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.
On Thursday, students plan to carry signs reading “Curly, off campus!” as they protest a recruiting visit by a company they see as a villain in the war in Iraq: Halliburton Co. Protesters plan to disrupt the company’s visit to an engineering career fair by discouraging students from talking to its representatives.
“We’ve decided that any war-profiteering recruiter stands in the tradition of Curly,” said Chris Dols, a student and member of the Campus Antiwar Network, which is organizing the protest. “We’re explicitly drawing the connection between the two.”
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.
