Lawrence, 1970 : a narrative and oral histories surrounding three crises

Abstract

The project focuses upon the era of turmoil and protest in Lawrence in 1970. The narrative article and appendix of oral histories provide background and accounts of three crises: the University of Kansas Student Union fire on April 20, 1970, and the three-day curfew; the shooting death by a policeman of Rick "Tiger" Dowdell; and the shooting death of Harry "Nick" Rice during a disturbance at which police weapons were fired. During the April and July crisis periods, vigilantes, students, white protesters, blacks and police readied their guns. The city's response was the Police- Community Relations Program, a conflict resolution/ sensitivity training program. This master's project includes the perspectives of many factions identified in the conflict. This narrative article draws from the six oral histories in the appendix, additional interviews, newspaper articles, a Dowdell inquest transcript and other written materials. The weaknesses in the oral history/cultural journalism method have hopefully been corrected in this project through the narrative, the editing, the comparison of sources, the selection of materials, the notes included in the oral histories and the balance of materials taken together. The oral histories provide personal accounts, anecdotal experience and current perspective on those experiences in the sources' own language. This project only begins to fill the gap of material published on Lawrence in 1970, and upon the deaths of the two former KU students and the Union fire.