It’s been over a half century since Ohio National Guardsmen on the campus of Kent State University gunned down four people protesting the war in Vietnam. Like the recent anti-Israel demonstrations, the “Kent State Massacre” set off a wave of protests and riots that shut down campuses across the country, including Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Now, rare footage has surfaced of the riot that rocked Carbondale on May, 7, 1970, along with other vintage scenes from those turbulent times. 

Actually, in my role as unofficial hometown historian for that era, I recently surfaced the footage myself from the SIU’s Morris Library Special Collections Research Center and put it on YouTube. The film clips appear in “SHITT” (“Stay High in Troubled Times”), a sardonic, black and white short film made in 1971 by Dave Dardis, then an undergrad design student at SIU, who today is proprietor of Rainmaker Arts and Entertainment in nearby Makanda. 

Interspersed in the 18-minute flick, which Dardis shot around Southern Illinois, is vintage newsreel footage and live radio reports from the infamous May 7, 1970, riot, when tear-gassed antiwar demonstrators rampaged through “the strip” in downtown Carbondale, breaking store windows and looting businesses. The next day martial law was declared and the school closed before the end of the semester.

The movie is more art film than documentary, but it has some journalistic elements. In one scene, a WSIU News reporter says protesters “sitting peacefully” in the intersection of two highways in downtown Carbondale have been told that as long as they remain peaceful, the police won’t bother them. “Evidently the police aren’t going to bother them,” he reports, as the video shows restive students, one with a bullhorn, milling about the intersection. 

The movie cuts to a line of Illinois State Police with batons a block east of the intersection, and an apparent news producer can be overheard telling a field reporter, “We have been told the National Guard is definitely, are getting ready, to possibly go with tear gas. You guys better be ready to move out.” 

“Oh oh,” the reporter begins, but the producer interrupts. “Don’t go spreading that around,” he shouts. 

“Somebody’s running,” the reporter continues. “Somebody’s already running. The crowd is beginning, they’re on their way. They’re running up this way.”

The producer interrupts again to give some advice on tear gas. “Tell everybody to get a handkerchief or rip off the tail of your shirt or something. Take your shirt off.” 

The reporter describes tear gas canisters being launched as the video shows a glowing white plume, followed by a cordon of military vehicles driving the protesters down the strip, and then there’s a glimpse of store windows being broken and looters running by. 

According to news accounts from the time, authorities decided to disperse the crowd with tear gas after about 150 militants and street people broke away from the main crowd and blocked the nearby train tracks. Unaware of the splinter group, the panicked and enraged protesters at the intersection thought the police had broken their word, and while fleeing past downtown businesses, some broke windows and looted.   

In a recent phone call, Dardis told me he got the riot footage highlight reel from “a couple of guys in Champaign” (Illinois). He said they feared the powers that be would bury the footage forever, so he persuaded them to give it to him. He said the guys he knew knew the guy who shot the footage, apparently for WSIU-TV, and he wished he’d credited that guy, but now he can’t remember his name.  

Dardis said he’d been slowly editing his movie when he heard about a contest for what became SIU’s Big Muddy Film Festival, and overnight he spliced together the rest of his film in time to compete. When I asked how much of the riot footage made it into his movie, he said he couldn’t say for sure, but that he recalled literally tripping over all the celluloid that got left on the editing room floor. He said it was such a rough cut that the film broke three times while it was being shown at the festival — causing some in the audience to suspect it had been sabotaged — yet it still won first prize.

The movie also has a musical soundtrack and other scenes shot by Dardis, including an appearance at SIU by Chicago 7 civil rights attorney and activist William Kunstler; a death-defying dive into a local strip-mine pit; nude horseback riding; and a love-in at Giant City State Park (Carbondale blues singer Tawl Paul can be spotted briefly). Dardis said one of the actors, who dived off the cliff, was Will Soto, who became a street performer in Key West. There’s also photos and video of other protests, and of students sacking the ROTC building on campus the day before the riot. 

When I asked Dardis if his film had a message, he laughed, paused, and repeated the title, “Stay High in Troubled Times.” 

The digitized copy of “SHITT” that I received from SCRC was very dark in some places, so although I am not an audiovisual expert, I tweaked the video a bit. “SHITT” can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/E6wRnlRSooM

For more information about the May 1970 protests in Carbondale, see my book, “Carbondale After Dark,” available from Amazon https://hbkoplowitz.com/