“Down with Dow! Down with Dow!” the marchers chanted on their way to the Commerce Building. As they rounded Bascom Hall, local television newsman Blake Kellogg (in white trench coat), filmed the protest.
The gray-speckled granite floor virtually disappeared from view as the hallway flooded with demonstrators. The hallway was narrow, a mere ten feet across. This was no place for a claustrophobic.
Students recoil as Madison police make their charge. The tall student on far left is Jonathan Stielstra; in the sheepskin coat on the right, starting to cover his neck, is Paul Soglin. Within seconds, Soglin was on the floor being pummelled by club-wielding officers.
As the police moved into the foyer, there was no space to gain footing, just a wall of people. The officers started flailing with their nightsticks.
After the hallway was cleared, officers huddled in a protective semicircle at the front of Commerce. The confrontation had enraged the crowd. “Sieg heil! Sieg heil!” came the shouts.
Jonathan Stielstra scrambling off the Bascom Hall roof after cutting the flag lanyard and setting off firecrackers. This photograph by Norm Lenburg started a manhunt for the flag-cutter.
The arrest of Vicki Gabriner, Miss Sifting and Winnowing, was pure guerrilla theater. She went limp, then resisted vociferously as two policemen dragged her away. One of the defining pictures of the day was of Gabriner’s painted face staring out the back window of a paddy wagon.
There were messy scrums on the Commerce plaza, with students surging forward and policemen responding with billy clubs. “Everyone in the pile was swearing, ‘God damn, get off me!’”
Most of the students treated at nearby UW Hospital had scalp wounds that gushed with blood but looked more serious than they were.
In the aftermath of the Dow riot, Paul Soglin (standing in sheepskin coat) emerged as a student leader. Within six months he was elected to the city council, and within six years he was mayor of Madison.
William Sewell, the UW chancellor, testifies at a legislative hearing after the Dow riot. A renowned sociologist, Sewell was the classic liberal of that era, caught between radical students and conservative state politicians.
A connection that defies all odds, bringing together the worlds of war and peace. Dave Wagner (left) was at the Dow demonstration at Wisconsin while Michael Arias (right) was at the battle of October 17. Wagner’s son, Ben (second from left), married Arias’s daughter, Theresa.
Thirty-five years after the battle, Vo Minh Triet (right), commander of the First Regiment, greets Nguyen Van Lam, an officer with the local rear service group, at Lam’s house near the battlefield. “Oh my God,” Lam said. “You are still alive?”
Clark Welch and Vo Minh Triet retrace their steps on the battlefield. “We once fought against each other; now we are becoming old soldiers together,” Welch said. “We together grieve for the terrible losses.”
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