 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|||||
|
|
|
|||
Yellow Springs: 1803-present |
|||||
 |
|
Installment
9: 1958 to 1973 Highway, sewer line threatened the Glen In the late 1950s and early ’60s, Yellow Springs was galvanized by two controversial plans, one to build a highway, the other a sewer line, through Glen Helen.
Both plans, which were proposed about the same time in the fall of 1958, sparked stinging debate and helped influence the creation of the Glen Helen Association. The controversies differed, however, in one significant way: the highway plan, which called for rerouting U.S. 68 through the Glen, was proposed by an outsider, the state of Ohio; the plan to run a sewer main through Glen Helen came from a local entity, Village Council — and, therefore, led to a more bitter debate. The first controversy was a plan by the Ohio highway department to reroute U.S. 68 from Bellefontaine to Wilmington. Part of this plan involved building a 300-foot, four-lane limited access road through the Glen. An engineer with the highway department called the road the least expensive route. A second option proposed constructing the road between the Glen and John Bryan State Park. Ken Hunt, director of Glen Helen, mobilized local residents and Ohio conservationists, asking them to write Governor William O’Neill and object to the state’s plan. Hunt called the location of the road a “threat to the continued program of conservation education by the Glen.” The campaign worked, and on Oct. 29 Governor O’Neill ordered the highway department to study other locations for the road “so as to thus avoid going through Glen Helen Park.” But in February 1959, the plan resurfaced after the election of a new governor, Michael DiSalle. This time, however, the state also said it was considering a new alternate route that would run through the western edge of town. Hunt again asked for help and a massive letter-writing campaign was organized. A month later, Village Council proposed a third option, asking the state to swing the highway to the west of East Enon Road. In April, Governor DiSalle said that the state would pursue the Village’s proposal, sparing the Glen and Bryan State Park. Several years later, however, the Antioch Record reported that the plan had been placed on hold indefinitely. Though the community rallied together to fight the highway plan, it was divided by Council’s sewer proposal. Council began considering the sewer project during a time of growth. Yellow Springs population increased 43 percent in the 1950s, Lilian Pillard, an Antioch alumna who was studying for a master’s of personnel service at the University of Colorado, wrote in a 1961 paper, and development was spreading to the south end of town. The school district had built a new elementary school and was considering a new high school. The Village was paving roads and it planned to build a new water tower at Gaunt Park. The growth exacerbated the Village’s sewage system, which was inefficient and frequently polluted waterways in the Glen. Under pressure from the state, the Village was now considering enlarging its sewer system. Over the course of a year, as talks went on between the Village and Antioch, Council considered several options, including a plan to run a buried sewer line through the Glen, which by the fall of ’58 was just starting to stir up opposition, including that from Hunt. In August 1959, Council finally decided to run the sewer line through the Glen, saying that it was in “the best interest of this community.” Council’s proposal also included building a new sewer plant in the Glen that would accommodate a significant increase in population over the next 50 years. Officials said the gravity line, which was more than a mile long, was the cheapest of the options the Village considered. Antioch and Glen Helen objected to the plan, saying that it threatened the natural state of the Glen and that the college had a responsibility to protect the nature preserve as an educational facility. Antioch, which had its own engineering study review the Village’s proposal, also presented alternative sewer plans. The Yellow Springs News reported that conservationists from around the U.S. were writing both the paper and Council arguing that the sewer “would spoil the Glen.” In a letter to the editor in September, local resident H.T.E. Hertzberg wrote: “If any places should be sacrosanct, it should be those that heal the soul. May the Glen remain in that category.” The controversy picked up steam when Antioch rejected the Village’s request for a right-of-way through the Glen. Council responded by saying it would use its power of eminent domain and ask the courts to secure the right-of-way and a site for the sewage plant. Then, after Antioch authorized an inventory of the Glen’s trees and vegetation, the college declared that the area Council wanted for the line was worth more than $400,000. The Village solicitor called the figure “fantastic.” The rift gained the attention of area media. Papers in Dayton, Springfield and Xenia, as well as The Associated Press, regularly covered the controversy. Almost every week, the Yellow Springs News carried numerous stories, letters to the editor and editorials on the issue. In the fall a group of citizens was formed to fight Council’s plan. The Committee to Save the Glen and Taxpayers’ Money studied the Village’s plans and proposed an alternative solution centered on building a pump station outside the Glen and keeping the sewer line out of the preserve. At the end of 1959, there was a significant breakthrough in the controversy when the Save the Glen committee offered the Village $30,000 to keep the line out of the Glen and instead build a pump station. The News, which had initially backed Council’s proposal, praised the idea as a “sound” and “reasonable solution.” A short time later, Antioch added $12,000 to the committee’s offer. The following month, a compromise was reached after Antioch proposed to give the Village land for a sewage plant, a pump station and a waterworks, as well as the funds from the college and committee — all in exchange for relocating the proposed sewer line. Council quickly accepted the offer, agreeing to keep the line out of the “natural area” of the Glen. Later that year, the Village began installing a sewer main along the old railroad tracks, which today is the bikepath. Eventually, the Save the Glen Committee became the Glen Helen Association. After the controversy was finally resolved, the News praised local residents in an editorial for the way they respectfully debated the controversy. Noting that the community found a solution that met all parties’ main concerns, the editorial said that the village was “able to avoid the aftermath of rancor and bitterness that so often follow a public hassle.” —Robert Mihalek
Massive desegregation demonstrations rocked town It would be easy to say that Lewis Gegner, owner of the last segregated barber shop in town, was a racist. Modern intuition tells us that the hundreds of Antioch students and civil rights activists who protested Gegner’s business to the point of civil disobedience in the spring of 1964 acted as heroes in the fight for racial equality.
But in the unraveling of the complex and highly publicized struggle, the distinction between right and wrong blurred into a bittersweet haze that shrouded Yellow Springs for some time afterward. When Squires barbershop desegregated in 1960 under pressure from the Antioch College Chapter of the NAACP, Gegner was the only remaining barber in town who refused to cut black people’s hair, according to a 1963 document by the Antioch Committee for Racial Equality (ACRE). Though students and area residents had found social and legal means to integrate restaurants, beauty shops, and the movie theater, they could not convince Gegner to follow suit. Gegner and his father, Louis Gegner, had operated a barbershop in town for 35 years. He later described himself as a stubborn man who did not like to be told what to do. Though, according to local resident Naomi McKee, Gegner had done a nice job cutting the hair of at least one young black man before the trouble began, when put to the test he refused. “I don’t know how to cut their (Negro’s) hair,” he is quoted as saying in the ACRE account. Gegner appeared unfazed when in August 1960 he was fined $1 for violating a Village antidiscrimination ordinance. The following year, local resident Paul Graham, who is black, filed a discrimination complaint against Gegner with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, which issued a “cease and desist” order against the barber. But Gegner appealed the order in Greene County Common Pleas Court, and a year and a half later, it was canceled. Students and residents became increasingly frustrated with the legal process, so they organized a protest in front of Gegner’s shop in April ’63. It started out small as the students followed Antioch’s rules for nonviolent direct action. The students took turns parading in twos in front of Gegner’s Xenia Avenue storefront and handing out fliers to passersby. Picketers were to walk in a circle without blocking the shop entrance, and they could not litter or wear beards. At the end of the month, students Jim Fearn and Hank Richardson, who were both black, returned to the shop to ask for haircuts. When Gegner refused, a group of about 35 students began to file into the shop and attempt to sit in all the chairs. Gegner grew so furious that he jacked a chair up as high as it could go, turned it around and sat in it himself, the ACRE account reported. The situation ended when 18 people were arrested and law enforcement officials turned a fire hose on the crowd outside.
In May, when the courts ruled in favor of protecting Gegner’s rights to run his business the way he wanted, the students organized a march of several hundred people downtown. “It is legitimate and wholesome, when injustices and indignities exist, that there should be a protest to that by the people who hope for better conditions,” former Antioch College President Arthur Morgan said during a speech at the march. Villagers voiced differing opinions in the News about the growing conflict. “Harmony and peace cannot be achieved without first gaining justice for all,” the News said in an editorial. Jean Dewine, who wrote a column for the News, criticized the protesters for seeking childish and irresponsible ways of influencing what was the law. Members of the Civil Rights Commission advised protesters to stop demonstrating and wait for the next appeal, but ACRE members voted overwhelmingly to continue their actions. The conflict was particularly taxing on Yellow Springs Police Chief Jim McKee, who was black. He later said that he sympathized with the protesters but he had an obligation to uphold the law. Many more Yellow Springs residents joined the demonstrations and sit-ins that summer. In January 1964, the Second District Court of Appeals reinstated the “cease and desist” order against Gegner. But he immediately appealed the case to the Ohio Supreme Court, and neither the Greene County prosecutor nor Village officials would enforce the circuit court’s ruling. Then on March 13, 1964, Gegner got a Greene County judge to issue an injunction limiting the number of picketers to not more than three at a time. The next day, March 14, civil rights supporters mobilized a massive and chaotic street demonstration that Chief McKee would later describe as “the worst day of my life.” Over 200 citizens took to the street around noon and locked arms to form a helix 10 people deep across Xenia Avenue in front of Gegner’s shop, the News reported. Over 150 law enforcement officials from three counties used tear gas and fire hoses to scatter the first surge of demonstrators as hundreds of onlookers stood by in shock. People all over the country watched on TV and listened on the radio to the havoc that ensued.
At 4 p.m. Montgomery County police read the Ohio Riot Act, and a thick line of officers carrying nightsticks advanced on the demonstrators. Finally, local resident Horace Champney encouraged them to disperse, as police arrested 108 people. No one was in control that day. ACRE leadership broke down before the protest began, and 150 students from Wilberforce, Central State and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee grabbed the reins. Demonstrators violated Antioch’s nonviolent rules of conduct by flipping, kicking and actively resisting arrest. It was unclear who ordered the tear gas, but Greene County Sherriff Russell Bradley took responsibility for it. Lewis Gegner closed his shop that day, and villagers ruminated on both the cause and the effect of the frightening day. The March News carried an editorial entitled “When strong men weep.” “A handful of students, a single barber could not have thrown our town into such a turmoil, unless there already existed some deep and serious problems,” the editorial said, emphasizing the need to rebuild mutual respect. In addition, the paper published letters to the editor which described elevated emotions on both sides of the struggle. Carl and Lorena Hyde acknowledged Gegner’s violation of the law but admonished those who tried to “advance the cause of integration by an act of angry retaliation” that was “natural” and “understandable” but emphatically neither morally right nor constructive. Antioch Bookplate founder Ernest Morgan said the demonstration was unnecessary and that it “degenerated into a fiasco.” Antioch College officials later conducted an internal investigation and found they were in agreement with the Hydes’ and Morgan’s views. “The popularity of a given point of view can be no criterion for the freedom of its expression, for a crucial test of civil liberties is the ability to tolerate dissent,” the committee said. “It is the judgment of this committee that despite the adherence to the letter of the regulations, important decisions leading to the March 14th demonstration were not made in ways that should be acceptable to the Antioch community.” Villagers also sought to evaluate their actions and held a public discussion and a community walk the week after the protest. About 700 residents participated in both events, and both sides were given the chance to express their dissatisfaction with the actions of both the police and the demonstrators. The Human Relations Committee, which was chaired by Arthur Morgan and included both college and village participants, organized committees to address local issues of equal rights, fair employment, integrated housing, good childrearing, civic responsibility and open public accommodations. A group called the “200 citizens,” including 104 local businesses, teamed with the HRC to start an educational campaign to end discrimination, prejudice and racial tension in the area. Three months and 12 days after the March 14 demonstration, the 1964 Civil Rights Bill became the first federal law requiring all businesses to serve the public regardless of race. Gegner never reopened his shop, and in July of 1964, he sold his business to local barber Russell Hughes, claiming a total loss of $15,000. Several years later, when he was working as a clerk for a state liquor store in Xenia, Gegner was invited to speak at a Ku Klux Klan meeting in Dayton, according to a Dayton Daily News article from April 1966. During his speech, he admitted that his stubbornness had something to do with the conflict. “I was determined that none would get into my chair and they didn’t,” he said of blacks. Gegner also told the Ohio Associated Press that he was not prejudiced. “I was just doing what I thought I had a right to do,” he said, adding, “Everyone’s screaming about civil rights. What about my civil rights?” Though he said he would do it again if he could, Gegner eventually realized, he said, that he was fighting a losing battle with the civil rights movement. —Lauren Heaton
Robinson created housing opportunities for blacks By the looks of things in Yellow Springs in the 1960s, it seemed that African Americans should have been able to buy a house and raise a family in town. But many neighborhoods during that time were still highly segregated, and some say the local financial institutions wanted to maintain that trend. Things began to change, however, when a black entrepreneur named Omar Robinson came to town with the idea of helping young black families plant roots here. Yellow Springs had a reputation as a liberal and racially integrated town that drew many more highly educated and skilled blacks from surrounding areas, local resident Orlando Brown recalled. “It was thought to be a Mecca here for blacks looking for better homes, safety for their families and better schools,” he said. Yellow Springs had some predominantly black neighborhoods north of Dayton Street and west of High Street and a section of town with prefab National homes, Brown said. But for black families who wanted custom-built, spacious homes, finding a bank willing to finance their American Dream was hard to come by. In the late ’50s, Robinson was commuting from Richmond, Ind., to work at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and wanted to move closer to work. When he came to Yellow Springs, the friendliness of the villagers and talk of racial tolerance made it all the more frustrating when he could not secure a loan to build, Omar Circle resident Shelbert Smith said. But Robinson was a visionary, and when he saw an opportunity in the late ’50s to purchase a large parcel of land, he took it. A black man named Mr. Shorter sold him the property — between West South College Street, East Enon Road, Vernay’s Dayton Street property and land near Wright Street — for about $30,000 because it was outside the village limits, which stopped at Wright Street at the time. Robinson and his family moved into a trailer at what is now West South College and Barbara Streets, named for his wife, and began developing the land. Though it was not official, both Smith and Brown said that Robinson meant for the land to go to black families. “Omar thought that African Americans should have the opportunity to have high-quality homes,” Brown said. “In his mind it was for African Americans.” After Robinson contracted with a mortgage company in Springfield, he built his own house and then made plans with his closest friend, William Ross, to build 40 to 60 more homes. The development would eventually be called Omar Circle. Smith was one of the first residents to see the unfinished development when he considered buying a home there in 1958. “I got a tour from Omar when the house was still incomplete, and right away I loved it,” Smith said. “I came the next day and said, ‘I’ll take it.’ ” Others must have felt the same because by the early 1960s, 10 black families had moved into homes on the circle, and within the decade, there were about 30 families, all with young children. Robinson took pride in his development and in the people who moved into his neighborhood, Brown said. When it became clear to the rest of town that Omar Circle was intended for black families, a group of residents complained to Village Council that Robinson’s housing practices were unfair. For several months Robinson resisted, Smith said. Even after he consented to open up the development, it wasn’t until the late ’70s that the first white family bought a house on the circle. His friends say that Robinson was an unassuming, hard-working man who liked bowling and golf. But he was also disappointed in the village, Brown said, and felt that it was not living up to its own standards. “In other places they would tell you outright that they don’t want you,” Brown said, implying Yellow Springs was different. Partly because of the Omar Circle development and the civil rights movement, between 1960 and 1970 home ownership for white residents increased by only 11 to 542, while home ownership among black residents increased by 168 to 257 houses. —Lauren Heaton
Students went south in Freedom Summer In the summer of 1964, many Americans put their lives on the line for civil rights, traveling to the explosive South to take part in Freedom Summer. Among these activists were several Antioch College students, who journeyed to Mississippi to help register African Americans to vote and to open “freedom schools.” “I always thought those kids were the bravest people,” said Wally Sikes, who at the time served as the college’s associate dean of students. “I was worried. They had some fearful experiences.”
If the students didn’t know before they left that they would likely encounter danger, they understood clearly after their week long training session, which took place at Miami University. “Lessons were given in how to protect your vital organs while being beaten and what to do when a mob gets out of hand,” student Terri Shaw wrote in a November 1964 issue of the Antioch Record. “In an auditorium more often used for assemblies and class days, stories of beatings and shootings and bombings were told by the witnesses and victims themselves.” Before leaving, students were required to arrange for $500 in bond money, and leave a list of next of kin. “The prospect of death was always present,” the Record reported on July 3, 1964. That prospect became very real when, shortly after arriving in Mississippi, the students learned that three civil rights workers were missing. The missing workers, who were later found dead, held a special connection to the students, since two of them, both from New York City, had Antioch connections. Mickey Schwerner was the brother of Antioch graduate Steve Schwerner and Andrew Goodman was the brother of freshman David Goodman. But no one turned back. Shaw wrote that her first few weeks in Hattiesburg, Miss., were relatively quiet. The students, who lived with African- American families, went door to door in the neighborhood, taking applications for freedom schools. The schools, taught largely by college students, focused on African history and literature, and mathematics, French and art. But the quiet didn’t last. “Late one night a pickup truck with a covered license plate and carrying five white men with rifles drove down Mobile Street, the main street in the Negro area,” Shaw wrote. “They took potshots at some people on the street and shot directly into the hoods of two cars with out-of-state plates, both belonging to volunteers.” While Shaw never came in harm’s way in Hattiesburg, a former Antioch student, Larry Rubin, had worse luck in Holly Springs, Miss., where he, while working in a freedom school, was beaten by a “mob of whites,” the Record reported on July 3. However, he was not injured seriously and returned to Antioch to work with other students who wished to join the cause. All returned safely to the college, and the following January Antioch’s involvement in the civil rights movement became more structured when six students took civil rights co-op jobs organizing freedom schools in the South. The assignments grew out of a proposal by one of six students, Steve Miller, who had been in Mississippi during Freedom Summer. “The boys can expect to be beaten up or thrown in jail or both,” Miller was quoted as saying in a January 1964 Dayton Daily News article. That prediction proved at least partially true, as a Feb. 5, 1965, article in the Record reported that Miller was “chased and shot at by irate whites” in Bogalusa, La. However, he was not injured, the article said, and was “escorted out of town” by an FBI agent. Another student, Dick Heitler, was reported to have been “attacked three times this week” in Hattiesburg, the Record said in January 1965, but again came away uninjured. But the violence didn’t deter the students, and when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked for support in March 1965, many already in the South and others in Yellow Springs responded. King had arrived in Selma, Ala., to take charge of a march to Montgomery protesting the state’s voting rights practices, but police refused to allow the activists to march. A group of about 40 people from Yellow Springs traveled to Selma to join the march. The Dayton Daily News reported that seven Antioch students and villager Bob Barber were among the 88 people arrested in Montgomery following the march. In the next few years, racial tensions died down in the South, as African Americans slowly won their civil rights. But for several years in the early and mid-’60s, racial injustice stirred the passions of many Antioch students and local residents. And while those years were filled with dangers, they also brought a powerful sense of satisfaction, Sikes said. “Among the kids the general spirit was uplifting,” he said. “They were fighting the good fight.” —Diane Chiddister
Desire to keep village small sparked green space effort Yellow Springs could have turned out differently. Like they did in Fairborn and Beavercreek, housing developments and strip malls could have pushed the village’s boundaries beyond current limits, until no one could tell where Yellow Springs ended and another town began. Yellow Springs could have joined other small towns that have lost their identities under the crush of urban sprawl. Yellow Springs could have turned out differently. But it didn’t.
Yellow Springs leaders in the late 1960s and early ’70s embraced innovative ideas and activist strategies. Fearful of growth from developers’ plans and I-675, leaders began taking steps to control the land around the village, both to keep Yellow Springs small and to keep it green. “We had models,” said Paul Webb, who served on Village Council at the time. “But not very many.” Sparking the greenbelt movement was a proposal by developer Richard Benner, who in the late 1960s purchased the 123-acre Peterson farm on the south edge of town. Over several years Benner approached the Village Planning Commission with plans to develop the farm, on which he planned to build 300 to 400 homes. Although the Village came close to annexing the farm into Yellow Springs and reaching agreement with Benner, villagers’ opposition to the development led the Village to reject Benner’s request. More than 1,000 villagers — the town’s 1972 population was 4,700 — had signed a petition opposing the annexation. At a well-attended May 1972 town meeting about the Peterson farm annexation, residents suggested other ways to control potential sprawl, which looked imminent given the planned construction of I-675. Some pushed Council to purchase the 900-acre Whitehall farm, which they believed owner Martha Rankin wanted to sell. “The two goals of halting growth of the community’s population but of adding lower cost housing were expressed by most,” the News reported. Letters to the editor in the News during the period also supported the anti-growth sentiment. “Let us all take care of the green space we do have,” Hazel Chatfield wrote. “It holds a goldmine of happiness for young and old. Protect, it, cherish it, for like our precious eyesight, once it’s gone, it can seldom be replaced.” Although only a few communities at the time had begun controlling growth by creating green space, villagers could look to a nearby model for how to control land use. Beginning in the 1950s, Ken Hunt, the first director of Glen Helen, became concerned about 1,500 acres of land between the Glen and Clifton, which, if developed, would undermine the Glen’s purpose and programs. In 1962, Hunt created the Committee for a Country Common, a group of nine agencies with interest in preserving the green space. The group included representatives from the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, the Ohio chapter of the Nature Conservancy, the Ohio Division of Parks, the Village and the Yellow Springs schools. With the backing of Antioch President James Dixon, the group applied for and received a variety of grants that allowed it to either purchase land or conservation easements. Financial help also came from a $30,000 endowment from the Vernay Foundation. By 1967, the year Hunt retired, the group had acquired seven conservation easements, and the land he feared might be lost remained forever green. Also in that year, the Village took the first steps to create a greenbelt around Yellow Springs by adopting the first Comprehensive Land Use Plan and purchasing the 127-acre Sutton Farm. The greenbelt issue garnered little public attention for the next few years, until Richard Benner tried to annex the Peterson Farm into Yellow Springs. The request galvanized the public and empowered local leaders to take bold action. In the next few years, they would further codify the village’s desire for green space and planned growth with a revised Comprehensive Plan. “This community should somehow find a way to own or legally control its 3,800 acre plateau and set about making a plan for its future,” Paul Webb said in a Decemeber News article. “I think we all have to think anew about Yellow Springs, our constituents and the effects of our actions on the future.” —Diane Chiddister
Vietnam War gripped village, Antioch Like many American communities, Yellow Springs was gripped by the Vietnam War as many local residents followed its events closely and responded to them in a variety of ways throughout its duration. Antiwar activities abounded in Yellow Springs. The National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam held a series of workshops in Yellow Springs in June 1966. On Nov. 23, Yellow Springs residents began holding a “Weekly Vigil for Peace” at the corner of Xenia Avenue and Limestone Street. That same month Antioch College hosted a conference on changing the Selective Service Act, which would expire in 1967.
Though doves were perhaps more visible than hawks, opposition to the war did not go uncontested. A discussion about draft alternatives scheduled at the United Methodist Church in May 1967 was canceled because the church’s board felt rational discussion would not be possible because there was so much hostility between the groups for and against the war. Eighty members of the Yellow Springs and Antioch communities returned their draft cards in October 1967, as part of the national Draft Resistance Week. Then on Oct. 18, a group of villagers, students and faculty barricaded and locked the Behavior Research Laboratory at Antioch to protest the lab’s contract with the Defense Department. Others, however, criticized the action, saying it was coercive and discouraged reasonable discourse. At the beginning of December over 80 Antioch students were arrested and charged during a large demonstration in front of the Cincinnati federal building. The students included Mary DeCourcy Squire, who was charged with contempt of court, trespassing and resisting arrest. She was sentenced to nine months in the Cincinnati workhouse and fined $625. She became well-known for fasting from Dec. 7 until Jan. 29. She was released on Feb. 6, 1968, and received co-op credit from Antioch for the time she had spent in the workhouse. In 1971, when President Richard Nixon appeared at the Air Force Museum’s opening, a number of people from Antioch and Yellow Springs who tried to attend were detained by authorities. A group of Yellow Springs residents and Antioch students and workers also demonstrated at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on April 20, 1972. Many local residents subsequently lent money to cover the bail of the 154 who were arrested there. Antioch faced difficult decisions during the war. The college considered varying degrees of cooperation and noncooperation with the Selective Service before the campus approved in 1967 a referendum to abolish academic ranking, which helped determine who was eligible for the draft. During the 1967–68 school year, Antioch organized an Assembly on Vietnam to decide whether the college should take a position on the war. The assembly concluded that Antioch would not take sides because it was not of educational concern, but it also said that the college “deplores the efforts of anyone, in government or not, to discourage legal expression of dissenting opinions on critical contemporary issues.”
Two campus boards resolved that Antioch would no longer exchange information with the Selective Service system directly. The councils said that Antioch was a “nonpolitical institution” and therefore it was inappropriate for the college to directly involve itself with the draft. Antioch also refused to let the armed forces use college facilities for recruitment purposes. Though the college was officially neutral, Antioch continued to support individual dissent, declaring a two-day moratorium in April 1972 to permit members of the Antioch community to participate in antiwar activities. College President James Dixon and AdCil sent a telegram to President Nixon on May 9, 1972, protesting his expansion of the war effort. A significant number of local residents also served in the military during the War. By May 1967, more than 40 Yellow Springs residents belonging to various branches of the armed forces had gone to Vietnam, and at least two had died there. Some Yellow Springs natives distinguished themselves in the war. Navy Airman Apprentice Tilton McDaniel served on the USS Kitty Hawk, the flagship for Commander Task Force 77, “the attack aircraft striking force for the Seventh Fleet,” the Yellow Springs News reported. Airman Richard A. Eyster received technical training as an Air Force air policeman. Sergeant Donald E. Williams was decorated for “meritorious achievement during aerial flights” in October 1967. —Evelyn La Croix
Installment
1: 1803 to 1853
|
|
