As pro-Palestinian protests have spread at colleges and universities across the United States, some commentators have taken to comparing current events to those of the late 1960s. It’s a tempting analogy: protests from an earlier era, often marked by violent clashes with police; and the same today. History simply repeats itself.
No. The recent demonstrations are nothing compared to what happened in the 1960s, when persistent mass protests — driven by a formidable alliance of increasingly radical activist groups — roiled colleges and universities across the United States for nearly a decade. Confusing a few weeks’ protests with the events of an entire decade is not only bad history, but could lead to unnecessary tragedies.
The student protests of the 1960s likely began off campus a decade earlier, when Martin Luther King Jr. and other black leaders launched the Civil Rights Movement. Their efforts, which ranged from boycotts to marches and voter registration campaigns, provoked intense, violent resistance in the South.
