Or, more appropriately, a sculpture of a bomb. This wooden bomb was the figurehead of a peace protest march on the tail end of the Vietnam War that gathered over 500 people in the Erb Memorial Union.
It was Saturday, Jan. 20, 1973, two days before Roe v. Wade ruled laws banning abortions were unconstitutional. “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon was the Billboard number one single. A help wanted ad in the Emerald classifieds plugged a position for a “dancer cocktail waitress.”
Gathering first on the EMU terrace, around 500 activists from the community marched through campus, past the dorms, over the Ferry St. Bridge and to Alton Baker Park. They marched with a North Vietnamese flag at the front of the procession.
Making their way through the University of Oregon dorms, protesters shouted, “Out of the dorm and into the street!”
It’s unclear whether any students joined them in this march, and whether any students were in the original crowd, but someone did hang a Nazi flag from a third floor window of Hamilton Hall as protesters went past.
On Fourth St., a truck came into the intersection blasting its horn. The crowd was forced to move when the truck didn’t slow down, barreling through and honking.
The protesters were joined by Charlie Porter, a local attorney and activist who was carrying a bomb on a dolly. The bomb, sculpted by resident Byron Krog, was a response: Porter had asked for a permit from local authorities to “bomb” Eugene with leaflets, but was denied.
Speaking of bombs, halfway through the protest, an anonymous tip told Eugene police there was a bomb on the Ferry St. Bridge rigged to go off as the protesters marched across it. Police stopped the procession and searched the bridge. There was no bomb.
The march ended in Alton Baker park with a performance of “guerrilla theater,” where peaceful people of North Vietnam were shown being bombed by a wood mockup of a plane while a priest and a capitalist smoking a big cigar looked on.
This was the last of many anti-Vietnam protests held at UO during America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Five days after this protest, the Paris Peace Accords were signed between the United States, South Vietnam, North Vietnam and the Viet Cong and a ceasefire took effect.