Student protesters face down riot police on Route 1, University of Maryland, 1970 (Photo source: University of Maryland Special Collections)

Student protesters face down riot police on Route 1, University of Maryland, 1970 (Photo source: University of Maryland Special Collections)

May 1970: College Park Explodes

The May 4, 1970 antiwar protest at Kent State University in Ohio, in which National Guard troops fired into a crowd of demonstrators protesting the Nixon Administration's invasion of Cambodia and shot four of them dead, was a traumatic event that burned itself into the American collective memory. A photo of a teenage girl crying out in shock over the body of one of the slain students became, for many, the iconic image that captured a frighteningly turbulent time.

But it's almost forgotten that the University of Maryland's flagship campus in College Park was rocked by a protest that was bigger and possibly more raucous than the one at Kent State.

Last Updated: May 18, 2022