Glens Falls in 1969 — “Moratorium Day”

Adirondack Community College Student Senate President Charles Paul led the 2.7-mile local Vietnam Moratorium Day march from the ACC campus in Queensbury down Bay Road to City Park in Glens Falls a half-century ago.

“At the outset, they numbered slightly over 350. However, by the time participants in yesterday’s peace rally in City Park dispersed, they were nearly 500 strong,” Irv Dean of The Post-Star reported on Oct. 16, 1969. “And if they accomplished nothing else, they proved that organized dissent can be effected peacefully.”

About a dozen Glens Falls police officers patrolled during the rally.

City Police Chief James Duggan said all were orderly.

“They are to be commended,” Duggan said.

The local march and rally was part of a national Moratorium Day on Oct. 15 to protest U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

The Post-Star editorialized the morning of the march that President Nixon had inflamed opposition to the war by saying the Day of Moratorium would make no difference in his thinking.

“Mr. Nixon, who was a college debater and had been a public speaker all his life, has somewhat lost what he should possess in great measure, a talent in the use of words. Or perhaps his trouble is that he does not hold the public in much esteem,” the editorial chided.

Elsewhere in the region there were marches at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs and at SUNY Albany that day, and at Hudson Fall in the evening.

Stephen Finks, assistant professor of history at ACC, now known as SUNY Adirondack, was keynote speaker at the City Park rally, speaking on the topic “An Admission of a Mistake.”

Finks said the United States was still a great nation.

“Let us recognize that great nations, like great persons, can err. To err is human; recognize that.”

He spoke at length about the history of Vietnam and suggested that federal spending for the war should be reallocated to peace efforts.

“Today Glens Falls joins the United States of America as well as the American people in being a witness to the war in Vietnam and its effects upon ourselves as citizens of this country,” he said.

The rally opened with singing of “The Star Spangled Banner” and reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.

Thorpe played guitar and led in singing of “We Shall Overcome” and “Eve of Destruction,” and performed an original song, “What Have They Done With The Rain.”

Margaret Tucker, professor of English at ACC, also spoke.

Members of the Student Senate did not all support the demonstration, Student Senate Vice President Dale Varney told The Glens Falls Times.

Varney said he and one other Senate member voted against holding the demonstration, and one member, the sister of a soldier in Vietnam, abstained.

Fifteen members voted to hold the march.

About 100 people participated in a mostly silent march and candlelight vigil that evening at Village Park in Hudson Falls, The Glens Falls Times reported on Oct. 16, 1969.

Robert Davies, a part-time ACC student, organized the march, and the Rev. Arthur Melius, pastor of Hudson Falls Methodist Church, was the main speaker.

“We have not come here tonight to accuse or denounce,” Melius said. “We do not insist that everyone think as we think.”