Editor’s Note: Sue asked her full name not be shared due to concerns surrounding her religion and details about the protest. 

SAMANTHA SIEDOW: Hi everyone, my name is Samantha Siedow. I am a staff reporter on the administration desk and you are listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota.

Today joining me is a really interesting woman named Sue, who was a student at the university from 1971 through 1976. So Sue and I actually met because we’re in a class together, and I’ve got to say, Sue, I think you study harder than anyone else in that class. 

For listeners, just to give them a description, Sue comes to class every day with this great bag full of printouts and highlighted and annotated notes from the readings. I mean, you don’t do anything halfway. 

SUE: It’s a pleasure to be in class with you, Sam. I enjoy being with the young scholars. 

SIEDOW: Well, we all very much benefit from your experience. 

SUE: And I from yours. 

SIEDOW: So today we’re actually here to speak a little bit about one of Sue’s experiences, which was witnessing the Eight Days in May, as they’re called, which was a period of unrest at the University of Minnesota from May 9 through 16 in 1972.

And they are known as the largest and most violent university demonstrations of the Vietnam War era. So during this period of two days at the university, there was a protest in which the Minnesota National Guard unit had a presence at the university after anti-war protesters built a barricade blocking traffic at the intersection of Washington Ave and Church Street Southeast.

So according to a Minnesota Daily article I dug up from the archives written in 1997, dozens of protesters and police were injured in the demonstrations and the resulting altercations. There was a piece in the article that actually mentioned that Dinkytown residents had to keep their windows shut, due to the heavy use of tear gas, to stay safe in their apartments. I mean, this was no small movement at all. 

SUE: No, I was a freshman in college when this all happened. So I was 18 years old. Just turned 18 that September. And, growing up in a small suburb like I did and having certain exposures to the Vietnam War that I had, I did not come into the university, I guess you would say with the bandwidth or the skills set to actually, I wasn’t an activist.

I was a freshman just trying to get through school. And trying to understand what was going on through my personal experiences as they related to the Vietnam War. So, on the day that it happened, we didn’t have the National Guard. They weren’t called in until 1:00 in that morning. Moos was off campus, President Moos.

Eidenberg, or whatever, you can look up his name in this article, was overseeing what was happening. We knew that there were protests going on at what we would have called back then Cedar Riverside, the big housing complex that is up over there. And we knew that was being protested.

And then we knew that with the mining of the harbor that Nixon was going to do, it was gonna hit this campus as well, the Vietnam War. From my understanding, the two protests coalesced on the East Bank. I mean, we were aware it was happening in Dinkytown. We were aware, of course, the Armory would be in the hub of all that.

We were in class. I was in a communications class in the hall right behind Ford Hall. We got out late that afternoon, and when we came out, the first thing that hit us were the sounds and the smells of what was going on. It was loud, it was chaotic. Tear gas, even though it was Minneapolis Police officers, not the Guard, it was just in the air.

And one of the most poignant moments that I remember being 18 and trying to figure this all out for myself, from my personal experiences, was a friend and I came out of our class and back in the day, there was a high school in Dinkytown and we don’t know how she got to where we were. But a young student, who had been tear gassed and was trying to get to the University of Minnesota hospital emergency rooms, got all the way over to behind Ford Hall.

And we found her, and she, her eyes were just watering, and so forth. So we got her to the emergency room. And that is something I will carry with me, as someone who spent all of her life in education, or advocating for young people and their families. That young woman and how that affected her. You just will never forget it. 

The second big experience, because we were not at the Armory and so forth over here, as the chaos came down the mall, was later in the evening. I lived in Comstock Hall. So, right next to Coffman Memorial Union, back then it was all women, and boring. The second big experience came in that evening when the streets had gotten blocked off.

So, Washington Avenue was blocked off. We couldn’t go anywhere. I remember having to call in to work and telling my bosses downtown, I can’t get to work. I can’t get out, the buses can’t come. And they hadn’t quite heard all of what was going on, and they were, “Well, what’s going on?” I said, “Well, we have some protests here at the university, go turn on the radio, go turn on the news.”

I worked at a shop on Nicollet Mall. So, we had that happening, and as the evening progressed, I’m sure you’ve seen the old picture which I showed Sam of the police lining up right in front of Memorial U, Coffman Memorial Union. And that’s where the guest speakers were and, you know, there were rumors, of course, that the Weathermen had come to the U, which, no. It was the SDS, Socialist Democratic Students group that was here.

And the speakers themselves I went to listen. I decided to do that because I wanted to actually learn, since I wasn’t an activist, learn what was going on, listening to why they were saying what they were saying, what they were protesting, and so forth. Now I know during the day from a picture that still exists, in black and white, you see a police officer attacking a student on the grass in the mall.

That night, I don’t recall ever seeing anyone attack the speakers. I recall bonfires, I want to say there was a flag burning, which wasn’t unusual back in the day, with the Vietnam protest, and listened, and it went on for several hours. Eventually, I went back to the dorm. I’ll be honest, I was a little intimidated by it.

Again, as I said earlier, I didn’t have the bandwidth or the skills. I had not gotten into it. My whole approach with the Vietnam War has actually never ended because many of my generation are still facing the repercussions of Vietnam, mentally and physically. And, so I just went back and my parents were calling, they were frantic.

You know, “Where have you been? Are you okay?” Yes. And, you know, I told them. I went outside and I listened. To me, I felt it was important to hear the messages that were being said. Now I didn’t hear anything about the housing even though they coalesced together, all the messages and things, McCarthy from my understanding came here. I think you can research that in the article. They just, I used them as a resource to learn and then I went home.

When I got up and went back to the dorm, told my family I was okay, the barriers came down quite quickly. They were not there for more than a day, I don’t think. And I just remember Washington Avenue being open. The campus wasn’t, like you would see today in some of the protests going on, the campus wasn’t a mess.

You didn’t, there was no destruction on the mall. None. And the other thing you have to keep in mind is that they never canceled classes. Nope, we went, the campus was not closed, we went back to classes. Eventually, my understanding is, and according to this, the guard didn’t come in until 1:00 in the morning. And by that time, you know, we weren’t sleeping, but I was back in the dorm. And so, that was my initial experience with a protest.

SIEDOW: I’m so curious, when you got back into your dorm and you called and you told your family. 

SUE: They called me, yeah.

SIEDOW: When they called you and you told them, “I’m okay, I’m safe, I was just going to kind of get a better understanding of the war and of the activism movement happening at the U,” and then you found out that, or at least you had an awareness that the university was not going to cancel classes, things were going to operate functionally pretty much as normal.

What was going through your head at the time? Because you were coming from a suburb where you had little to no experience with protests and activism in general. I would love to know how you were able to flip that switch back to normalcy, or if you were able to do that. 

SUE: I was a little bit frightened going back to class the morning, in the mornings, but as the days went on you became more and more comfortable because, as I said, the destruction, there just wasn’t any. And the ear markings of the protests, the barriers and so forth, as quickly as they went up, they came down. And so, even though there were speakers and different things possibly going on, for one thing, I didn’t go over to the Armory, and I didn’t go over to Dinkytown.

My life was situated here at Comstock, at the Mall, and at the West Bank. And so, you know, it just, you acclimated back into the situation fairly quickly because you almost had to. You didn’t have a choice. I mean, you still had to get up. You still had to go to school. You still had to do your homework. You still had to go to work. 

And I had all these things that had to be done. And yet, on top of it, you also, you know, walked away wondering, you know, what happened to that young lady? And what did these protests accomplish, if anything? Did people listen? And in putting that all through your head and reflecting upon that, and so, it affected you in that way.

And it’s something that, when you started talking about it, and you brought back all the memories of what I went through and what people went through and, and to this day, well, I, you know, want to acknowledge the messages and so forth that were being given to us. I also still will never forget, there was a high school in Dinkytown, and how were those students?

You know, one of my biggest fears as someone who went into education and so forth, how were they? Were they terrorized? How was their mental health? How were they? People didn’t discuss that back in the day. And so that became an issue for me personally anyway. Dinkytown and the Armory were the hardest hit. 

SIEDOW: You mentioned earlier that you almost feel as though the Vietnam War never ended because of the lingering repercussions that are faced by people in your generation, some of which that you even know personally. 

I would like to hear a little bit about your first kind of your early memories of hearing about the Vietnam War and how that shaped your understanding of what was happening and how your personal relationships with your people who were sent to war shaped that.

SUE: So when I was in high school and I was telling Sam this, and this will wrap around to the point, I went to a gymnastics camp at a college in southern Minnesota for two summers and at that camp were two coaches from Kent State. And that’s why this will wrap around. Rudy and Janet. At the second camp, I was getting ready to graduate the next year.

They talked to me about considering coming to Kent State. And it was the first time I thought about going out of state to college. I went home quite excited. It was a smaller campus and talked to my parents about it. And then the tragedy hit. And the students lost their lives. And it’s not something I could comprehend at 16 and at 71. I still don’t comprehend it, and I hope I never do. I hope I never get that callous, but.

SIEDOW: For listeners, sorry, but for listeners who may not be aware, the Kent State shooting was a shooting of unarmed college students who were protesting the Vietnam War, who were part of the anti-Vietnam War movement in northeastern Ohio by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970. 

SUE: Yep, and I graduated in 1971. And so, once again, my family had to step in and say, you know, “No, you’re not. Don’t even consider it. You’re going to the university” and that’s where, and I think, you know, it was also part of the fact that it was close to home and I, they always felt I would be safe here.

I come from a large family, then my next experience came. I’m the oldest of seven and my oldest brother got his draft notice. And so getting that draft card and knowing that he would have no choice, but have to go. And many members, including my father, served in the military. And so that, that became a moment that our whole family had to grapple with.

Even though, later on in life, I’ve had brothers who enlisted and went on to have careers in the army or long term services. So we, you know, all of a sudden it became very personal. Because I was, in fact, I was just talking to my brother about this the other day, telling him about this podcast. And he said, “Oh no, Susan, I got my draft notice.”

And of course, there were loved ones. I had a relative who came and he served, he lived, he came back, and his sister and I were very good friends, and I would go spend the night there. And throughout the night, you would hear these horrible sounds coming from their room. Well, that’s what we still live with today, are the nightmares. Those aren’t going to go away. You know, those men who served over there, and women, experience things we’ll never know about, and we’ll never experience in our lives. 

A friend whose brother came home on Christmas Eve, but he was dead. And so these all added up, and the final one I’ll share is, I had a swim coach in high school. Again, we were high school students. You were the end of the era coming into this. Whose fiancé was over, and I believe it was called Eagle Beach. And he would send letters to her. And before practice would start she would sit down and share those letters with us. It was a safe spot. We loved this coach and hear about what was going on.

And so Vietnam was, for me, more personal than an an activism role. It became very personal. You know, as we grew older, and of course, of course, we were exposed every single day to the TV coverage. You know, we saw the protests. I’m old enough to remember the fall of Hanoi and see that, so you have to remember my generation saw not only the protest, but we saw people we knew, or we knew that were there, and we saw what the fighting was like over there. 

And so you got this dual composition of what Vietnam was because my friends, my brother had no choice, they were going, unless of course you left the country, and many, many young people did. They went to Canada. You have to let and respect everyone make their choice. 

SIEDOW: So you had all of these personal ties to people who had fought and some of which didn’t return from the Vietnam War. With that in mind, I’m curious what you believe the place is in kind of the anti-war movements or just in general in social movements for students to be protesting at colleges. These students, so far removed, not far removed, but just far away physically from events protesting something at an educational institution. 

SUE: Well for me it was kind of a dichotomy because I believe in the freedom to speak and speak what your beliefs are. I question the validity of the Vietnam War. But I’m not gonna lie, I also was angry, very angry, with the way the veterans were treated when they came back. 

They came back with a lot of mental and physical issues. Agent Orange was real. And the crap that was going on over there was real. It was horrible. And they didn’t ask to go. And so when they came back, it was awful and it took years and years and years for that generation to be acknowledged for their service. 

So I agree that on college campuses, voices should be heard. But in all honesty, protest. Let your voices be known. Do I believe anybody listens to them? Well, nobody did back then. That war didn’t end, and people kept dying. But I hope that the people who did protest it felt a validity to making those voices heard.

At least somebody was saying something. And the young people were standing up and they were saying, “We’ve had enough.” You have to remember our chant was, “Hell no, we won’t go.” And they were standing up and saying, “Enough is enough.” And Nixon didn’t listen. 

And so I admire them for taking such a horrible issue, war is never a good issue, taking such a horrible issue, especially a war that was fought the way Vietnam was. This wasn’t a war. It was fought in rice paddies, and it was fought in foliage, and it was fought by the air. I have two acquaintances who were pilots over there and they said one made the comment years ago, “I survived because I couldn’t see what was below.” But I think that students and activists do need to exist.

I think they’re a very big part of what this country needs. And I think that voices need to be heard when they don’t agree with an issue. My only, and I didn’t disagree with the protesters at that time protesting Vietnam. The only thing that broke my heart, coming from a family where people did serve later on and my dad served, was, as I said earlier, the way the veterans were treated when they came back.

It was horrible. It was horrible. And so, but yes, I think voices need to be heard. But I think it needs to be, I wish there was a way that we could have taken those voices and brought them together with those soldiers who came back, male or female, and had them talk to one another. So that those who were protesting could have had an even greater sense of what they lived through over there. You know, and brought that voice to the campuses and brought that voice to America. 

SIEDOW: Just a bit ago you mentioned that you didn’t feel that the protests, at least at the university at the time, or that they didn’t shape anything to do with the U.S. government’s decision during the Vietnam War period and the horrors that were happening in Vietnam. 

I’m curious in the aftermath of these two major protests on the university grounds that you remember, if anything was changed by these protests? Like, what, what the feeling was on campus? 

SUE: The only thing that got changed by these protests, and you can look it up in this article, because history professor was quoted in here, was the policies that the University of Minnesota has put into place for that kind of activism, and how it should be handled, how it would be handled, and how that’s affected us forever.

That piece of the puzzle came. Do I think the voices got listened to? It breaks my heart, but if they had, I mean, I wish their voices had had a greater impact. Because maybe so many young people wouldn’t have lost their lives or come back the way in facing the challenges.

Those challenges didn’t go away in the 70s. This is 2024. And there are Vietnam vets out there who are still feeling the pains of that service. 

So, I wish the older generation or the political generation or whatever you want to call them would pay more attention because, you know, hell no we won’t go made so much sense, and they were standing up and people were dying. It didn’t get listened to and I feel bad.

SIEDOW: You mentioned, you just spoke about the hell no, we won’t go chant specifically. Were there any other particular signs or chants or speakers that you can remember from the protests that made an impression on you to the extent that you can still remember them to this day? 

SUE: Well, we had Eugene McCarthy here in Minnesota and he was an extremely liberal politician, and would stand up for speaking against the war. Sadly, I remember the people that I disliked, like Richard Nixon and the people who put us into the war. I remember when it was happening here on campus, there was a group that got a lot of bad publicity and were considered agitators, just like there are those groups in protest today. And that was the Weathermen. 

And I just remember thinking as I was standing out in front of Coffman Memorial Union, “Are they coming, are they going to be here, and if they do, what will happen?” But they didn’t, at least as far as I know. You have to remember my whole experience with the Vietnam War and the campus part was minuscule compared to how it’s encompassed the rest of our lives. But I remember the people who just wouldn’t listen and kept sending them over and.

SIEDOW: Did your lack of previous experience with protests and protesting coming from being raised in that suburb make the intensity of this kind of scene that you’re witnessing any more shocking? 

Like, how did you even process being so young and this being one of your first years in university, how did you process what you were witnessing?

SUE: Well, it was my first year and as I said earlier, I didn’t have the bandwidth of understanding nor the skill set. There was so much anxiety and so much fear. Once you, if you got through that, then you realize the need to wait, which is why I went back out. You need to listen to these voices.

You need to learn from this voice. You need to learn to understand what that message is and why that message was being shared with us. Obviously, it had an impact on me, because I’m 71 now, and it’s 52 years after it happened, and we’re still talking about it. But I hope that impact never goes away.

I really do because it brought, you know, so much thought, and so much for me to delve into the issues further, and to learn as much as I could, and to learn the empathy, and learn the anger, and learn all that this encompasses. Not just as a sister whose brother was going to be drafted, or a friend, but as an educator.

Going in to have to teach the Vietnam War to students is not an easy task. Because the lack of back in the day, the lack of curricula and things. The best way to teach it was to bring in a Vietnam vet. 

SIEDOW: Do you then think that your role as an educator later in life was any way shaped by your experiences on campus at the time as a student?

SUE: I think that, yes, it made me, one, learn that I needed to develop those skills. So I could become more aware of the activism, not just with the Vietnam War. There’s been many issues since. Remember, I’m old enough where I came, I went through the whole Martin Luther King and the rights. It was a building of skill sets, and yes, it did. It made me aware that I needed to look at issues harder.

Not just the war, but civil rights and, and many other issues have come up through my lifetime and what we faced. And I look at that almost as a gift. I mean, while it was scary and hard, it’s something you carry with you if you choose to. You know, you carry it with you, and now, as I have gotten older and older and gone through more and more issues, you learn to do your due diligence.

You learn to listen to all the voices. You learn to appreciate there are two sides or three sides or four sides to everything. Throughout my lifetime, 43 years, I’ve tracked in various venues of education or advocacy work. In my world, and as an educator, you must listen to all the voices. 

SIEDOW: You have had such a long and beautiful career, and I hope that you feel so accomplished with everything that you’ve done.

SUE: Well, it’s had its ups and downs, but mostly ups. And, you know, I have to thank all the people along the way who blessed me with those opportunities to get out and work with the communities and the families that I did. 

SIEDOW: Having had such a long and, like I said, such a beautiful career and advocacy work, I wonder if you feel that witnessing the kind of momentum of young voices during that period of protests during your time at the university had shaped your views on activism in any way?

SUE: Well, it did. If I had not probably seen this, I don’t think I would have gotten as involved as I did and took the pace of the, or the changes or the venues that I took in my career choices. And so, yeah, I mean it had to be in the back of my mind, which is why as I got older and became more comfortable with the different skills and things I had heard, young voices I had heard here. Well, I was one of those voices, but silent at the time. It was a blessing and it helped move me forward.

SIEDOW: I’m just wondering if there’s anything that you would want to, if you were able to tell either your younger self or students today about that time. 

SUE: The 70s and the 60s, I wish that I had had more tools and more skills because it was turbulent. The 60s and 70s were turbulent. You had the civil rights, you had Vietnam. There was a lot going on and I would tell my younger self, I would have gone back and told my parents if I could tell them one thing to do it all over again, probably have done more talking with us at home. 

SIEDOW: Do you have anything you want to say generally on the importance of young voices and young voices being heard specifically?

SUE: Young voices have a lot to say and my generation, and other generations who are younger than me, we all need to listen. And I’m really, really tired of Gen Z, Gen X, Millennials, Boomer 1, Boomer 2. We are all here on this planet. And if we don’t start listening to each other, we’re gonna be in big trouble.

And a lot of those voices come from youth. They bring so many ideas. Which is why I come here still. You know, I sit in the classes and I get to hear their voices, and your voice, Sam, and learn. And I hope that never stops. And I hope their voices never, ever stop, ever. So I’m going to say to all of you students out there, you keep on marching, you keep on rocking. Make sure you’re being heard.

Just do it in a way that people will want to listen to, because I will tell you one thing, and this is my generation, when it gets violent, or is perceived as, as not being respectful, 

SIEDOW: Disruptive maybe? 

SUE: Disruptive, thank you. That hearing will shut down, and that’s what we want to avoid. We want to keep everybody listening and the youth, you know, this is a wonderful campus. It’s got a lot of great organizations. All their voices need to be heard. And I keep hoping that they keep on keeping on. That’s another saying from our day. Keep on keeping on. And I’ll end it there. 

SIEDOW: Thank you so much, Sue. 

SUE: Thanks for having me. 

SIEDOW: It’s been absolutely wonderful to have you here and to be able to speak to you and to learn from you, and I’m excited to continue doing so in our class for the semester.

SUE: Sam, thank you so much and thank you both as well for having me.

SIEDOW: I think that this episode was written by Samantha Siedow and produced by Kaylie Sirovy. As always, we appreciate you listening in. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to email us at [email protected]. I’m Sam, and this has been In The Know.