Don’t Shoot Michael!

Watching news reports the last few weeks is bound to transport someone my age to the late 1960s. And the trip back in memory can be pretty bumpy, depending on how you actually spent those years. My ride had only a few bumps.

Before I left Savannah, Georgia, for New Haven, Connecticut, in August 1967, I considered myself pretty liberal. I even signed up ahead of time for membership in the “Party of the Left” in the Yale Political Union.  I quickly found out that a radical in Savannah was, at best, a moderate around people from Chicago, New York, and Boston. I was left-leaning but not left-committed. To prove that point, I remember promising my father that I would not get arrested in any peace demonstration or burn my draft card. I kept my promises.

When the Party of the Left morphed into the SDS on the Yale campus, I gave up my membership to become just plain Liberal. I also became a card carrying member of the Yale Daily News staff, focusing mostly on sports but with an occasional drift into campus or national politics. For example, I was assigned to cover the visit of Edmund Muskie to New Haven when he was running for vice president with Hubert Humphrey in 1968. I was even invited to be on the Press Bus—how cool was that, and how moderate!

A poster announcing our May Day "uprising"

Then came May Day weekend in 1970, and the ’60s really came alive for me finally, no matter what the year. Suddenly, 10,000 left-committed people descended on New Haven to demonstrate for freeing Bobby Seale, a Black Panther who was on trial for murdering another Panther near New Haven. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, two of Seale’s fellow Chicago 7 defendants from the 1968 Democratic Convention, were on hand, and they riled up the crowd with chants of “Yip! Yip! Yip!” After all, they were founders of the Youth International Party, called Yippies. There were a lot of Yippie followers on campus that weekend, but not me. Instead of demonstrating, I was covering events for the Yale News. Nevertheless, I did get tear-gassed twice that weekend while “on the job”—something that is hard to describe or forget. But I did get my story. I also got some great anecdotes to share about my time with the real radicals.

Some other reporter posted this story about the
demonstration where I was tear-gassed

I communicated with my parents back in Savannah after the crazy weekend and learned an even more interesting story. I mentioned that members of the National Guard had camped out a few blocks from the campus, and my mother said that she knew all about that. In fact, a few weeks before May Day, one of the young men working with her in my uncle’s clothing store had said that he might be called up to his Guard unit and assigned to New Haven. My mother looked right into his eyes and said menacingly, “Terrence, don’t you dare shoot Michael!”

I’m not sure if Terrence was in New Haven or not for May Day, but luckily he heeded my mother’s warning. Neither I nor anyone else got shot that weekend. My mother was looking out for all of us.

  

At least one of these Guardsmen seems a little distracted.
Maybe he is thinking about my mother's warning. 

So, as I watched the Guardsmen clear out demonstrators in Lafayette Square Park near the White House with tear gas and rubber bullets a few weeks ago, I had a flashback and felt a small bump. I am still just left-leaning, but for a few hours I felt left-committed.