Halliburton Evokes Memories of Dow on Wisconsin Campus

Evoking Vietnam clash, Wis. students to protest Halliburton visit

MADISON, Wis. — The memory of William "Curly" Hendershot is alive and well on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

Hendershot was the Dow Chemical Co. recruiter whose 1967 visit here sparked one of the most important protests of the Vietnam War era. A sit-in against the company that made napalm used in Vietnam ended in a bloody clash with police that turned many students into radicals...

...The 1967 protest started with a sit-in at a university building where Hendershot was trying to recruit students. When a large crowd of activists refused to leave, police used their clubs on students to end the event with force. Dozens were injured.

The police violence turned apathetic students against the war and made others into antiestablishment radicals. Madison became a hub of the anti-war movement. Many protests ended with violence or blasts of tear gas from police. Downtown businesses were vandalized. National Guard troops were called out.

Among those beaten by police at the Dow protest was Paul Soglin, a graduate student who later became the city's mayor.

"Halliburton is certainly as offensive a company today as Dow was 40 years ago," he said. "It's just wonderful that these students are raising these issues about the ethics of a corporation like that in a university setting."

Students in 1967 demanded the university kick Dow off campus because of it had a military contract to make napalm, a chemical weapon that burned the flesh of Vietnamese.

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Comments

[Aquene Freechild]

Sadly Dow is still the offensive company was 40 years ago, it still sells products that maim and kill children and families around the world such as Dursban. I has not shown up in criminal court in India to face manslaughter charges for the 1984 Bhopal disaster and is publicly trying to snake its way out of liability for the clean up of the toxic waste site in Bhopal that is poisoning 25,000 people via contaminated well water. Find out more at bhopal.net, take action at www.thetruthaboutdow.org