News
Nearly 200 Harvard Affiliates Rally on Widener Steps To Protest Arrest of Columbia Student
News
CPS Will Increase Staffing At Schools Receiving Kennedy-Longfellow Students
News
‘Feels Like Christmas’: Freshmen Revel in Annual Housing Day Festivities
News
Susan Wolf Delivers 2025 Mala Soloman Kamm Lecture in Ethics
News
Harvard Law School Students Pass Referendum Urging University To Divest From Israel
Sweet young Wheaton girls, at least 150 of them, strung up Fidel Castro in effigy last night. Taking care not to sell their madras skirts, the lynch mob danced 'round the hanging-tree-Maypole, staying "God Bless America," and other patriotic songs.
As the girls screamed "tear him to bits," and hurled shoes at the battered mannikin, freshman Kathy Houser appeared on the scene with two friends, calmly sliced Dr. Castro down, and raced away. Later, she said she "had been disgusted, and wanted to show that there were people with other ideas about Cuba."
It was doubtful, however, that anyone had any ideas to begin with. Marion Lear, one of the four girls who had organized the lynching, said it aimed at "ending political apathy and unawareness at Wheaton." Miss Lear admitted that she herself couldn't name the President of Cuba because she "never read newspapers."
After the dancing, staging, and the actual stringing-up, there was an address delivered by Miss Elina Carillo, a Wheaton student who had formerly lived in Cuba. "My father," she recalled, "need to own a sugar plantation But now they're all gone."
The anti-May Day demonstration was one of several in the area. Reports of similar activities came from Boston University, M.L.T. and the Harvard Yard.
Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.