HONORING OUR HEROES
6 | WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 2022
50 years ago: Vietnam protesters recall fight against ‘never-ending war’ BY BRIAN AROLA, THE FREE PRESS, MANKATO, MINN.
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 neverending 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.
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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.
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