1970 — May 4, Kent State U. demonstrators shot by Ohio National Guard members, OH– 4

–4 Caputo, Philip. “The Kent State Shootings, 35 Years Later.” National Public Radio.
–4 Deseret News, Salt Lake City, UT: “Remembering Kent massacre.” 5-3-2000.
–4 Lewis/Hensley. “The May 4 Shootings at Kent State University…” Kent State U., 1998.
–4 Wikipedia. “Kent State Shootings.” 12-25-2011 modification.

Narrative Information

Deseret News: “Kent, Ohio — There is a hole in the heart of America. It has been there for 30 years. The hole pierces an iron sculpture on a campus in the midlands of the country. It’s a neat hole. It was made by a bullet. It was one of at least 61 shots that were fired over 13 seconds, shortly after noon, on May 4, 1970.

“This was the day the Vietnam War came home to America — made its bloody tracks into the heartland — through American blood, shed by American troops, on American soil. And that was the day, in the view of some experts, that the war began to end, even though it took five more years to die.

“Here is what happened, what never had happened before, what has not happened since: National Guardsmen shot into an unruly but unarmed crowd of college students. They killed four. They wounded nine. They stunned the nation.

“The Guard had gone onto campuses before — but never with live ammunition and loaded guns, and shot to kill.

“Kent State? How could it happen there? The college generation was at the point of revolt that spring over the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, coming about a year after Richard Nixon became president on a promise of a ‘secret plan’ to end the war. Their parents’ — the World War II veterans generation — was primed to smack down those revolting, privileged children who were showing their flag-patched backsides to their country in time of crisis.

“Weren’t the Kent State students asking for . . . something?

“On Saturday morning, they had rioted through downtown Kent, breaking windows. On Saturday night, somebody set fire to the ramshackle headquarters of the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps on campus. That Monday, May 4, a crowd of some 3,000 jeered at the Guard’s orders to disperse. When the Guard fired tear gas, the crowd ran upwind. When the Guard fixed bayonets, students threw rocks at them. And the Guard fired. In the echoes, everybody ducked.

“For 30 years the nation has flinched from what became known on the instant as “the Kent State massacre.” No one — guardsman or student — has ever been convicted of culpability for the deaths that day. Although one student pleaded guilty to first-degree riot, charges were dismissed. Nobody directly involved then — president, governor, university official, student activist — has apologized. There was a civil trial brought by the wounded students and the parents of the slain students against Ohio Gov. Jim Rhodes, Kent State President Robert White and eight of the guardsmen — but the jury voted 9-3 ‘not liable.’…” (Deseret News, Salt Lake City, UT: “Remembering Kent massacre.” 5-3-2000.)

Wikipedia: “The Kent State shootings—also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre —occurred at Kent State University in the U.S. city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.

“Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the American invasion of Cambodia, which President Richard Nixon announced in a television address on April 30. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.

“There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of four million students, and the event further affected the public opinion—at an already socially contentious time—over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War….

“Two of the four students killed, Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller, had participated in the protest, and the other two, Sandra Scheuer and William Knox Schroeder, had been walking from one class to the next at the time of their deaths. Schroeder was also a member of the campus ROTC battalion. Of those wounded, none was closer than 71 feet to the guardsmen. Of those killed, the nearest (Miller) was 265 feet away, and their average distance from the guardsmen was 345 feet….

“President Nixon and his administration’s public reaction to the shootings was perceived by many in the anti-war movement as callous. Then National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger said the president was “pretending indifference.” Stanley Karnow noted in his Vietnam: A History that “The [Nixon] administration initially reacted to this event with wanton insensitivity. Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, whose statements were carefully programmed, referred to the deaths as a reminder that ‘when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy.'” Nixon himself had talked of “bums” destroying US campuses, to which the father of Allison Krause stated on national TV “My child was not a bum”….

“Eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury. The guardsmen claimed to have fired in self-defense, a claim which was generally accepted by the criminal justice system. In 1974 U.S. District Judge Frank Battisti dismissed charges against all eight on the basis that the prosecution’s case was too weak to warrant a trial. ….” (Wikipedia. “Kent State Shootings.” 12-25-2011 modification.)

Sources

Caputo, Philip. “The Kent State Shootings, 35 Years Later.” National Public Radio. Accessed 3-13-2022 at: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4630596

Deseret News, Salt Lake City, UT: “Remembering Kent massacre.” 5-3-2000. Accessed 3-13-2022 at: https://www.deseret.com/2000/5/3/19558501/remembering-kent-massacre

Lewis, Jerry M. and Thomas R. Hensley. “The May 4 Shootings at Kent State University: The Search For Historical Accuracy.” Kent State University, 1998. Revised from original, published by Ohio Council for the Social Studies Review. Vol. 34, No. 1, Summer 1998, pp. 9-21. Accessed 3-13-2022 at: https://www.kent.edu/may-4-historical-accuracy

Wikipedia. “Kent State Shootings.” 12-25-2011 mod. Accessed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings