably one of the most notable protests to take place in Boulder during this time happened in May of 1972. In response to President Nixon's announcement of the U.S. blockade of North Vietnam and the mining of Haiphong harbor, students and other protesters blockaded U.S. 36 or the Boulder - Denver Turnpike blocking people from entering and leaving Boulder. They started gathering trees, street signs, large rocks, and anything else they could use to block the roads. This held off traffic for most of the day. For the most part the police kept out of it and remained peaceful. Tear gas was later used to clear the people out of the streets and to finally shut down the demonstration. Overall there were no serious injuries and a little over 100 people were arrested for various charges.
Boulder was alive with political protest and many anti-Vietnam War demonstrations happened on CU campus and around town. One of those was a vote to do a campus-wide strike until they brought the U.S. troops home. This vote brought about 8,000 strong to the CU campus to protest.
http://boulderhistory.org/
No comments:
Post a Comment