Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 (29 page)

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Authors: Robert Zimmerman

Tags: #History, #United States, #20th Century, #test

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Page 155
Many in the S.D.S. leadership were hostile to the United States and capitalism, often expressing themselves in words reminiscent of Soviet propaganda.
15
"What we are witnessing and participating in is a revolt of the trainees of the new working class against oppressive conditions of capitalism," wrote S.D.S. vice-president Carl Davidson.
16
Or as local Columbia University chapter officer Anthony Papert said, "A university controlled by imperialists is not going to allow these changes. So the practical answer is we'll have to take it over."
17
For Rudd, the specific reasons for protest, "to end university complicity with the [Vietnam] war," were perhaps less important than the protest itself.
18
In 1970 Roger Kahn, in his book about the Columbia University protests, described Mark Rudd as
A curiously appealing young man, except when he is possessed by a vulgarity or hostility or arrogance. He speaks earnestly and forcefully about a new order. He wants to see mankind freed from toil. How? He is not certain, and he does not take suggestions well. When someone corrects Rudd . . . his rhetoric grows simple. "Aw, fuck off."
19
In October Rudd had written what he called a "coherent strategy" for "radicalizing" the Columbia student body. His game plan called for a step-by-step escalation of the conflict, beginning with position papers and leading to petitions, "harassment of [ROTC] instructors," demonstrations, and finally "a general student strike.''
20
Soon to join the Vietnam War and the "oppressive conditions of capitalism" as issues of protest was the gymnasium that Columbia was building in Morningside Park. Seven years earlier the university and New York City had made a deal: the university would be given a plot of land in the park in exchange for allowing community use of the gym.
By 1965, however, a number of politicians and local Harlem community leaders were questioning whether the city should have been leasing public park land to a private organization. By the spring of 1968 the S.D.S. had joined them, demanding that the gym's construction be stopped.
On Monday, April 23rd, approximately five hundred students, some from the S.D.S., some from the Students' Afro-American Society, and some

 

Page 156
merely curious bystanders, gathered in the center of the campus. There at the bottom of the grand steps leading up to Low Library they chanted and made speeches, condemning the gym as Rudd had done at the King memorial. Then about two hundred demonstrators proceeded to the gym construction site, where several attempted to tear down the chainlink fence that surrounded it. Three policemen intervened and a scuffle ensued. One student was arrested when a policeman was knocked down and kicked.
In retaliation, the protesters returned to the campus to grab their own "hostage." They moved
en masse
to the ground floor of nearby Hamilton Hall, where Rudd told a dean and two other faculty members: "We're going to keep you here."
21
Though the "hostages" were released the next day, by Thursday, five buildings were occupied and the campus was shut down. When one hundred fifty students seized Low Library, they broke into the locked building by smashing a window and injuring the security guard. Once inside they rummaged through desks and rifled the files of the university president.
22
Soon politicians and outsiders were inserting themselves into the conflict. Roy Innis from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) showed up to praise the demonstrators. "I'm proud of these kids. They've got the dean in what you might call
an extended dialogue."
23
State Senator Basil Patterson arrived to negotiate for the students. When he could get no satisfaction he said, "I know Harlem . . . settle this by nightfall."
24
Tom Hayden, one of the early founders of the S.D.S., made an appearance and suggested that if the police moved in, the protesters should make use of the university collection of priceless oriental vases as a defense. "We take these pieces and put'em out on the ledges. First time a cop takes a step toward us, we shove off a Ming vase."
25
The university's administration and faculty stood by, unable to make up their minds exactly what they should do or where they should stand on any of the issues. The administration feared riots in nearby Harlem, and thus waffled on doing anything. The faculty wanted the protest to end, but opposed police intervention. Many, wearing white armbands to identify themselves, stood in front of the occupied buildings, and like school crossing guards, ushered the protesters in and out as well as guiding both demonstrators and counter-demonstrators into neat and proper lines.

 

Page 157
Finally, on Monday night, the administration decided to call in the police. In the early predawn hours of Tuesday a force of about a thousand policemen was sent in to retake Columbia University. In front of each occupied building about a hundred officers arrayed themselves, with the officer in charge announcing by bullhorn that "On behalf of the trustees of Columbia University . . . I have been authorized to order you not to remain and you are hereby ordered to remove yourselves forthwith." At two buildings, underground tunnels allowed additional police officers to slip inside from below.
Only one building was cleared peaceably. Hamilton Hall had been the first building occupied. After the first day the black protesters ordered the whites to leave so they could take sole control of the building. Now the blacks calmly told the policeman in charge that they would not resist arrest, but that they would only leave if arrested. All eighty-three were handcuffed and quietly led to vans and taken away.
Everywhere else was violence. Students, both inside the buildings and in crowds outside, screamed "Pigs!" "Fascists!" and "Motherfuckers!" at the police. At some buildings the students and facility outside linked arms and tried to block police access to the buildings. Inside, protesters also linked arms, refusing to stand and leave when ordered to do so.
26
The cops retaliated with force, using batons and nightsticks. Pushing their way through the crowds, they dragged and shoved students from the buildings and into waiting police vans. Before long, the pushing and shoving changed to kicking and beating. Some cops cursed the students, shouting, "Commies!" "Bums!" and "Motherfuckers!" Soon students and teachers alike (even those who had decided not to resist) were assaulted. In front of one building the police formed a gauntlet, and forced every captured protester to run through it, bludgeoning them unmercifully as they passed. By night's end over one hundred people were injured, and over seven hundred were arrested.
27
This was just die beginning of the protests and violence. On May 17th 117 persons were arrested when about 1,000 people, including both students and some local politicians, occupied a university-owned tenement on 114th Street.
28
On May 21st, sixty-eight persons were injured, including seventeen policemen, and another 177 arrested when students once again occupied Hamilton Hall.

 

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This time it was the students who went wild, smashing windows and doors, setting fires, and throwing rocks, bottles, and bricks at police.
29
What made the Columbia University demonstration so shocking was that it involved the nation's so-called elites its upper middle-class students, its Ivy League intellectuals, and its law enforcement officials.
The students had been expected to spend their time learning about the world so that they could some day run it. Here, the protesting students seemed less interested in learning than in destroying the society around them.
The teachers had been expected to understand these complex issues, and to wield wisdom in the name of justice. Here, they merely stood by, helpless, unwilling to take any stand.
The police had been expected to firmly but justly enforce the law. Here, out of resentment and anger at the anti-American beliefs of some protesters, they violently broke it.
Expected to lead the country away from violence and irrational behavior, the participants at Columbia all reveled in it.
Possibly the most disturbing aspect of these protests was that, while the police and the school were justifiably condemned for their improprieties, the demonstrators were in the years to follow portrayed as noble heroes. As Jeff Kaplow, a thirty-year-old assistant professor at Columbia noted soon after, "I'm very sympathetic to [the] S.D.S. and I don't deplore the taking of the buildings. It's a silly piety to deplore it. It was done in a situation where all other remedies had failed."
30
This is not to say that all protesters condoned this violence. Many people of good will participated in many peaceful Vietnam protests in the ensuing months. On April 24th, for example, with Columbia's buildings still occupied, almost 200,000 college students throughout the New York metropolitan area gathered in Central Park to peacefully protest the Vietnam War.
31
Nevertheless, the aftermath of the Columbia protests could be seen almost immediately. Just three weeks later a group of forty students seized the registrar's office at Brooklyn College, occupying it for sixteen hours, demanding that the college guarantee the admission of 1,000 more blacks in the coming fall semester.
32
And this was only the beginning, as similar protests soon broke out in hundreds of campuses across the country.

 

Page 159
American society had seen the arrival of a violent protest movement that in years to come would tear at the social order, attacking and changing every assumption about the country.
Saturn 5
Twelve hours before Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis, the sun rose bright and clear at Cape Kennedy. At pad 39A, the countdown of the second unmanned test launch of the Saturn 5 rocket reached its finish. At 7 AM, the engines fired and, like a huge lumbering titan, the rocket began its slow climb skyward.
Though less than twenty months remained before the arrival of Kennedy's self-imposed deadline, NASA had only tested the complete package of this massive machine once before. In its first launch, on November 9th, 1967, the Saturn rocket had taken a test command module to a height of over 11,000 miles, at which point the service module's engines had driven the module back into the earth's atmosphere at almost 25,000 miles per hour. This accelerated return was intended to simulate the return of a spacecraft from lunar orbit. Its parachutes unfurling, the command module had landed safely in the Pacific, less than ten miles from the
U.S.S. Bennington
. It had been a perfect flight, putting a strong positive spin on what had been a sad year at NASA.
This second launch, officially named Apollo 6, would be a repeat of that first mission, giving the ground crew a bit more experience for the first manned mission now scheduled for October. It would also reaffirm that the Saturn 5 and all its components were ready and able to safely put human beings into space.
At one second past 7 AM, just as planned, Apollo 6 lifted off. Little else went as planned. Just over two minutes after launch, the engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama began recording powerful oscillations in the thrust of the rocket. Like a badly-tuned car, the rocket was actually
bouncing
five or six times a second as it rose into the air, the rocket's thrust fluctuating up and down across a wide range of

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