Early in that semester, a group 94 African American students were expelled at Oshkosh State University for protesting against the lack of black faculty and black history courses.  Like at our campus the previous year, the Oshkosh administration employed baton-wielding riot police and mass arrests.  Our SDS chapter called for a march to support Black Studies and the expelled students.  I, of course, was at my most militant.  When the Madison cops tried to confine everyone to the sidewalk, I tried to lead the crowd into the street.  This stubborn move earned me a lifelong friend in Jon Melrod, who still tells the story.  And it earned me a night in jail.  Only a handful of the 94 expelled students were later re-admitted.

In early 1969, the same issue of Black Studies took center stage on the Madison campus.  Nathan Hare, a professor from San Francisco State, had visited Madison’s Black student organization.  He challenged them to lead a student strike.  Many classes were shut down.  The campus was polarized between those who wanted to attend classes and the pickets.

We paralyzed the campus for about a week, leading the National Guard around campus in an elaborate avoidance of conflict.  There had been many a tense moment.  Tear gas clouds billowed outside the halls of academia.  The Black students were the leading force.  As the momentum began to die, there was some minor damage to university property.  I took the cue and pitched a trash can through a frosted glass window of a men’s room door in Bascom Hall.  Almost immediately, I said to myself, “What if someone had been just coming out at that moment?”  I had rented a bull horn which I couldn’t return.  It had been broken over some poor guy’s head by one of the African American football players.  I worried for a few moments that the unpaid bill would affect my credit rating and quickly forgot about it.