I was student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I was deeply involved in the anti-war movement on campus. I was a member of what was an ad hoc organization that staged assorted anti-war actions. Right after the murders we met to discuss the idea that was circulating around the campuses across the country to call a general strike to shut down the schools. Remembering that this was a conservative school in the deep south, there was a lot of sentiment that if we called for a strike, it would be a flop. Besides looking like fools we would undermine the movement. We didn't realize that the the Faculty Senate was holding a parallel meeting. They beat us to the punch and called for a strike. That I think was a clear sign of how deeply the killings at Kent State effected the whole country. Ultimately four hundred schools closed down for three days. It was a huge boost to the entire movement nation wide.
Needless to say that throughout this period Trickie Dickie was severely criticize by students. He decided that he had to do something to prove he really wasn't hated by college students. So as luck would have it, at that time Billy Graham (the leading religious Nixon ass kisser who loved hob-nobbing with Nixon) was holding one of his mega Crusades in UT's Neyland Stadium. Nixon got Graham to invite him to that circus, I mean Crusade, to speak. Our group immediately decided to stage multiple protests against Nixon's appearance. The project I worked on was making cardboard coffins filled with the names of service members that had died in the war. We marched past student union to a microphone and read out the names. In the beginning it was announced that students would not be allowed to attend the speech. We went to court and the judge ruled that they couldn't prevent students from an event held at a school facility. So they designated two sections in which to segregate the students. That was a big mistake. All that did was concentrate the chanting. If you remember Stanley Karnow's Television History of Vietnam you might remember there was a short segment of Nixon's speech. In the background you can hear us students doing our best to shout him down. It was very satisfying.
Now we get to the point of this. A few days after the event we got a call from the Knoxville cop shop (we had many sympathizers in many places) to tell us that they were issuing warrants to arrest all of the leaders that had organized the demonstrations. It was at the end of the quarter and everyone just went underground. We'd sneak onto campus to take exams and then disappear again. They arrested a couple of people, but that was about it. Everyone went home afterwards and nothing ever came of it again. What were the charges you ask? DISTURBING A RELIGIOUS SERVICE! To this day I wear that charge as a badge of honor.
Just as an aside, the day before Nixon arrived the FBI arrived to shake down the place we all called the White House which was where all of us dirty hippies met to plot our misdeeds. They got a great deal of heckling, but unlike ICE, they didn't seem to take the search or the heckling it too seriously.
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