March 4, 1970
Living in a university town offered us lots of opportunities to see interesting shows and hear fascinating people. One of those scheduled to lecture on campus was a famous trial lawyer Nate wanted to hear – William Kunstler.
Kunstler was America’s most controversial and best-known lawyer in 1970. He had been the defender of a group of young men called The Chicago 7 who’d been accused of conspiring to incite riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Outside the convention hall there had been hundreds of arrests and these 7 young men had passionately urged protesters to fight the police when they tried to disperse the crowds. Mayor Daly put 23,000 police officers on the street to control 10,000 demonstrators, and it had been chaotic for both sides throughout the 4-day convention.
All 7 of the “conspirators” (and later an 8th) had been charged, but thanks to Kunstler, none of them were found guilty after the 5 month trial. Nate thought it would be interesting to hear him speak, despite being the polar opposite of Kunstler’s liberal views.
At the last minute, however, Kunstler’s lecture was cancelled because rioting had broken out on our University of Illinois campus.
It was a raw time in our nation with young people protesting the Vietnam War and any kind of discrimination – of which there was plenty. Police weren’t helping the razor-sharp tension as they responded with too much force, often hurting the innocent along with the guilty.
Nate and I were disappointed not to hear Kunstler, but we were also thankful we lived off campus, away from the chaos. We did worry, though, that reserve troops like him might be called into service. The National Guard was already being used to join police on several college campuses. And that very night the Guard was put on duty at the University of Illinois.
It was a frightening time of radical change for Americans, and no one knew where we were headed. The nightly news was full of violent video clips showing confrontations between students and police at scores of universities, something we’d never witnessed before. Watching a helmeted policeman hit a defenseless student with a billy club was a terrible shock.
The night of the cancelled Kunstler lecture, it was tempting to go to campus to see for ourselves what was going on. But Nate and I talked about Mary and Bervin’s experience in 1968 when they’d gone downtown to check on the protests in Grant Park.
As police had coaxed crowds to disperse and people had refused, they’d sprayed mace into the group. Mary and Bervin had been greatly affected by the mace, despite trying to run away, in eyes, nose, and throat.
So wisdom dictated that the best thing for Nate and I to do was just to stay home.
“Those who trust their own insight are foolish, but anyone who walks in wisdom is safe.” (Proverbs 28:26)
