Insurgent Politics in the Lone Star State: Remembering the Antiwar Movement in Austin, Texas, 1967-1973

In Insurgent Politics in the Lone Star State, Martin J. Murray uses his own personal engagement in the antiwar movement in Austin, Texas, to make sense of the entanglements between cycles of protest against the Vietnam War and the efforts of security agencies intent on suppressing dissent. Murray used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain FBI documents related to the Austin antiwar movement. He also examined the papers of three prominent security officials (Lt. Burt Gerding, head of Criminal Intelligence, Austin Police Department; Allen Hamilton, chief of University of Texas campus police; and George Carlson, head of security, University of Texas System). Access to these security records enabled him to broaden his inquiry into uncovering the strategies and tactics of security agencies intent on undermining the antiwar movement.

In his autobiographical account, Murray tells two parallel stories. In the first he recounts his own experiences, starting with the Students for a Democratic Society. Following its collapse in 1969, Murray then discusses more militant direct actions, including the Waller Creek incident (October 1969), the Chuck Wagon police riot (November 1969), and a rising number of unauthorized marches, culminating in the massive twenty-five-thousand-person march on the State Capitol (May 7, 1970) following the invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State killings. Murray also draws a link between the participation of the Austin-based Armadillo Mayday Tribe in the 1971 Maydays demonstrations in Washington, DC, and the protests in May 1971 at the dedication to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library on the UT campus. He ends with the May 1972 National Guard occupation of the UT campus.

In the second story, Murray focuses on the security apparatuses and their far-reaching efforts to monitor political activists, infiltrate the antiwar movement with undercover informants, and disrupt protest activities. Murray argues that one cannot make sense of the cycles of insurgent protest in Austin without understanding the secretive role of law enforcement agencies that were committed to breaking the antiwar movement, whether within the framework of the law or outside it.