When the War Came Home

“Bring the War Home,” which had been a rallying cry of the anti-Vietnam-War movement, was transformed on May 4, 1970 into a macabre irony when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on student anti-war protesters at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine.

Many, certainly not all, of the anti-war student activists were chauvinist, privileged, white men. Those cadres of the movement got a lot wrong then, but as the LGBT, environmental, and anti-war movements that followed have proven, they also had some core beliefs that were right. And while those 1960s activists most assuredly won’t achieve anything close to the idealism they purportedly believed in at that time, their kids just might.

When the War Came Home tells that story.

About this book Noam Chomsky writes, “Drawing from rich personal engagement, vividly portrayed, Bill Newman…capture[s] the courage and commitment of the young activists of the 1960s, the civilizing effect on the country in the years that have followed, and the shameful abuses that plague the society today. An enlightening collection, inspiring and often shocking.”

Bill Newman has been the Director of the Western Massachusetts Office of the American Civil Liberties Union for more than a quarter century.