Chapter 32 A year full of problems-2

However, he made an irreparable mistake.He left fingerprints in his Memphis apartment.After spending half a month in the Department of Justice, the CIA investigated the fingerprints of 53,000 wanted people, and finally found out that the man was named James Earl Ray.He was a habitual offender, with multiple convictions for forgery, car theft and armed robbery. In April 1967, he escaped from the Mississippi State Penitentiary.Now, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police learned of this person's whereabouts from the CIA, so they notified customs across Europe to pay attention to Snyder. He was arrested at London Heathrow Airport on June 8.When extradited in handcuffs, put him in a bulletproof vest, put on protective pants, and flew back to the United States, because no one wanted to repeat the Oswald story.He was packed in a six-and-a-half-ton truck and taken to a Memphis jail.The windows of his cell were covered with thick steel plates.He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.But where his money came from has never been clarified.

In the week of Ray's arrest, almost exactly two months after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, another foolish atrocity took place, killing one of the most important figures in the Democratic presidential bid. "An assassination has never changed the course of history," Robert Kennedy once said after his brother's death in Dallas, but that was not true.His brother's death, as well as his own, changed the course of history.He defeated Eugene McCarthy in the Indiana primary, 42 percent to 27 percent; in Nebraska, 51 percent to 31 percent.On the day of his death, Tuesday, June 4, 1968, he defeated Humphrey in Humphrey's home state of South Dakota and McCarthy in the largest California primary.

That day, Kennedy spent the morning on a beach near Los Angeles with six of his ten children and his wife, Ethel, who was pregnant with their 11th.Then in Suite 512 of the Ambassador Hotel in town, listening to election news.In the middle of the night, he took the elevator down to his own headquarters in the embassy lobby of the hotel, and talked for a while with the cheerful volunteers who came to help.Finally, he said: "I thank you all, and the next step is to go to Chicago, where we shall win." Friends and his closest entourage imitated his tone: "The next step is to go to the 'factory'. "It's a buzzing nightclub and they're going to go with him to celebrate the victory.However, he still had to go to the press room to say a few words.From the podium to the gates of the embassy hall there was such a crowd that one of the partygoers suggested that they go out through the back passage.Kennedy's bodyguard, Bill Barry, a former FBI agent, objected, disapproving of the idea.But the senator said, "It doesn't matter," and they stepped into a stuffy, smelly corridor.Kennedy paused to shake hands with Jesse Pere, a 17-year-old waitress, and answered a question about Humphrey: "It goes back to that fight because..."

He could no longer finish the sentence.A reporter in Pasadena saw an arm and a pistol protruding from a group of bystanders.The assassin put his right elbow on the counter and fired at Kennedy, only four feet away.It wasn't until he had fired all eight bullets in the flat-nosed Ivor Johnson revolver that Kennedy's friend and Olympic champion Rafe Johnson knocked the gun out of his hand.Six people lay bleeding on the hall floor, five with minor injuries and the sixth, Kennedy, whose injuries were fatal.He was shot twice, one irrelevant and the other piercing the skull and entering the brain.Axel knelt beside him.Bob asks for water, and then he asks, "Is everyone all right?" The waiter gives him a cross, Bob holds the rosary in his fingers, and Ethel prays.That's when Roosevelt Greer, a 300-pound Los Angeles Rams forward, hugged the skinny, dark-haired assassin.

"Why are you doing this?" someone yelled at him.The assassin screamed: "I have a reason, let me explain the reason!" Jesse Unruh, the leader of the California Democratic Party, asked him loudly: "Why did you kill him? Why did you kill him?" That's what my country does." It sounded absurd, but then slowly the truth became clear.From his insane thoughts he did believe he was acting out of patriotism.To everyone else in Los Angeles it was the day of the California primary, and to the Kennedy assassins it was the anniversary of the six-day war between Israel and the Arabs.The man's name was Sir Khan Bishara Sir Khan, born in Jordan, and he hated Israel, Kennedy's favorite.On the face of it, that seemed to be the only motive of the dark, skinny Arab in killing Kennedy.

The dying Kennedy was first sent to the central asylum hospital, and then transferred to a larger charity hospital.He was kept alive on adrenaline injections and heart massages, while he was rushed into surgery.However, it cannot be saved.After several struggles, he finally died at 1:44.Lyndon Johnson lashed out at the "frenzied trade" in domestic guns before dispatching one of the president's jets to bring Kennedy's body home.Once again, the Kennedy family and their friends escorted a coffin back east on a Boeing 707.The flag of the United Nations is flown at half mast.It was unprecedented for such a tribute to a man who had never been head of state.By the time the plane arrived in New York, 10,000 people had lined up outside St. Patrick's Cathedral to say goodbye to the body.Candles are lit on each corner of the altar, and friends take turns to keep watch.Ted Kennedy, the only surviving Kennedy brother, delivered his elegy in a trembling voice as the male patriarch.

The ceremony was presided over by Cardinal Richard Cushing, and Andy Williams sang the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", and the choir sang "Praise God".Then, the motorcade drove to Pennsylvania Station, where a special train pulled by two black locomotives was waiting, destined for Washington.However, because the crowds standing on both sides of the railway line were too dense, the trip took eight hours.By the time we reached the capital, it was already dark.With only streetlights on, the convoy skirted the city's vast, dark government buildings, crossed the Potomac River, and arrived in Arlington.Here Bob's grave was prepared, a solitary black stone under a magnolia tree, just a few feet from his brother's gravestone.A brief funeral was held here, before the draped flag was folded into a triangle and dedicated to Issel.At this time, the band plays:

America, America! God bless you! And crown your kindness with brotherhood, From ocean to glorious ocean! In 1968, from January 1 to June 15, a total of 221 large-scale demonstrations took place, covering 101 American university campuses, and nearly 39,000 students participated.Buildings are bombed, principals and deans are treated roughly, obscenities are painted on walls or used to scold the police, and sometimes it turns out to be educated girls from noble families in the quiet and elegant Seven Sisters Women's College dry.Colleges and universities damaged by student violence in recent months include: Temple University in Philadelphia, SUNY at Buffalo, Oberlin College, Princeton University, Duke University, Roosevelt University in Chicago , Southern Illinois University, Boston University, Marquette University, Tufts University, Stanford University, Colgate University, Howard University, University of Oregon, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Barnard College, Mills College, University of Connecticut , Trinity College, Tuskegee College, University of Chicago, Booie State College in Maryland, University of California in Los Angeles, University of Miami, etc.—

And, of course, Columbia University. In the third week after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, the most notable event in the coverage of the Morningside Heights campus was its reversal of a decision made the previous year to no longer accept industrial chemistry A gift from scientist Robert Strickman - a royalty on a cigarette filter he invented.The news of that incident was very much criticized by the society, but the social impact of the Colombian riots in April 1968 was much worse.It was the largest university uprising since the Berkeley student uprising four years ago, and in one respect it was all the more meaningful because it marked the emergence of the Student Association for a Democratic Society.Before that, the society was just another political student organization in the public mind.Eight years later, the membership of the association has grown to 5500, with branches in 200 colleges, and it has shown the characteristics of students' aversion to centralism.By the mid-1960s, however, the society had shown a militant spirit, with its leaders openly declaring an enemy of the oppression, racism, and imperialism that the society had articulated.It argues that American universities have been corrupted by all three, with Columbia University in particular.

In the cheerful days of weekdays, such a college student march is popular among the students of the Morningside Heights campus: Who is the master of New York· Who is the master of New York· Hi, we are New York hosts! Hi, we are New York hosts! Who? Colombia! The Student Association for a Democratic Society reminded students that Columbia University does own $230 million worth of Manhattan real estate (including the land occupied by Rockefeller Center), and the nearby deteriorating Harlem apartment complex makes up most of it, so in fact Columbia University Universities became the big landlords of the slums.Six years ago, Columbia University inadvertently provided the fuel for future explosions when it leased another 2.1 acres of its 30 acres near Morningside Heights Park from New York City.The school originally planned to build a magnificent gymnasium worth 11.6 million yuan on this land.Negroes living in neighboring booze-strewn Harlem ghettos had free access to the ground-floor stadium and swimming pool, and the upper floors were used by the university's athletic departments.The trustees of the university board figured that any resident with a modicum of civic self-respect would welcome the plan, since the neighborhood was currently filled with prostitutes and drug addicts and had one of the highest crime rates in the city.But they are wrong.

Dissenting tenants called the plan a "land grab" and said it was "a stain on the park."At this point, the university administration made another mistake.They published an architect's composition of the gymnasium, in which the gymnasium faces the gate of the school, which is well-designed and expensive, and the door facing Harlem on the other side is small and simple.As a result, the leaders of the neighborhood organizations denounced this arrangement as "segregated inequality".The chairman of the Harlem Conference for Racial Equality accused angrily: "This residential area has been robbed." So 150 demonstrators marched to the stadium construction site, shouting "The racially discriminatory stadium must be demolished!" and demolished a section of the fence.Among the whites who took part in the demonstration was Mark Rudd, president of Columbia University's Student Association for a Democratic Society, and as many followers as he could muster. Ladd was exactly the kind of New Leftist Edgar Hoover imagined.Not long ago, Hoover had spoken of the SSDS as "a militant youth organization supported by the Communist Party, which in turn supported the Communist Party's goals and tactics in its struggle."Students at Columbia University sarcastically said: "The Communists can't take over the Student Association for a Democratic Society because they can't find it." They also like to be rough, so according to the parlance of the time, they seem very great.Ladd in particular was noisy.He had just returned to school after a three-week visit to Castro's Cuba on the day the balloon was launched over Morningside Heights.As if going out of his way to confirm Hoover's view, he lauded Cuba as an "extraordinarily humanitarian society." Rudd's opposite is Columbia University president Grayson Kirk, a detached 68-year-old with little administrative capacity.Later, a commission headed by Archibald Cox concluded that the administration under Kirk had been "autocratic and incurring distrust." In April, the Student Association for a Democratic Society collected 1,500 signatures on a petition calling for Columbia University to withdraw from the Institute for Defense Analysis (a group of 12 university researchers who work for the Pentagon), Kirk was This was ignored.The student union accused the Institute of Defense Analysis of research projects that "are aimed at oppressing the Vietnamese people" and include "riot control equipment for the mass genocide of black people (in the United States)." After knocking down a section of fence at the gymnasium site on Tuesday, Rudd led a march to the ivy-fringed Hamilton Building, home to Columbia University's governing body, in a demonstration.Here they were surprised to meet the conciliatory acting provost, who said that while he had "no intention of acceding to their demands in the circumstances," both gymnasium and IDA membership were negotiable question.The Student Association for a Democratic Society is not interested in these now.Tasting the sweetness of victory, the rebels took advantage of the momentum and detained the acting provost and two other staff members for 26 hours.The siege of Colombia thus began. That first night, the white students discovered something else: black power.The 60 black students among them asked the white students to leave.They said that the Student Union for a Democratic Society did not seem to them to be sufficiently militant.There is a theory that the blacks were all carrying guns and were going to fight the police.Their white brothers don't think building a gym is worth the gun.Some white students felt distressed.One of them said: "Why should they care about this? The country is divided and polarized enough." Anyway, at 6 a.m. the next day (Wednesday, April 24), Rudd announced that no whites were needed in the Hamilton Building student.They handed over the building to the blacks, took over the Luolou library themselves, and posted a notice saying: "Liberated areas, you can join in freely." Principal Kirk's office is in this building.They broke in, searched, photographed and littered some of the letters and papers; they smoked Kirk's cigars and drank his sherry.And this is just the beginning.They told reporters they believed the vandalism of the school was justified.They invoked some of the principles established during the trials of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.They claimed that the Columbia University administration under Kirk was as bad as the Nazis. Now, they have grown to seven hundred.On Thursday, one hundred people took over the Feyeweather Social Sciences Building; another hundred took over the Avery Building, the architectural design center.On Friday, a fifth building was also occupied.They hung a banner on the balcony of this building: "Ladd Building, Fifth Liberated Area." They established a command post and mimeographed various statements.One was to demand a pardon for them all, which Kirk disagreed, saying that failure to take disciplinary action would "destroy the entire fabric of the university collective."For a time another group of students (athletes) seemed likely to drive the rebels away. ("If it's a savage society," says one wrestler, "it's survival of the fittest—and we're the fittest.") But Kirk doesn't want any more violence, so he restrains them.He also made a concession: the construction of the stadium was suspended.The demonstrators were yelling in those buildings that it wasn't enough! They demanded the withdrawal of the Institute of Defense Analysis, while making many other demands that they just thought of.Errand runners brought them groceries, blankets, and bottles of Vaseline.So Vaseline, because they heard they could use it to protect against tear gas.They estimated that the police may have used tear gas. They were right, the police came.When the first police team arrived at Morningside Heights, 30 young Columbia University faculty members blocked the gate of the Lowe Building.Things are deadlocked.But that followed the university regents' decision to "firmly instruct" Kirk to "impose firm disciplinary measures against student conduct".Thus he made what he himself later called the "most painful" decision of his life to retake the buildings by force if necessary—using a thousand policemen in a quick wedge.First to be tackled was the Hamilton Building.Black students were very obedient, black lawyers appeared to defend them, and black police officers supervised their withdrawal.After the black students left quietly, after inspection, the building was as clean as usual. The situation was quite different in buildings occupied by white students.Here, whenever students showed any resistance, they used sticks, punched and kicked them, and pushed them down the concrete stairs.There were thousands of onlookers, and the police told them that as long as they stood behind the police wall, they would be fine, but later it was found that they were all on the side of the students, so the police also rushed towards them .A total of 698 people were arrested.Ladd and 72 other students were suspended for a year.Cox was invited to investigate the disturbances.After 21 days of checking 79 witnesses, Cox and four colleagues released a 222-page report that was critical of both university authorities and the police.While not defending the students who led the riots, the report found that the students' actions were "disproportionate to the level of (police) brutality that resulted in harrowing brutality." Investigators found that Kirk and his staff "had consistently Students are placed "at the bottom" of their priorities.It concluded that the problems with the gymnasium and the Institute for Defense Analysis were superficial, rooted in students' discontent with the Vietnam War and racism in the United States. According to an investigation by The New York Times, the aggressive whites at Columbia University and other schools share common characteristics. Most of them come from wealthy suburban families with politically enlightened parents. They all major in liberal arts rather than science. All are prominent, and the majority are Jewish. Ted Gold, 21, is typical. He and Rudd are both leaders of the Columbia movement and a chapter president of the Student Association for a Democratic Society."The goal of our struggle is not only for a revolutionary Columbia University, but also for a revolutionary America," Gold told reporters. Sometime in the '60s, a man who never violated stop signals began to do so.He was careful that nothing happened, so he deduced that the law was stupid and only robots obeyed it.He violated it again, and after a month, he continued to work with peace of mind.Another month later, as long as he reached the intersection, even if the red light was on, he would go straight through.Although he ignores these transportation connections, he is annoyed that at his favorite gas station, the attendant will no longer check the oil and wipe the windshield for him, as he used to do, if he doesn't ask.He changed to another gas station, and it was the same.At about the same time, a door of his new car made a nasty rattling sound, and when it was pulled apart, it turned out that someone on the Detroit assembly line had left a Coca-Cola bottle in the door. These are small things, but there are others.Like one morning, you find a notice in your milk carton saying no more milk deliveries; the company has stopped deliveries, and you have to go to the store to buy them.The postal service is not good either, everyone has a horrible experience with the postal service.In a restaurant, the waitress brings someone else's order to you.Taxi drivers can't find where you're going.The evening paper you ordered has not been delivered.The pharmacist took the wrong medicine.The new washer dryer was defective.The delivery man parked outside the car parked parallel to the sidewalk and refused to move.The final stretch of Johnson's term was a national joke.People put up little signs everywhere: