Humboldt State students voted a one-week "strike for peace" on May 6, 1970, galvanizing local antiwar activism

On May 6, 1970, students and faculty at Humboldt State College voted to enact a one-week boycott of classes — a "strike for peace" — to support anti–Vietnam War activism and to send a campus delegation to Washington, D.C., to press legislators on the war.

The vote, held in what was then the Sequoia Theater (now Van Duzer Theater), followed national unrest after the May 4 shootings at Kent State University and the U.S. incursion into Cambodia. The crowd that gathered for the campus meeting that day was described by participants as among the largest single-day political protests in the college’s history. "Every seat in the theater, the hallways, the floor going down into it was just on the stage crammed with students," said Wesley Chesebro, a former student who later served in the California State Senate.

The student strike resolution had two principal measures: a one-week cessation of classes so participants could focus on antiwar organizing, and a delegation to Washington to communicate the campus's stance to federal lawmakers. "Bill…