STATE MUSEUM EXHIBIT INCLUDES PEACE  MOVEMENT

At the South Carolina State Museum, a new exhibition opened on the anniversary of the Tet Offensive attacks that looks at both this momentous military struggle and the evolving peace movement in the United States.

While a little over half the exhibition focuses on the events leading up to Tet and its immediate aftermath, the rest of the exhibition reviews the growing peace movement in the United States and the struggle led by young college students such as Brett Bursey to protest American involvement in that troubled part of the world.  The local protest movement in Columbia that coalesced around the UFO Café established on Main Street across from Columbia City Hall is one of the important stories told.

At the South Carolina State Museum, a new exhibition opened on the anniversary of the massive attacks that looks at both this momentous military struggle and the evolving peace movement in the United States.

While a little over half the exhibition focuses on the events leading up to Tet and its immediate aftermath, the rest of the exhibition reviews the growing peace movement in the United States and the struggle led by young college students such as Brett Bursey to protest American involvement in that troubled part of the world.  The home front exhibition section uses posters from the era, protest buttons, sixties record album covers and much more to convey to visitors what the conflicted feelings of the era were like along with the vibrant new youth culture that began flowering before and during this period.

The local protest movement in Columbia that coalesced around the UFO Café established on Main Street across from Columbia City Hall is one of the important stories told.  The few objects related to this institution, closed in January 1970 under suspicious circumstances, are supplemented with film footage from WIS News reels now preserved by the USC News Film Library.  Footage of student protestors marching down Main Street, an interview with John Gardiner, founder of the UFO Café in 1968, are just two of the events captured in the film reproduced and shown in the exhibition.  These are just a few of the stories told about the peace movement and the counter culture in Columbia and South Carolina.