On April 26, 1968, a national student strike against the war in Vietnam enlists as many as one million high school and college students. In Seattle, some 2,000 students boycott classes at the University of Washington and 600-plus attend a rally in front of the Administration Building.
Larry Baker organized the UW event. He presented a list of demands to UW president Charles Odegaard (1911-1999) dealing with academic governance; ROTC, corporate and military recruiting; and weapons research.
Odegaard rejected them out of hand, but was more responsive to demands for increased minority-student aid presented by Black Student Union head E. J. Brisker on May 6.
Sources:
Walt Crowley, Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 115, 255.
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