From Protest to Power

The controversy began – and continued – in wartime.

On Nov. 11, 1942, the U.S. Congress approved lowering the draft age to 18 and raising the upper limit to 37.  

This change occurred because by November 1942, the U.S. was no longer a neutral bystander in World War II and was now an active participant. Prior to this change, the Burke-Wadsworth Act, passed in Congress in 1940, established the country’s first peacetime draft of men between the ages of 21 and 36. However, of the eligible men in that first draft, 50% were rejected for health reasons or because they were judged to be illiterate.  

The U.S. needed troops, which prompted the expansion of the draft age and the beginning of the protest slogan “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote.” A West Virginia congressman, Jennings Randolph, was a passionate supporter of lowering the voting age and sponsored the first of 11 bills in 1942. Despite support from first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and several senators and representatives, Congress failed to pass that bill. The popular movement to lower the age continued nationwide.

In 1943, Georgia became the first state to lower the voting age for state and local issues to 18. In 1955, Kentucky did the same.  

President Dwight Eisenhower was a supporter of lowering the voting age and expressed his support for the legislation in his 1954 State of the Union Address, saying, “For years our citizens between the ages of 18 and 21 have, in time of peril, been summoned to fight for America. They should participate in the political process that produces this fateful summons.” 

War-Weary Citizens Renew the Call

Public disillusionment with the long war in Vietnam, in terms of its cost in U.S. dollars and the lives of young soldiers, revived the movement to lower the voting age, and the slogan “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote” became part of signs and chants at protests. Young men, who had no say in the legislative process, feared that their draft numbers would be called next.  

National organizations, including the National Education Association, the AFL-CIO and the NAACP organized protests and lobbying under the umbrella of “Project 18.”

In 1968, Ohio had the opportunity to pass Issue 1, which would have lowered the voting age in Ohio from 21 to 19. Ohio Gov. James Rhodes supported the issue, with the idea that it would help alleviate student protests, but this issue was narrowly defeated 50.95%–49.05%.  

In 1970, then-Sen. Randolph and a group of legislators included an amendment into the Voting Rights Act of 1970 that specified lowering the age to vote in federal, state and local elections. Almost immediately, President Richard Nixon issued a statement that the federal government regulating state and local elections would be deemed unconstitutional and lowering the national voting age would require a constitutional amendment. Nixon was right, and the Supreme Court struck down the legislation.

The result was messy: State and local elections had different rules than federal elections, which caused logistical problems on election days nationwide.  

Kent State’s Role in Bringing About the Change

Kent State University President Todd Diacon is a historian who knows well the university’s connection to the 26th Amendment. “My brother was 18 years old in 1970, and he couldn’t vote,” he said. “He was a college student. He was working summers on the Santa Fe Railroad. He had lots of rights, like he could legally drink beer. But one thing he couldn’t do was vote. 

“Really, as a result of the activism and all the tragedy coming out of May 4, Congress eventually passed that amendment and we now have the right to vote,” Diacon said. “Kent State played a major role in that.”

When first-year students at Kent State tour the May 4 Visitors Center as part of their Flashes 101 student orientation class, Director Alison Caplan highlights the voting age as being one of the reasons the students were protesting on May 4, 1970. “Students are always aware of the Vietnam War, and they know about the draft, but they don’t realize that young people on Kent State’s campus in 1970 didn’t have a right that students have today: the right to vote,” she said.  

“We sometimes think of suffrage in relation to people of color and women, but we don’t often talk about suffrage related to young people,” Caplan said.  

The Pivoting Point  

Caplan acknowledged that the movement to lower the voting age began immediately after the draft age was lowered to 18 in 1942. She said, “The idea of ‘old enough to fight, old enough to vote’ was definitely front and center, but there wasn’t the power to pass that kind of legislation, especially a constitutional amendment, until the tragedy at Kent State happened.”

That spark from 1942 continued to smolder and grew in intensity when veterans returned from World War II. Caplan said that those veterans saw that war was “a just war” and “it was something that the whole world was engaged with.” When speaking with students about WWII, she said that the students’ response was, “Why wouldn’t you feel the need to go and fight the Nazis?”

When veterans came home, they found they had access to many things, like education through the G.I. Bill, housing and a period of relative prosperity. Kent State enjoyed a healthy influx of new student veterans through the G.I. Bill. This prosperous time, and the baby boom it created, birthed the generation known as “The Baby Boomers,” Caplan said.  

But as this new generation came of age, there were conflicts with the generations that came before. “The civil rights movement, the protests related to Vietnam created so much generational tension,” she said. “And the feelings around Vietnam for young people were not the same as their parents may have felt about previous engagements, which increased the tension.”

Those tensions grew and came to a head in May of 1970 with the shootings at Kent State and Jackson State Universities.  

In June 1970, President Nixon established the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest, which became known as the Scranton Commission after its chairman, former Pennsylvania governor William Scranton. The commission’s findings included that student protests and violence on campus diminished when it appeared that the Vietnam War was winding down and increased in response to the American invasion of Cambodia.  

Reading between the lines, commission members may have determined that without the right to vote, students used protest as their voice. At this point, President Nixon and other national leaders began to see that granting 18-year-olds the right to vote in national elections could help in ending these protests.  

The 26th Amendment Is Passed

Less than a year after the shootings at Kent State and Jackson State, on May 4, 1970, and May 15, 1970, respectively, on March 10, 1971, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously in favor of a Constitutional amendment lowering the national voting age to 18. An overwhelming majority of members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of the 26th Amendment on March 23, 1970. The states all ratified the legislation, and it took effect on July 1, 1971 – nearly 30 years after Randolph first proposed lowering the voting age.  

Artifacts of Transition

To commemorate Kent State’s role in the creation and passage of the 26th Amendment, Caplan reached out to recent Kent State graduate student Mason St. Clair for help in creating an exhibit that included artifacts from that transitional time.  

St. Clair has a collection of political memorabilia dating from 1840 to present, totaling more than 8,000 pieces. It includes pins, buttons, bumper stickers and campaign promotional materials of all shapes and sizes. At the suggestion of Lori Boes, former assistant director of the May 4 Visitors Center, he began displaying themed presentations, highlighting some of his collections, in cases on the first floor of the university library.  

The 1972 Presidential Election  

The first presidential election following the passage of the 26th Amendment was the 1972 contest between South Dakota Sen. George McGovern with running mate U.S Ambassador to France Sargent Shriver and incumbent Nixon with Vice President Spiro Agnew. Both campaigns aggressively pursued the youth vote with pamphlets, posters and campaign buttons targeting this new demographic. Both parties raced to register young voters on college campuses and anywhere else they could find young people.  

The “Use the Power 18 – Register to Vote” campaign button was created for a celebrity-studded concert event held by the McGovern campaign in Los Angeles. Intended to woo the youth vote, the all-star lineup at the “Four for McGovern” concert featured performances by Carole King, Barbra Streisand and James Taylor and appearances by Hollywood luminaries of the day, including Warren Beaty, Jack Nicholson, James Earl Jones, Shirley MacLaine and Goldie Hawn.  

The candidates’ efforts were successful, the youth vote reached an all-time high in 1972 with 55.4% turnout among voters aged 18-29.  

Ultimately, Nixon carried 49 out of 50 states and 61% of the popular vote, and the youth vote became a deciding factor in many state and local races.  

All the artifacts in this display are from St. Clair’s personal collection, except for the Spiro Agnew watch, which was donated by Bill Smith, a friend of the May 4 Visitors Center. This exhibit is in his memory. The Spiro Agnew watch, a popular accessory in the era, came from a joke that was circulating around college campuses: “Did you know that Mickey Mouse wore a Spiro Agnew watch?” 

The origin of the joke was in the perception that Agnew was not intelligent and something of a buffoon, a human cartoon. The reasoning was that if humans wore watches with cartoon characters on them, a cartoon character like Mickey Mouse might wear a watch with a human cartoon on it (Agnew).  

Kent State Votes

With the university’s historic role in student voting as its foundation, Kent State Votes was created as a university-wide nonpartisan coalition affiliated with Undergraduate Student Government. The initiative serves as an organizing umbrella for voting-related activities throughout the university system with the goals of promoting voting and voting education on campus as well as addressing barriers to students’ full participation in the voting process.

Craig Berger, associate director of Community Engaged Learning in Kent State’s University College, is the co-chair for Kent State Votes. He said that voting is “definitely the most basic right that students who are eligible to vote have for participation in our democracy.” For first-time voters, Berger said, “It is the launchpad for getting involved in our democracy. There are many other ways as well, but voting is the most basic way you can make your voice heard.” 

‘There’s a History of Social Justice on Campus, a History of Students Using Their Voice’

Trevor Martin, a 2004 Kent State alumnus who now works as campaign coordinator for the League of Women Voters, recently returned to campus as part of the League’s “Your Voice, Your Vote, Your Power” tour. During the tour, the league’s Airstream trailer traveled to more than 20 Ohio colleges and universities to share information about voting and to get students registered to vote. Kent State was the tour’s final stop, on Oct. 7, the final day of voter registration.  

He said, “It’s so meaningful to come back to Kent State, my alma mater, to this campus because the history and tradition that we’re steeped in here. Kent State was foundational in lowering the voting age to 18 via the 26th Amendment and the history of May 4, 1970. 

“It’s just got a long tradition of students being involved and using their voice, empowering themselves and really shaping American history,” Martin said. “I don’t know if it’s possible, but just being back, it’s even more beautiful. It’s just inspiring being here, with the feeling of being back on campus and giving back to my Flash community.”  

Caplan said that when students tour the May 4 Visitors Center, the staff at the center hopes for two outcomes: that they understand the history and feel a stronger connection to Kent State and that they will consider registering to vote and engaging with politically active organizations on campus.  

‘‘There’s a history of social justice on campus. There’s a history of students here using their voices, and we’re here to make sure students know that history, but also encourage them to make their own meaning of that history and part of that is knowing the First Amendment and understanding that they have the right to use their voice and the ability to redress the government for their grievances,” she said.

 ‘‘But one of the ways we do that is at the polls, right? We can go and vote and use our voice that way too.  I think there are so many great resources here on campus like Kent State Votes that help students engage in the political process.”