The South Park Blocks erupted in violence, and 21 protesters were hospitalized due to injuries from police beatings
With downtown businesses closed, busses on infrequent schedules and few cars on the road, a stroll through Portland’s South Park Blocks today could be quiet and idyllic. As you approach the north side of Portland State University, observe the statutes of great presidents Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. Surrounded in this setting, close your eyes and connect with the space.
Now imagine the chaos of hundreds of students screaming “Sieg Heil!” and “Free Bobby! Jail Nixon!” Police truncheons slapping stiff leather gloves. This was the scene 50 years ago today, on May 11, 1970.
Daniel Lownsdale dedicated 24 narrow blocks to Portland in 1852, just one year after the city’s incorporation. At the time, the Park Blocks spanned across downtown, connecting what are now the North Park Blocks and South Park Blocks, separated by development. But at its inception, the Park Blocks were envisioned as a strolling promenade or maybe even a firebreak at the then western edge of town. In addition to creating a space for picnics, playing children and some civic pride, Lownsdale gifted a stage for political theatrics to appreciative Portlanders. None of these actions achieved the same rhapsody as the Park Blocks demonstrations of May 1970.
On April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia on national television — he said, “this is not an invasion of Cambodia.” Protests, both violent and peaceful, sprouted up across the nation. Well remembered this last week was the massacre at Kent State University, when on May 4, the Ohio National Guard fired on protestors, killing four students and wounding nine. But, Kent State was not the only university paralyzed by political protest that week. By May 8, across the nation, more than 250 colleges closed and strikes stopped another 400. Portland State University, nestled in the South Park Blocks, was one of them.
The South Park Blocks in 1970 were a very different place than the pedestrian zone you experience today. Cars and trucks drove right through, making the spaces we now take for granted traffic-bearing throughways.
The blocks outside of Portland State University were frequently commandeered by protestors with a laundry list of causes, including the shootings at Kent State, the imprisonment of Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale, the expanding war in Indochina and the shipping of nerve gas to the U.S. Army base at Umatilla. In May 1970, like other students across the nation, much of the PSU student body went on strike.
Ten unique barricades were erected to block traffic, making way for a 24-hour protest. One was named for the president’s daughter, Patricia Nixon, who didn’t understand why protestors were so upset at her father. A fort was created out of park benches and “liberated” building supplies from nearby construction projects. Other barricades were called Bobby Seale, One Way, Alan Peterson and The Pentagon/Wipe Out Alley. Various activist groups, including the Society of Strangers, a politically active science fiction club, ran two other, unnamed barricades. Portland Police Officer Freshour noted, “one of the teachers had a contest going for the best signs, or (best) barricades built by his students.” Other activists joined PSU students, some who hitchhiked to Portland to dig the scene. Wild parties erupted in the evenings.
As intensity on the Park Blocks grew, PSU President Gregory Wolfe decided to cancel classes for May 7 and 8. A huge, unsanctioned party was held in the Smith Center student union, with drugs and public sex, trashing the building. With the aftermath of the spectacle aired on local television news affiliates, conservative Portland, already upset at the hippie Park Blocks party, was irate.
On Friday evening, Wolfe received a telegram from Oregon Gov. Tom McCall, letting him know that he expected PSU classes to resume on Monday, May 11. The Oregon National Guard was “ready to assist.” Wolfe declined the assistance of the Guard, but was told by Assistant to the Governor, Ed Westerdahl, that McCall would deploy them to PSU if he felt it necessary.
McCall sent out a shocking telegram entitled “Special Message to Oregonians on Kent State University Tragedy.” As a response to a request for memorial services to the fallen students from PSU students and faculty, McCall noted that “responsible” reflection was warranted. But, he stressed that he was willing to use all authority of the office to maintain order on Oregon’s campuses, “including the use of the Oregon State Police and Oregon National Guard.” The image of the governor that emerges from this missive is one of disconnectedness and daftness.
Within the context of the nationwide protests, however, the telegram was not unusual. National Guard troops were deployed to 21 campuses in 16 states. Thirty ROTC buildings were burned or bombed that first week of May, including at Oregon State University in Corvallis. To some, the revolution appeared to have begun, and McCall was fully in that camp.
“We are in danger of becoming a society that could commit suicide … a society that seems to be ripping itself apart just for the masochistic pleasure of seeing blood,” he wrote in a telegram. Showing his thinly veiled fear for the fragility our society, he also stated his belief that “America is in travail.”
“Sirens howled through the windows of my small apartment south of campus. A friend and I affirmed paranoically the viable possibility of an existing police state. The dark, heavy air of that late May afternoon carried all the forebodings of repressive brutality.”
Classes resumed at PSU on Monday, May 11 and so did the protests. A group of more conservative students marched on City Hall, demanding the city do something about the protests. Portland’s then-Mayor Terry Schrunk decided enough was enough. Backed up by Portland Police officers, city sanitation trucks moved into the Park Blocks and began to dismantle the barricades.
Police reports of the incident help show how odd the scene was to police. Police Officer Frey wrote, “I was repeatedly subjected to some of the worst verbal abuses that I have ever had, and I might add that these were heard from young female-type individuals.”
A Jesus was in attendance at the Smith Student Union. An officer wrote that “One subj(ect) was dressed in what appeared to be a loin cloth standing in front of a cross and accompanied by a brunette, who was dressed only in a black slip. They were reading scriptures from the bible.” They were in the company of raw egg-throwing protestors. “Amongst them was one girl of blonde hair, which I observed to unbutton her blouse, and was wearing no brassiere.” Another female protestor adorned with rectangular glasses was heard to tell an officer, “F*ck me, and I’ll have your baby, and then I’ll raise it and teach it to hate you.”
As cops fanned out on the sides of the Park Blocks, students taunted them with Heil Hitler salutes. White-helmeted Tactical Operations Police, wielding white batons, formed a wedge and started moving down the blocks toward a student-run first aid tent, beating the protestors. They bludgeoned them, blood smearing across the Park Blocks. It was an unwarranted and violent reaction. Sounds of chaos filled the space.
While historical memory presents us with an image of peaceful protesting PSU students, this is not entirely correct. There were many confrontational hippies. Strikers threw objects at the police — bricks, bottles, construction debris and even an alarm clock. Some barricades had stockpiled rocks and pipes for an inevitable confrontation. The violent images presented to Portland news consumers were not seen as repugnant, as we view them today. KGW reporter Ivan Smith noted that phone calls to City Hall supported the police action against the protestors in the order of 25 to 1.
Twenty-one protestors, 11 of them PSU students, were hospitalized due to police beatings. A grand jury declined to issue indictments. The violence in the Park Blocks is viewed as the main reason McCall planned the state-sponsored Vortex I music festival that summer, an event I’ll revisit in a future article.
Political activity still takes place in the Park Blocks, albeit in a typically less violent manner. In 2016, several PSU students in Make America Great Again hats “built” a faux Wall in the Park Blocks (it was of shoddy construction and didn’t stay up for long). Pro-life students, in concert with national organizations, display photos of aborted fetuses and the Holocaust: tools of comparisons to the Third Reich have shifted polarities, from the Left to the Right, in student activism.
Portland State University, surrounding the South Park Blocks, is in a COVID-19 existential crisis; scores of employees have been furloughed through the summer and professors teach students via video applications. The concept of “campus” has evaporated, and the Park Blocks are silent today. Political theater is on hold. Quiet.
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