Student protests caused Ohio University to close early in 1970, and Athens has long been a hotbed of activism.
Editor's Note: This article is the first in a four-day series on protests and activism in Athens and Ohio University.
Ken Steinhoff said he still gets "nostalgic for the smell of tear gas in the spring."
Steinhoff, a former photographer with The Post and The Athens Messenger in the late 1960s and early 1970s, said when he visits Athens, he can still picture National Guard soldiers at nearly every uptown parking meter. He can see the hundreds of students that sat protesting for civil rights at the corner of Court and Union streets.
Though that era was one of the most contentious in Athens’ history, the city has been a hotbed for activism and protests throughout the past two centuries, according to Tom O'Grady, executive director of the Athens County Historical Society and Museum.
Steinhoff had a firsthand glimpse of a lot of the student activism taking place at Ohio University — activism which eventually led to the university shutting down early in May 1970.
“I was always the guy in the middle of the crowd, not part of it but watching it,” he said.
Steinhoff’s photographs are currently part of an exhibit at the Athens County Historical Society and Museum commemorating the 45th anniversary of the shooting of 13 students by the National Guard at Kent State University.
Even prior to those shootings, student activism had been rising since at least Oct. 15, 1969, Jessica Cyders, curator of the museum, said.
That day was known as Moratorium Day — a national day of protest against the Vietnam War.
“People didn’t go to work, people didn’t go to school,” she said. “It was a peaceful protest against the war designed to end the war and show the political leaders that there wasn’t strong support for continuing the war.”
At OU, 140 professors cancelled classes, and 47 people met on College Green and marched around town, Cyders said.
Steinhoff said the activists set up a loudspeaker on the green and read the names of every victim of the war, banging a drum once for each name.
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“That f--king drum," he said. "You could hear that all over Uptown. And every time you heard that f--king beat you knew that there was a dead kid your age who had been killed. And I can still hear that haunting sound.”
Some of the protests during that time were related to issues that still draw student activism today, Cyders said.
Protests against rising tuition took a violent turn in January 1970.
“There were bricks thrown through windows, there were rocks thrown off Alden Library,” Cyders said. “It was not a great protest.”
Cyders said it was one of the first protests of the era to become violent, bringing police to the incident.
During that protest, former OU President Claude Sowle called on the Ohio State Highway Patrol to keep order, leading to the arrests of 46 students.
Steinhoff said, at the time, he had no idea he was witnessing something that would become become a part of the region’s history.
“All I remember when I was covering those events was I was tired, I was hungry and I wanted to go home,” he said.
Cyders said the "shift in the tone of the protests" at OU was sparked by the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970.
Steinhoff said student activists went on a two-day fast after the shootings that culminated in a peace march May 6.
After the march, the students held communion on College Green, led by Rev. Tom Jackson, the former head of United Campus Ministries.
For the first several hours, Jackson used formal wine and communion wafers, but he ran out a few hours into the event, forcing the group to resort to store-bought bread and cheap wine.
“Even though I’d grown up in parochial schools, I’d never been religious about anything in my life,” Steinhoff said. “I found myself going through that line and realizing what communion was really about. It wasn’t fancy gold chalices. … It was some cheap-ass bread and cheap wine that you share with the community. It was the first time that I ever had communion, and it was the last time I ever had communion.”
The following week, the protests returned to violence, Cyders said.
On the nights of May 13 and 14, in response to student riots, police officers from Athens and neighboring towns sprayed tear gas on the protesters, causing Sowle to shut down campus on May 15, 1970.
“That I think changed the dynamic of the whole event,” Steinhoff said. “Athens cops and students had kind of a ritual chicken dance. They both kind of knew the rules of engagement and how far you could go. Those other cops had never seen college students. They didn’t understand how to deal with these crazy hippies.”
But early activism in Athens didn’t always involve such overt demonstrations. During World War II, activism took more domestic forms, like planting “victory gardens” — vegetable gardens designed to help ration food — and collecting supplies such as rubber and scrap metal.
“All activism isn’t protesting,” O’Grady said. “Activism is the community coming together to make a difference in the world. … Back in those days when you supported the troops you did more than put bumper stickers on your car.”
Earlier in Athens’ history, there were disputes for several decades about whether cows should be allowed to graze on College Green, until the 1890s when Athens City Council passed a resolution putting the green under the university’s jurisdiction, O’Grady said.
“That ended the controversy, but not without resentment for some years,” he said.
In 1865, railroad expansion drummed up activism from Adeline Sidney, Josephine, Meary and Virginia Currier, who lived on the flatiron square, where Domino’s Pizza, 12 Mill St., currently stands.
“They barricaded the road, and they stopped the railroad from coming to town and rerouted it around the city limits,” O'Grady said.
Troops from the National Guard were called to Athens County to respond to mine strikes in 1874 and 1884.
As the city developed, Athens residents and students also expanded their attention to national issues, from wars abroad to impact on the environment.
In the 1980s, environmental student groups, such as Save Our Rural Environment, advocated against strip mining and brine disposal from oil wells.
The next decade, students overtook the intersection of Court and Union streets, as they had done in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to protest the first Gulf War.
Cyders said activism has largely dwindled since those days.
“I don’t know if there’s nothing galvanizing the students like it did back then,” Cyders said. “Because back then you knew someone, whether it was your brother or a classmate or your husband, you knew someone who had been killed.”
O’Grady said there are still people in Athens who are willing to challenge the status quo, but that he thinks there needs to be more.
“I really think the most important thing are the questions, and I think we should be asking more questions today,” O’Grady said. “The questions are really what’s critical. Nobody wants to hear the answers, but a good question can elevate a society.”
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