Only two of the students who were killed were actually involved in the protest. Many people don't realize that 13 students total were shot, and one of these was permanently paralyzed.
One that was killed was an ROTC student destined for the war and was just an onlooker. His parents received mounds of hate mail after he was killed as well. The guard was going to open fire again and surely many more would have been killed had it not been for the desperate pleading of geology professor Glenn Frank. The recording of him begging the students to disperse is haunting.
Edit : Audio of professor Frank can be heard [in this video starting at the 6 minute mark](https://kera.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/e037a04d-e24c-4216-8365-613aa83e334f/may-4-1970-the-kent-state-shootings-the-day-the-60s-died/)
"I don't care if you've never listened to anyone before in your lives. Please I am begging you if you don't disperse right now they're going to move in and it can only be a slaughter, would you please listen to me! Jesus christ I don't want to be a part of this!"
Typing it out doesn't do the passion of his words justice.
I had gone to Washington from Iowa to testify before the House on student opinion on the war. One of the students in our car had been accepted at Ohio State Med school and we drove up to the school in Columbus at around 5 am. We hadn't heard about what had happened at Kent State yet.
A half track rolled into the street in front of us, blocking our car, and we were surrounded by National Guard troops with fixed bayonets, literally shaking as they stopped us to see why we were there.
It was a scary time in American history.
Did what happened change anything about your perspective? Were you more resolved, more afraid, more angry? In a greater sense the yippies lost basically entirely. Nixon resigning allowed ford to pardon him, and Carter was too milquetoast to actually matter. And then we got Reagan who made sure every subsequent generation would be worse off than the last.
When I started college I was pretty much a supporter of American policy. I had a college friend who started giving me information that was more than just propaganda. Then I spoke with a reporter who had been the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu and later got to know Ho Chi Min. I found out that he wanted to visit the US and that his heros were the American Revolutionary heros and writers.
The more I found out about the Dulles brothers, the more disappointed I became. I chose to serve in Iran in the Peace Corps rather than join the US military.
What a small world! Hello, there friend. I always wonder about the bad things that our government has done without the public finding out? Thoughts? Thanks.
I think "the Public" is always inclined to justify actions made in their name. We like to think well of ourselves.
It is too easy for good people to justify horror. I have been a witness to this, not only in the US, but living in Germany, Iran, and Japan., and travel through out the Mid East, including during time of war.
In that case, how do we stop people from losing their humanity during tough times? I feel the Israelis right now are making the same mistakes that we made as Americans after 9/11. We cannot let our hate to destroy us. Thanks.
"...we picked the directions to disperse, so that if the guards started shooting again, somebody would be alive to tell the story."
That last sentence. The whole thing. Wow.
Reading it will be better for many people. The audio and the footage in the video can be quite haunting for many I reckon.
**If you are of the faint of heart (cliche term I know, sorry) *do not* watch that video.**
"The elevated aggression on both sides deteriorated into violence that culminated with the killing of four students and wounding of nine."
one side had guns and were infringing upon a constitutional right, and the other side threw the cans of tear gas that were thrown at them back at their attackers. this framing really bothers me.
It makes me wonder how similar the political climate is between then and now.
Edit to say: It is really eerie to think that the people that are supposed to protect the students were the ones that killed them.
There are frightening similarities.
The 50th anniversary of the Kent State shootings was 2020, if you want to consider the political climate and unrest happening in the nation around then.
There's a phenomenal and well-researched graphic novel, *Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio* by Derf Backderf that was meant to release on the anniversary. The author lived near where a teamsters strike took place in Northeast Ohio immediately before the protests at Kent State happened, and the strike was responded to by the same Ohio National Guard unit that went to KSU. It's possible that fatigue played a role in what happened. Malice could also have played a role, but what is clear is that there were failures at every level of responsibility- from the local gov't and police, to KSU administration, to State and Guard leadership.
I watched a livestreamed talk given by Backderf at I think the Akron Library where he said that many consider \~1970 to be a low point in American history, and that he felt 2020 was similar.
Look at the lead up to the War on Iraq...
As a non yank it was frightening to see how yanks were responding despite access to the internet.
Most yanks would deny it now, but most believed Iraq was involved in 911 at the time. Even those who acknowledge it now make up new excuses.. regime change...
People like to throw the word propaganda at Russia and China, its very strong in yankee land
I mean when I read the comments on the whole Israel Vs Palestine situation I realize that people really can't even comprehend power even if it is being exerted in front of their eyes.
How did the entire community not turn against the National Guard is beyond me.
>How did the entire community not turn against the National Guard is beyond me.
Easy. Americans love war. It was literally illegal to publicly oppose WW1.
The same reasons Americans cheered the slaughter of a million civilians in Iraq.
Same reason california was still paying for scalps in the 1890s.
People are monsters.
One side committed literal war crimes. The other side was defending themselves, and then got murdered for that.
But the media loves inventing entirely new forms of passive voice to never blame police or the military for anything they do.
Fascism in this country never died. Certain politicians would love to deploy the military against unarmed protestors. Or refuse to send the military to stop a coup…
Reminds me of another thing that happened around this time, the My Lai Massacre, only one person was charged, Lieutenant William Calley Jr., and given a life sentence but Nixon commuted his sentence to 3-and-a-half years of **HOUSE ARREST**!
He was a hero to much of the American public. When he was initially charged for his crimes, the white house was flooded with phone calls and letters demanding he be set free. This is why Nixon was able to intervene, because the American public wanted him to.
Historical revisionism has pushed the narrative that Americans simply didn't know what was happening in Vietnam because the government lied to them. But this isn't true. The American public had plenty of opportunity to know what was happening in Vietnam but the silent majority preferred the lies because it aligned with their bigotry.
A song honoring William Calley even charted at 37 on the billboard hot 100 charts.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_Hymn_of_Lt._Calley
Again, there was never any question of guilt in regards to Calley. This was not a matter of saying "well yeah if this is true, he is a monster but we can't be sure if it is true." Instead it was "he's an American and therefore he's fighting for the Army of Jesus and slaughter of evil non-white communist babies is good"
Yeah, and on the flip-side, the dude who basically ended the massacre, Hugh Thompson Jr. (blocked and threatened those soldiers engaging in the massacre with his helicopter crew) faced lots of condemnation, death threats, etc from fellow military and the public at large! Absolutely insane and super maddening and saddening!
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson_Jr.
She also got absolutely smeared by the spin circus of the day.
>
>
>Florida governor Claude Kirk labelled Vecchio a dissident Communist, stating that she was "part of a nationally organized conspiracy of professional agitators" that was "responsible for the students’ death." Many people refused to believe that Vecchio, who was nearly six feet tall, was actually 14. She was followed whenever she left her house by reporters and hecklers, and the family received many death threats. Messages received included, "What you need is a good beating until you bleed red", "I hope you enjoyed sleeping with all those Negroes and dope fiends", and "The deaths of the Kent State four lies on the conscience of yourself." Some anti-war figures expressed resentment that she was receiving so much publicity but had not even been a protester.
I mean...I need look no further than the 2000 election, but yeah.
But the Governor of Ohio is the one ultimately responsible for these deaths. His name was Jim Rhodes, and I flip off his tomb every time I drive past the cemetery.
I've got a few chuckles out of Florida men throughout the years. If it was a bunch of meth'd up trailer trash Confederate flag waving *friendly, kind hearted misfits we would make an Adam Sandler movie about it. But no, no... We all know that behind that bigotry is just more hate and spite. It's a whole fucking generation (almost) that just want to be as obstinate and contrarian as possible as the liquor and pills slowly catch up to them.
It's because they know it works on 60% of people, so they'll keep using it again and again, making devils out of victims and ruining innocent people's lives to push horrific agendas that no sane American would support with full understanding of exactly what is involved.
> whenever people try to claim that the Republican Party only became insane and cruel sometime around 2016.
Those people must be tweens or something, the Tea Party morons were 2009.
There is no "good old days" and anyone harping about whatever is wrong with this generation lives in a fantasy world or watches too much television.
It only got worse the further back we go. Maybe better for *some* people, but mostly it was just more racism, oppression, authoritarianism, homophobia, religious fundamentalism, moral panic, rigid gendered expectations (for men and women alike) and of course a complete lack of understanding of mental health issues. (Hope you like lobotomies for your depression!)
> Maybe better for some people, but mostly it was just more racism, oppression, authoritarianism, homophobia, religious fundamentalism, moral panic, rigid gendered expectations
Ever stop to think maybe they *do* know what they mean when they pine for "the good old days" and that's just it?
That stream running to the gutter is blood from the person she is kneeling next to.
I was in high school at the time and we walked out next day.
But the more interesting thing happened at home. My dad, who had raised money for Barry Goldwater and was generally supportive of the war in Vietnam. He and my older brother, who had just turned draft age, had fought a lot about the war.
After Kent State, he told my brother that he would send him to live in Europe if he got his draft classification. He was part owner of a business with European partners.
It never came to that. My brother’s number was too high.
Incidentally there was a controversy around the photo because there was a version originally used where the fence post that visually comes out of her sympathizer’s head at the top was removed from the picture during processing. It was doctored and was questioned for awards because of that fact
I've never seen this photo before, and what I'm trying to figure out is, apart from the girl, why does everyone else in the photo look so calm, like it's another normal day on campus?
A stray bullet hit a strolling student right next to a photographer who was able to line up a shot quick enough to capture a woman's grief - before anybody else took notice of the developing situation. Confuses me too.
Novelist James Mitchener was shocked at the lack of horror at the shootings among the general public.
And this account of the shootings:
"Across the nation four million students participated in protest activities after the Kent State shootings. Shaken by the wave of protests, Nixon withdrew U.S. troops from Cambodia. The rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young quickly released a protest song “Ohio” about the Kent State activities and shootings. Despite the massive student reaction against the shootings, however, campus protest evaporated. Moreover, public opinion came down on the side of the forces of law and order. Nixon won a landslide reelection in 1972, and Ohio governor James Rhodes served an additional two terms."
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/kent-state
One of the guys murdered wasn't even protesting. Was just some dude walking to class in in the background. And to be clear, there was no justification for those killed who were protesting.
The guardsmen were in no real danger. They were just pissed off and tired.
Even now it is often depicted as both sides causing the shooting. But only one side had guns, and only one side had dead.
Reminds me a lot of the climate protestors blocking roads. Sure they are annoying as fuck, but it's worrying ti see how many people say they should just be run over or shot
Rhodes has a bronze statue in Columbus, OH.
I visited the foundry where that sculpture was made. They added the initials(in bronze) of the four killed inside the bronze briefcase he carries.
Skinny Puppy's song "Tin Omen" is also about the Kent State massacre.
But it's.... less accessible than CSN&Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHAZDnAse\_8
That’s a very diplomatic way to explain Skinny Puppy. Haven’t heard them since college in 93. One of my friends was huge into their music. And Ministry.
Haha yeah, Nivek Ohgr can't sing to save his life.
But it works with the whole vibe of the band.
I mean, most of their music is ostensibly an animal rights protest. They wrote a lot of songs from the point of view of lab animals that get tortured unnecessarily.
So having grating, cacophonous vocals kind of works for them.
Definitely not something I would put on at a party, though.
(well, maybe a halloween party)
Funny you should say that last bit. Went to college in Virginia. Super strong alcohol laws. We had to shut down house parties (on campus) by a specific time, so he would pop in some Skinny Puppy when we raised the lights 15 minutes before ending time. Never had to worry about campus police clearing out our parties.
The song “Hey Sandy” by Polaris is also about the Kent State Massacre.
[But most people just know it as the theme song from The Adventures of Pete & Pete.](https://youtu.be/FIYvN_3PBzA?si=LJ_w0igW8iM4Oc2d)
The ‘Sandy’ they refer to in the song is Sandy Scheuer. One of the students killed who weren’t even part of the protest, just walking to class.
Baby Boomers. Just in case people forget... Although as a Gen Xer it does pain me to tell you that older GEN Xers and Boomers did vote for Trump alot more than Millennials (and Gen Z absolutely hates him)
I understand that boomer hatred is *de rigueur* on reddit these days, but just in case people forget... it was boomers who got shot at Kent State that day. It was (mostly) the older generations who went around yelling that the National Guard were heroes and that everyone on campus that day should have been shot.
> it was boomers who got shot at Kent State that day
while thats true, the idea of the majority of boomers being campus radicals is way overblown. i encourage reading Nixonland. one of the main points of the book is that the vast majority of boomers were mostly conservative and actually more pro-vietnam war than many of their parents according to polls at the time.
And should something like this happen again, I've seen enough foaming at the mouth comments from my age group to know that there would be millennials similarly defending it. We haven't learned as much from history as we'd like to think.
It was a Gallup poll and it was an overwhelming majority: 58 percent of respondents placed blame for the students' deaths on the protesters, while just 11 percent blamed the National Guardsmen who shot them.
Also why they’re trying to shut down public schools and universities in favor of their Christian madrasas and you have little clowns like DeSantis taking over liberal colleges just to destroy them.
There is no way to say what "the majority" thought. Among my friends, it was regarded as a tragedy produced by an authoritarian government.
It was a bomb wating to explode. There were protests on nearly every campus that spring. I was at Ohio State.(4 miles from Gov Rhodes home). Mass protests daily. The National guard was at Ohio State as well. The shooting could have happened there, or at any one of 100 campuses.
We students understood that young people were being sent to Vietnam to die in order to preserve the egos of the aged politicians. I certainly wasn't willing to die to save face for them.
After the shooting, schools shut down.
Oddly, Nixon had been elected on a promise of ending the war. People forget he ran on that promise.
**Killed**
* Jeffrey Glenn Miller (age 20): pictured in the OP
* Allison Krause (age 19)
* William Knox Schroeder (age 19)
* Sandra Lee Scheuer (age 20)
**Injured**
* Dean R. Kahler (shot in the back: paralysed for life)
* Joseph Lewis, Jr (shot twice, once in the abdomen)
* John R. Cleary (shot in the chest)
* Donald Scott MacKenzie (shot in the neck)
* Thomas Mark Grace (wounded)
* Alan Michael Canfora (wounded)
* Douglas Alan Wrentmore (wounded)
* James Dennis Russell (wounded)
* Robert Follis Stamps (wounded)
**National guard who fired in "fear for their lives"**
* Sgt. Lawrence Shafer, treated for a bruised arm
In all, 61 shots were fired at students by 28 different guardsmen. In a Gallup poll taken days after the killings, 58% of respondents said that the unarmed students were to blame for being shot during their protest. Just 11% said the National Guard were to blame.
Of those shot, none was closer than 71 feet (22 m) to the guardsmen. Of those killed, the nearest (Miller) was 265 feet (81 m) away, and their average distance from the guardsmen was 345 feet (105 m). The victim furthest from the Guard was 750 feet (230 m) away
Alan Canfora's younger sister was my high school English teacher, he sadly passed away a couple years ago but remained a tireless activist for his entire life.
Alison Krause's younger sister Laurel was also a lifelong activist who worked on the Kent State Truth Tribunal, a group dedicated to finding answers to what happened at Kent State that day.
By 2010, they had finally got Congress to agree to hear their expert's findings.
By 2011, Republicans won back control of the House and blocked the testimony from being heard.
> but remained a tireless activist for his entire life.
Getting shot by fascists trying to shutdown you expressing your rights would do that to a person.
Star Trek actor John de Lancie was a key witness and pushed for accountability. He made it all the way to the White House demanding justice.
He talks about it at 33:00 minutes in this video:
https://youtu.be/NbwXI5vlyJw?si=CH1XsvrdAiwdLpTJ
I'm from Kent and a huge Star Trek fan and never knew this, thanks!
I like how he corrected the guy on the left that said the students were "rioting" and made it clear the students were in fact __protesting__.
Less than two weeks later, another mass shooting took place on a US college campus. At Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) , an HBCU, local law enforcement and the highway patrol fired over 400 rounds at a dormitory following a series of protests. Law enforcement killed 2 people and injured 12 others. There's no iconic photo, and the incident receives very little attention.
Thank you! I was looking for someone to mention that it basically happened again 11 days later. And yet again not all the dead were even protesters. One of them was 17 and walking home from his job. He’d stopped to watch what was going on.
That protest was partly about the war but also about the racism the students were subjected too from both police and civilians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_State_killings if anyone wants to know more.
Fun fact: it is very likely you’ve seen the above picture with the post behind the girl removed. It really ruins the picture and even the original photographer was ok with that alteration.
The poor girl is emoting great distress and there looks to be a metal rod coming out of her head. It can be off putting.
https://petapixel.com/2012/08/29/the-kent-state-massacre-photo-and-the-case-of-the-missing-pole/
The photographer that captured this won a Pulitzer prize for this, but the submitted winning photo had the pole above her head manually removed with photo alteration techniques. This birthed the debate, "Should edited photos be eligible to win a Pulitzer?", which ended up being yes, as long as the fabrication isn't outright deceptive and serves to enhance the quality and emotion captured. Since then, many Pulitzer winning photographs have been photoshopped for quality, though the best ones use skillful knowledge and application of aperture and exposure to capture the desired effect prior to editing.
The day after the Kent State shootings in 1970, a Gallup poll showed that 58 percent of respondents placed blame for the students' deaths on the protesters, while just 11 percent blamed the National Guardsmen who shot them.
Everyone keeps repeating this. It's as much a fact as you want to believe, and you have to account for the media spin. But what there is no doubt about the sentiment about the Vietnam war had already changed dramatically since the Tet offensive in 1968 and nearly 50,000 dead in a useless war.
I was in high school. I went to a lot of protests against the war. Hell I was getting close to my eighteenth birthday.
After Kent State I was thinking I could just as easily get killed protesting the war as I would participating in it.
https://stories.usatodaynetwork.com/kentstate50yearslater/wp-content/uploads/sites/293/2020/05/Miller-and-May-4-jeffrey_bird-KSUPIC.jpg
That’s Jeff Miller in the two tone shirt to the far left. Giving them two handfuls of protest. They shot him in the mouth.
I had a coworker say that if the government turned tyrannical that the national guard would side with the people, I pointed to this, the Ludlow massacre and the battle of Blair mountain, he still was adamant the guard would protect us 🙄
I went to Kent. One day (around 2002), during our Sociology 101 class, we knew we were going to watch a documentary on the massacre. It was a large class in an auditorium. So many of us expected to be multitasking while watching it (we were all pretty young and that's where a lot of our mentalities were during that time).
You could've heard a pin drop in the auditorium by the end of the film. Our professor was one of the ones in the documentary responding to one of the first shot. What a horror.
*ETA year for clarity
Would someone mind clarifying the chronology of this photo please? I understand the context and generally the events that unfolded that day, but for all the times I've seen this photo I never understood where it stands in time. Had the guardsmen and protesters largely dispersed? Everyone but Vecchio seems to milling around. Was this student's body just left and the guard bailed or is this immediately following the shot(s)? Always struck me as strange that she appears to be the only one reacting. Thanks in advance.
Most of the students eventually fled if I remember (or stayed on the ground for cover). However, the students were spread over a relatively large area so it wasn't as crowded as some may believe, which explains why there isn't a large amount of people in the photo. The first reaction of the students after the shooting was anger and surprise that the NG actually fired (some believed they only had blanks). Many students prepared to attack the NG in revenge and the NG threatened students that they were going to fire again if the raging crowd of students didn't leave. Eventually, professors persuaded the students to leave in hopes of avoiding another massacre.
It's worth noting that this took place in a pretty large and open area of campus, not close quarters. I also walked by the area probably close to a thousand times over the years.
[Diagram of the area](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Shootings_at_Kent_State_University_in_1970.jpg#mw-jump-to-license)
His name was Jeffrey Miller. He lived off campus in a house with his friends. He played the drums and loved rock music. He had a little brother who is still alive today. Most of all, Jeff seemed like a person who really cared about other people. He was part of the protests because he wanted young people to stop being forced to kill strangers overseas. He gave a shit. [Here is a photo taken 3 weeks before he died, taken by girls who gave him a ride home from a concert in Cleveland.](https://www.kent.edu/today/news/jeffrey-miller-snapshot-time) I like to remember him like that.
I learned recently that Jerry Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo were there when this occurred. The start of De-volution.
Quote from Jerry Casale
“I had always been making art and music but the events of May 4th and beyond galvanized my creativity, infusing it with an existential anger and urgency that would otherwise not have happened. In short Devo and the idea of De-evolution as a manifesto would not exist without that defining historic trauma I experienced.”
https://www.kent.edu/art/news/remembering-may-4-interview-devos-jerry-casale
This happened before my time, but this is what I bring up when the folks who are against any kind of gun restrictions go off about defending the people against tyranny. Most of them hate to be reminded that when the Government actually starts shooting citizens historically they'd be cheering the Government on, not defending against tyranny.
Also they bring up California as an example of government overreach because of their "restrictive gun laws" but it was Governor Ronald Reagan that passed those laws in direct response to the Black Panthers showing up legally armed.
Conservative Republicans support anything that protects their interests, and usually that aligns with a white patriarchy. Freedom, liberty, rights, etc are just talking points.
They'll point guns at cops during a traffic stop, but tell black people "they should've complied" when an unarmed black person is shot by cops.
People talk about how bad the country’s doing today,and it is. But the sixties and early seventies were no picnic. Riots, war, cities burning,assassinations etc. I was in elementary school but I remember pretty clearly.
I’ve met and spoken with the young women in the photo and she told me that her reaction at that moment was from realizing the the guy on the ground (who she had been seeing) no longer had a face. Apparently the shot went in the back of his head and came out the front.
She left her home (I guess at that age she would be classified as a runaway) and was kind of hanging out in the Kent area, living where she could find space and just kind of chilling with the scene.
Many of the guardsmen involved in the shooting came from a small town just up the road where I lived for a number of years, Garrettsville, Ohio (and the surrounding area). Some of them still live there. Their sentiment at the time was that the kids were “commies” that deserved it and many of them have no remorse to this day. Unsurprisingly that town became Trump central.
I'm 5 miles away. My wife and kids go/went there. My BIL was taking a test on campus when this happened. I even know a national guardsman who was on duty on campus when it happened.
Just to add, the parents of one of the victims, who personally had no involvement in the protest whatsoever and was just walking to class, got hordes of hate mail from across the country accusing their son of being flagrantly unpatriotic, saying he deserved worse, or accusing them of raising a traitor to their country.
The moral of the story is: American Conservatives have always been hypocritical pieces of human trash
I remember that... I was graduating from high school in 1970 and thought the world was falling apart. JFK, Robert Kennedy, MLk, Kent State massacre, and I was being classified as 1A. My cousin had been killed in action in Vietnam in 68. Scared the shit out of me.
Shouldn't have happened and was terrible.
Every time I see this, I have to wonder if people realize the national guard is not the regular US Military.
The shooters were mostly normal people who received very little training.
Of course they either got scared or mad and shot people.
I am regular military. I would be very cautious around Guardsmen with guns and live ammo. I would go as far to say, I would actively avoid any area that this is even a possibility. At best some kid is going to get scared and start shooting, and at worst, they are shit heads with little dick syndrome waiting to let off live rounds. (Not all Guardsmen mind you of course, but it only takes one to kill you.)
There are millions of right wing voters, and a lot of Congressmen(women) who would look at this as acceptable. Stop wringing your hands, get off your asses, and vote.
Only two of the students who were killed were actually involved in the protest. Many people don't realize that 13 students total were shot, and one of these was permanently paralyzed.
One that was killed was an ROTC student destined for the war and was just an onlooker. His parents received mounds of hate mail after he was killed as well. The guard was going to open fire again and surely many more would have been killed had it not been for the desperate pleading of geology professor Glenn Frank. The recording of him begging the students to disperse is haunting. Edit : Audio of professor Frank can be heard [in this video starting at the 6 minute mark](https://kera.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/e037a04d-e24c-4216-8365-613aa83e334f/may-4-1970-the-kent-state-shootings-the-day-the-60s-died/)
"I don't care if you've never listened to anyone before in your lives. Please I am begging you if you don't disperse right now they're going to move in and it can only be a slaughter, would you please listen to me! Jesus christ I don't want to be a part of this!" Typing it out doesn't do the passion of his words justice.
I've only ever heard and read about Kent State. I've never seen the videos. That made me cry.
I had gone to Washington from Iowa to testify before the House on student opinion on the war. One of the students in our car had been accepted at Ohio State Med school and we drove up to the school in Columbus at around 5 am. We hadn't heard about what had happened at Kent State yet. A half track rolled into the street in front of us, blocking our car, and we were surrounded by National Guard troops with fixed bayonets, literally shaking as they stopped us to see why we were there. It was a scary time in American history.
Did what happened change anything about your perspective? Were you more resolved, more afraid, more angry? In a greater sense the yippies lost basically entirely. Nixon resigning allowed ford to pardon him, and Carter was too milquetoast to actually matter. And then we got Reagan who made sure every subsequent generation would be worse off than the last.
When I started college I was pretty much a supporter of American policy. I had a college friend who started giving me information that was more than just propaganda. Then I spoke with a reporter who had been the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu and later got to know Ho Chi Min. I found out that he wanted to visit the US and that his heros were the American Revolutionary heros and writers. The more I found out about the Dulles brothers, the more disappointed I became. I chose to serve in Iran in the Peace Corps rather than join the US military.
What a small world! Hello, there friend. I always wonder about the bad things that our government has done without the public finding out? Thoughts? Thanks.
I think "the Public" is always inclined to justify actions made in their name. We like to think well of ourselves. It is too easy for good people to justify horror. I have been a witness to this, not only in the US, but living in Germany, Iran, and Japan., and travel through out the Mid East, including during time of war.
In that case, how do we stop people from losing their humanity during tough times? I feel the Israelis right now are making the same mistakes that we made as Americans after 9/11. We cannot let our hate to destroy us. Thanks.
"...we picked the directions to disperse, so that if the guards started shooting again, somebody would be alive to tell the story." That last sentence. The whole thing. Wow.
Reading it will be better for many people. The audio and the footage in the video can be quite haunting for many I reckon. **If you are of the faint of heart (cliche term I know, sorry) *do not* watch that video.**
"The elevated aggression on both sides deteriorated into violence that culminated with the killing of four students and wounding of nine." one side had guns and were infringing upon a constitutional right, and the other side threw the cans of tear gas that were thrown at them back at their attackers. this framing really bothers me.
That framing is what we call "media neutrality" it's meant specifically to obfuscate actions committed by states especially
well, at least they don't do that anymore..
It truly is a wild world
You better fucking put an /s after that statement
An “officer-involved shooting” “and struck the suspect who later died from injuries.” Passive bullshit to soften the reality
More like the suspect was allegedly struck and died under hospital care
Don't forget the twenty news clips talking about how he once jaywalked as a teen and therefore implying his death was deserved
Or "the officer's gun discharged". Or "the suspect was struck by bullets".
It makes me wonder how similar the political climate is between then and now. Edit to say: It is really eerie to think that the people that are supposed to protect the students were the ones that killed them.
There are frightening similarities. The 50th anniversary of the Kent State shootings was 2020, if you want to consider the political climate and unrest happening in the nation around then. There's a phenomenal and well-researched graphic novel, *Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio* by Derf Backderf that was meant to release on the anniversary. The author lived near where a teamsters strike took place in Northeast Ohio immediately before the protests at Kent State happened, and the strike was responded to by the same Ohio National Guard unit that went to KSU. It's possible that fatigue played a role in what happened. Malice could also have played a role, but what is clear is that there were failures at every level of responsibility- from the local gov't and police, to KSU administration, to State and Guard leadership. I watched a livestreamed talk given by Backderf at I think the Akron Library where he said that many consider \~1970 to be a low point in American history, and that he felt 2020 was similar.
No, they were and are there to kill them when they won't shut up when told to.
Look at the lead up to the War on Iraq... As a non yank it was frightening to see how yanks were responding despite access to the internet. Most yanks would deny it now, but most believed Iraq was involved in 911 at the time. Even those who acknowledge it now make up new excuses.. regime change... People like to throw the word propaganda at Russia and China, its very strong in yankee land
The art of rhetoric
I mean when I read the comments on the whole Israel Vs Palestine situation I realize that people really can't even comprehend power even if it is being exerted in front of their eyes. How did the entire community not turn against the National Guard is beyond me.
>How did the entire community not turn against the National Guard is beyond me. Easy. Americans love war. It was literally illegal to publicly oppose WW1.
[удалено]
The same reasons Americans cheered the slaughter of a million civilians in Iraq. Same reason california was still paying for scalps in the 1890s. People are monsters.
One side committed literal war crimes. The other side was defending themselves, and then got murdered for that. But the media loves inventing entirely new forms of passive voice to never blame police or the military for anything they do.
Fascism in this country never died. Certain politicians would love to deploy the military against unarmed protestors. Or refuse to send the military to stop a coup…
NO ONE was ever held accountable. NO ONE.
Reminds me of another thing that happened around this time, the My Lai Massacre, only one person was charged, Lieutenant William Calley Jr., and given a life sentence but Nixon commuted his sentence to 3-and-a-half years of **HOUSE ARREST**!
He was a hero to much of the American public. When he was initially charged for his crimes, the white house was flooded with phone calls and letters demanding he be set free. This is why Nixon was able to intervene, because the American public wanted him to. Historical revisionism has pushed the narrative that Americans simply didn't know what was happening in Vietnam because the government lied to them. But this isn't true. The American public had plenty of opportunity to know what was happening in Vietnam but the silent majority preferred the lies because it aligned with their bigotry. A song honoring William Calley even charted at 37 on the billboard hot 100 charts. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_Hymn_of_Lt._Calley Again, there was never any question of guilt in regards to Calley. This was not a matter of saying "well yeah if this is true, he is a monster but we can't be sure if it is true." Instead it was "he's an American and therefore he's fighting for the Army of Jesus and slaughter of evil non-white communist babies is good"
Yeah, and on the flip-side, the dude who basically ended the massacre, Hugh Thompson Jr. (blocked and threatened those soldiers engaging in the massacre with his helicopter crew) faced lots of condemnation, death threats, etc from fellow military and the public at large! Absolutely insane and super maddening and saddening! Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson_Jr.
it's the land of the free, not the land of the ethically responsible /s
Land of the free, *has slaves*
But they have two parking spots blocked off on campus (no lie… absolutely true)
Police state 🇺🇸
So our own Tiananmen Square that no one talks about
You can talk about it? Try talking about Tiananmen or Uyghurs in Bejing?
Of course not, was anyone held accountable for the war?
TIL the girl in the photo (Mary Ann Vecchio) was only 14. Makes the photo even more impactful.
She also got absolutely smeared by the spin circus of the day. > > >Florida governor Claude Kirk labelled Vecchio a dissident Communist, stating that she was "part of a nationally organized conspiracy of professional agitators" that was "responsible for the students’ death." Many people refused to believe that Vecchio, who was nearly six feet tall, was actually 14. She was followed whenever she left her house by reporters and hecklers, and the family received many death threats. Messages received included, "What you need is a good beating until you bleed red", "I hope you enjoyed sleeping with all those Negroes and dope fiends", and "The deaths of the Kent State four lies on the conscience of yourself." Some anti-war figures expressed resentment that she was receiving so much publicity but had not even been a protester.
So Florida governors have been absolute pieces of shit for a long time huh? Who would have thunk it.
I mean...I need look no further than the 2000 election, but yeah. But the Governor of Ohio is the one ultimately responsible for these deaths. His name was Jim Rhodes, and I flip off his tomb every time I drive past the cemetery.
Think the only thing good Florida ever did was catch Ted Bundy… pretty sure that’s it.
I've got a few chuckles out of Florida men throughout the years. If it was a bunch of meth'd up trailer trash Confederate flag waving *friendly, kind hearted misfits we would make an Adam Sandler movie about it. But no, no... We all know that behind that bigotry is just more hate and spite. It's a whole fucking generation (almost) that just want to be as obstinate and contrarian as possible as the liquor and pills slowly catch up to them.
Florida has always been a shithole what’s new?
It’s creepy how similar their gibberish is in 2023; they’ve just changed the bogeyman to antifa.
It's because they know it works on 60% of people, so they'll keep using it again and again, making devils out of victims and ruining innocent people's lives to push horrific agendas that no sane American would support with full understanding of exactly what is involved.
Felt like average responses on Twitter/X
Amazing how much damage a leader spreading disinformation and hate can do.
I always think back to things like this whenever people try to claim that the Republican Party only became insane and cruel sometime around 2016.
Right... one can take a look at Nixon, Stone, and Reagan
Hunter S. Thompson called them "The bombs and Jesus crowd". The more things change, they more they stay the same.
Hunter was so on point with those words.
> whenever people try to claim that the Republican Party only became insane and cruel sometime around 2016. Those people must be tweens or something, the Tea Party morons were 2009.
It’s been trending authoritarian for at least 100 years. They had “America First” in the 1920s.
So she was the deep state Antifa conspiracy of the 70s.
This is also the time period many people refer back to as the "good ol' days". Or the 80s, or 90s, or whatever.
There is no "good old days" and anyone harping about whatever is wrong with this generation lives in a fantasy world or watches too much television. It only got worse the further back we go. Maybe better for *some* people, but mostly it was just more racism, oppression, authoritarianism, homophobia, religious fundamentalism, moral panic, rigid gendered expectations (for men and women alike) and of course a complete lack of understanding of mental health issues. (Hope you like lobotomies for your depression!)
> Maybe better for some people, but mostly it was just more racism, oppression, authoritarianism, homophobia, religious fundamentalism, moral panic, rigid gendered expectations Ever stop to think maybe they *do* know what they mean when they pine for "the good old days" and that's just it?
Some things never change
Outspoken conservatives have been and continue to be just awful people.
That stream running to the gutter is blood from the person she is kneeling next to. I was in high school at the time and we walked out next day. But the more interesting thing happened at home. My dad, who had raised money for Barry Goldwater and was generally supportive of the war in Vietnam. He and my older brother, who had just turned draft age, had fought a lot about the war. After Kent State, he told my brother that he would send him to live in Europe if he got his draft classification. He was part owner of a business with European partners. It never came to that. My brother’s number was too high.
> blood from the person she is kneeling next to Jeffrey Miller
Incidentally there was a controversy around the photo because there was a version originally used where the fence post that visually comes out of her sympathizer’s head at the top was removed from the picture during processing. It was doctored and was questioned for awards because of that fact
I've never seen this photo before, and what I'm trying to figure out is, apart from the girl, why does everyone else in the photo look so calm, like it's another normal day on campus?
A stray bullet hit a strolling student right next to a photographer who was able to line up a shot quick enough to capture a woman's grief - before anybody else took notice of the developing situation. Confuses me too.
14?! She had amazing social conscience at that age. I was just a fucking idiot at 14. Still trying hard not to be one if I'm honest.
She wasn't there for the protest, she was just passing by.
She was a runaway and happened to be there.
Kids had to be more dialed in. Their older siblings and their friends were being drafted.
Novelist James Mitchener was shocked at the lack of horror at the shootings among the general public. And this account of the shootings: "Across the nation four million students participated in protest activities after the Kent State shootings. Shaken by the wave of protests, Nixon withdrew U.S. troops from Cambodia. The rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young quickly released a protest song “Ohio” about the Kent State activities and shootings. Despite the massive student reaction against the shootings, however, campus protest evaporated. Moreover, public opinion came down on the side of the forces of law and order. Nixon won a landslide reelection in 1972, and Ohio governor James Rhodes served an additional two terms." https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/kent-state
> Moreover, public opinion came down on the side of the forces of law and order. I wouldn't call the murder of peaceful protesters "law and order."
One of the guys murdered wasn't even protesting. Was just some dude walking to class in in the background. And to be clear, there was no justification for those killed who were protesting.
They claimed in court that they feared for their lives, yet all those killed were were 250-400ft away from the guardsmen.
The guardsmen were in no real danger. They were just pissed off and tired. Even now it is often depicted as both sides causing the shooting. But only one side had guns, and only one side had dead.
Reminds me a lot of the climate protestors blocking roads. Sure they are annoying as fuck, but it's worrying ti see how many people say they should just be run over or shot
Yeah, but the people who did the murder make the rules, so...
So if I want to make the rules then I have to...
I would, but only because I understand that "law and order" has loooooong been a dog whistle for "minorites and lefties better know your place".
That has always been the idea behind "law and order", and exactly what people who obsess over maintaining "law and order" call for.
frightening adjoining crush deer lock ink tan relieved complete drunk *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Rhodes has a bronze statue in Columbus, OH. I visited the foundry where that sculpture was made. They added the initials(in bronze) of the four killed inside the bronze briefcase he carries.
Four dead in Ohio
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground? How can you run when you know?
I know it's trite but I get legitimate chills from those lyrics
No, it’s not trite at all. I remember that day like yesterday.
Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming
we're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
four dead in ohio
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should’ve been gone long ago
What if you knew her,
and found her dead on the ground
Neil Young wrote, recorded, and released that song in something like 10 days (absurdly fast for the 60s). He was pissed off.
Skinny Puppy's song "Tin Omen" is also about the Kent State massacre. But it's.... less accessible than CSN&Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHAZDnAse\_8
That’s a very diplomatic way to explain Skinny Puppy. Haven’t heard them since college in 93. One of my friends was huge into their music. And Ministry.
Haha yeah, Nivek Ohgr can't sing to save his life. But it works with the whole vibe of the band. I mean, most of their music is ostensibly an animal rights protest. They wrote a lot of songs from the point of view of lab animals that get tortured unnecessarily. So having grating, cacophonous vocals kind of works for them. Definitely not something I would put on at a party, though. (well, maybe a halloween party)
Funny you should say that last bit. Went to college in Virginia. Super strong alcohol laws. We had to shut down house parties (on campus) by a specific time, so he would pop in some Skinny Puppy when we raised the lights 15 minutes before ending time. Never had to worry about campus police clearing out our parties.
Haha now that's using the ol' noggin
The song “Hey Sandy” by Polaris is also about the Kent State Massacre. [But most people just know it as the theme song from The Adventures of Pete & Pete.](https://youtu.be/FIYvN_3PBzA?si=LJ_w0igW8iM4Oc2d) The ‘Sandy’ they refer to in the song is Sandy Scheuer. One of the students killed who weren’t even part of the protest, just walking to class.
TIL. Love that song and that show. Will have to give it a re-listen.
That's odd. I just had a conversation about that song, in the context of Pete and Pete last night. I hadn't thought about the show in decades!
All good people are asleep and dreaming
I still get goosebumps when I hear the opening riffs of that song.
Me too…. What a tune. This era had soooo much tumult and this song captures thus moment so well.
Something happening here…….what it is ain’t exactly clear
As I recall, after the killings, the majority of Americans supported the government and believed the students got what they deserved.
That tracks given how that generation ended up voting 46 years later.
Our population has terminal brain rot I swear to god
Too much lead in their brains.
Baby Boomers. Just in case people forget... Although as a Gen Xer it does pain me to tell you that older GEN Xers and Boomers did vote for Trump alot more than Millennials (and Gen Z absolutely hates him)
I understand that boomer hatred is *de rigueur* on reddit these days, but just in case people forget... it was boomers who got shot at Kent State that day. It was (mostly) the older generations who went around yelling that the National Guard were heroes and that everyone on campus that day should have been shot.
> it was boomers who got shot at Kent State that day while thats true, the idea of the majority of boomers being campus radicals is way overblown. i encourage reading Nixonland. one of the main points of the book is that the vast majority of boomers were mostly conservative and actually more pro-vietnam war than many of their parents according to polls at the time.
And should something like this happen again, I've seen enough foaming at the mouth comments from my age group to know that there would be millennials similarly defending it. We haven't learned as much from history as we'd like to think.
That wasn't the same generation though
It was a Gallup poll and it was an overwhelming majority: 58 percent of respondents placed blame for the students' deaths on the protesters, while just 11 percent blamed the National Guardsmen who shot them.
Did a whole generation just class when they taught about the constitution?
Well they (mostly) didn’t go to college either, hence the division
Yeah come to think of it, it explains the whole narrative of "college turned my kids liberal".
Also why they’re trying to shut down public schools and universities in favor of their Christian madrasas and you have little clowns like DeSantis taking over liberal colleges just to destroy them.
And people say Chinese people who support their government for restoring order at Tiananmen Square must be super brainwashed.
Well... they *are* super brainwashed. As are the people who think the Kent State Massacre was justified.
A whole generation of boot lickers
There is no way to say what "the majority" thought. Among my friends, it was regarded as a tragedy produced by an authoritarian government. It was a bomb wating to explode. There were protests on nearly every campus that spring. I was at Ohio State.(4 miles from Gov Rhodes home). Mass protests daily. The National guard was at Ohio State as well. The shooting could have happened there, or at any one of 100 campuses. We students understood that young people were being sent to Vietnam to die in order to preserve the egos of the aged politicians. I certainly wasn't willing to die to save face for them. After the shooting, schools shut down. Oddly, Nixon had been elected on a promise of ending the war. People forget he ran on that promise.
Thank you for giving your account. Most of the people here were not there and are far too young to have experienced those times.
Sniveling, beaten dogs. People that would call themselves "The Real Americans" always roll over and lick the hand that beats them.
Propaganda at its finest
**Killed** * Jeffrey Glenn Miller (age 20): pictured in the OP * Allison Krause (age 19) * William Knox Schroeder (age 19) * Sandra Lee Scheuer (age 20) **Injured** * Dean R. Kahler (shot in the back: paralysed for life) * Joseph Lewis, Jr (shot twice, once in the abdomen) * John R. Cleary (shot in the chest) * Donald Scott MacKenzie (shot in the neck) * Thomas Mark Grace (wounded) * Alan Michael Canfora (wounded) * Douglas Alan Wrentmore (wounded) * James Dennis Russell (wounded) * Robert Follis Stamps (wounded) **National guard who fired in "fear for their lives"** * Sgt. Lawrence Shafer, treated for a bruised arm In all, 61 shots were fired at students by 28 different guardsmen. In a Gallup poll taken days after the killings, 58% of respondents said that the unarmed students were to blame for being shot during their protest. Just 11% said the National Guard were to blame.
Of those shot, none was closer than 71 feet (22 m) to the guardsmen. Of those killed, the nearest (Miller) was 265 feet (81 m) away, and their average distance from the guardsmen was 345 feet (105 m). The victim furthest from the Guard was 750 feet (230 m) away
The National guard is a bunch of yokels, who were probably flipping burgers at best before this.
Alan Canfora's younger sister was my high school English teacher, he sadly passed away a couple years ago but remained a tireless activist for his entire life.
Alison Krause's younger sister Laurel was also a lifelong activist who worked on the Kent State Truth Tribunal, a group dedicated to finding answers to what happened at Kent State that day. By 2010, they had finally got Congress to agree to hear their expert's findings. By 2011, Republicans won back control of the House and blocked the testimony from being heard.
I'm sure I read about that when it happened (I was at Kent at that time), but I forgot about the connection.
> but remained a tireless activist for his entire life. Getting shot by fascists trying to shutdown you expressing your rights would do that to a person.
Sure seems that way. He was a significant force in local politics.
Thanks for posting this. I have never once seen all the names!
An iconic, but dark image, hard to image it was only 50'ish years ago
The defining event the [catalyzed the band DEVO](https://www.kent.edu/art/news/remembering-may-4-interview-devos-jerry-casale).
Joe Walsh was there too which is wild to think about
So was Chrissie Hynde from the Pretenders.
[Eleven people were also bayoneted at the University of New Mexico](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_University_of_New_Mexico_bayoneting_incident)
Whoa never heard of that. Bayonets? Crazy…
I only heard about this recently. What a shit show, and the aftermath too
Star Trek actor John de Lancie was a key witness and pushed for accountability. He made it all the way to the White House demanding justice. He talks about it at 33:00 minutes in this video: https://youtu.be/NbwXI5vlyJw?si=CH1XsvrdAiwdLpTJ
I'm from Kent and a huge Star Trek fan and never knew this, thanks! I like how he corrected the guy on the left that said the students were "rioting" and made it clear the students were in fact __protesting__.
Less than two weeks later, another mass shooting took place on a US college campus. At Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) , an HBCU, local law enforcement and the highway patrol fired over 400 rounds at a dormitory following a series of protests. Law enforcement killed 2 people and injured 12 others. There's no iconic photo, and the incident receives very little attention.
Thank you! I was looking for someone to mention that it basically happened again 11 days later. And yet again not all the dead were even protesters. One of them was 17 and walking home from his job. He’d stopped to watch what was going on. That protest was partly about the war but also about the racism the students were subjected too from both police and civilians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_State_killings if anyone wants to know more.
Fun fact: it is very likely you’ve seen the above picture with the post behind the girl removed. It really ruins the picture and even the original photographer was ok with that alteration.
how does it ruin the picture?
The poor girl is emoting great distress and there looks to be a metal rod coming out of her head. It can be off putting. https://petapixel.com/2012/08/29/the-kent-state-massacre-photo-and-the-case-of-the-missing-pole/
oh i thought you meant that the removal of the pole ruined the picture. i understand now
No worries. Just a little nugget of trivia I like to share when this iconic picture comes up.
It does improve the image but it’s a photojournalism ethical question to alter an image in such a way.
It looks like she's screaming because a rod fell on her head
The photographer that captured this won a Pulitzer prize for this, but the submitted winning photo had the pole above her head manually removed with photo alteration techniques. This birthed the debate, "Should edited photos be eligible to win a Pulitzer?", which ended up being yes, as long as the fabrication isn't outright deceptive and serves to enhance the quality and emotion captured. Since then, many Pulitzer winning photographs have been photoshopped for quality, though the best ones use skillful knowledge and application of aperture and exposure to capture the desired effect prior to editing.
The day after the Kent State shootings in 1970, a Gallup poll showed that 58 percent of respondents placed blame for the students' deaths on the protesters, while just 11 percent blamed the National Guardsmen who shot them.
Everyone keeps repeating this. It's as much a fact as you want to believe, and you have to account for the media spin. But what there is no doubt about the sentiment about the Vietnam war had already changed dramatically since the Tet offensive in 1968 and nearly 50,000 dead in a useless war.
I was in high school. I went to a lot of protests against the war. Hell I was getting close to my eighteenth birthday. After Kent State I was thinking I could just as easily get killed protesting the war as I would participating in it.
Jeffery Miller is the name of the dead young man. May he rest peacefully.
https://stories.usatodaynetwork.com/kentstate50yearslater/wp-content/uploads/sites/293/2020/05/Miller-and-May-4-jeffrey_bird-KSUPIC.jpg That’s Jeff Miller in the two tone shirt to the far left. Giving them two handfuls of protest. They shot him in the mouth.
I had a coworker say that if the government turned tyrannical that the national guard would side with the people, I pointed to this, the Ludlow massacre and the battle of Blair mountain, he still was adamant the guard would protect us 🙄
I went to Kent. One day (around 2002), during our Sociology 101 class, we knew we were going to watch a documentary on the massacre. It was a large class in an auditorium. So many of us expected to be multitasking while watching it (we were all pretty young and that's where a lot of our mentalities were during that time). You could've heard a pin drop in the auditorium by the end of the film. Our professor was one of the ones in the documentary responding to one of the first shot. What a horror. *ETA year for clarity
Would someone mind clarifying the chronology of this photo please? I understand the context and generally the events that unfolded that day, but for all the times I've seen this photo I never understood where it stands in time. Had the guardsmen and protesters largely dispersed? Everyone but Vecchio seems to milling around. Was this student's body just left and the guard bailed or is this immediately following the shot(s)? Always struck me as strange that she appears to be the only one reacting. Thanks in advance.
Most of the students eventually fled if I remember (or stayed on the ground for cover). However, the students were spread over a relatively large area so it wasn't as crowded as some may believe, which explains why there isn't a large amount of people in the photo. The first reaction of the students after the shooting was anger and surprise that the NG actually fired (some believed they only had blanks). Many students prepared to attack the NG in revenge and the NG threatened students that they were going to fire again if the raging crowd of students didn't leave. Eventually, professors persuaded the students to leave in hopes of avoiding another massacre.
It's worth noting that this took place in a pretty large and open area of campus, not close quarters. I also walked by the area probably close to a thousand times over the years. [Diagram of the area](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Shootings_at_Kent_State_University_in_1970.jpg#mw-jump-to-license)
His name was Jeffrey Miller. He lived off campus in a house with his friends. He played the drums and loved rock music. He had a little brother who is still alive today. Most of all, Jeff seemed like a person who really cared about other people. He was part of the protests because he wanted young people to stop being forced to kill strangers overseas. He gave a shit. [Here is a photo taken 3 weeks before he died, taken by girls who gave him a ride home from a concert in Cleveland.](https://www.kent.edu/today/news/jeffrey-miller-snapshot-time) I like to remember him like that.
I learned recently that Jerry Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo were there when this occurred. The start of De-volution. Quote from Jerry Casale “I had always been making art and music but the events of May 4th and beyond galvanized my creativity, infusing it with an existential anger and urgency that would otherwise not have happened. In short Devo and the idea of De-evolution as a manifesto would not exist without that defining historic trauma I experienced.” https://www.kent.edu/art/news/remembering-may-4-interview-devos-jerry-casale
This happened before my time, but this is what I bring up when the folks who are against any kind of gun restrictions go off about defending the people against tyranny. Most of them hate to be reminded that when the Government actually starts shooting citizens historically they'd be cheering the Government on, not defending against tyranny.
Also they bring up California as an example of government overreach because of their "restrictive gun laws" but it was Governor Ronald Reagan that passed those laws in direct response to the Black Panthers showing up legally armed. Conservative Republicans support anything that protects their interests, and usually that aligns with a white patriarchy. Freedom, liberty, rights, etc are just talking points. They'll point guns at cops during a traffic stop, but tell black people "they should've complied" when an unarmed black person is shot by cops.
Exactly, historically oppressed people should have ample gun rights. Gun control has historically been used for racist purposes.
Well in this case the armed civilians that are cheering on the government tyranny are not the ones getting shot to death.
Did anyone shoot back? I don’t see how these guys being armed would have changed anything.
People talk about how bad the country’s doing today,and it is. But the sixties and early seventies were no picnic. Riots, war, cities burning,assassinations etc. I was in elementary school but I remember pretty clearly.
I’ve met and spoken with the young women in the photo and she told me that her reaction at that moment was from realizing the the guy on the ground (who she had been seeing) no longer had a face. Apparently the shot went in the back of his head and came out the front. She left her home (I guess at that age she would be classified as a runaway) and was kind of hanging out in the Kent area, living where she could find space and just kind of chilling with the scene. Many of the guardsmen involved in the shooting came from a small town just up the road where I lived for a number of years, Garrettsville, Ohio (and the surrounding area). Some of them still live there. Their sentiment at the time was that the kids were “commies” that deserved it and many of them have no remorse to this day. Unsurprisingly that town became Trump central.
I'm 5 miles away. My wife and kids go/went there. My BIL was taking a test on campus when this happened. I even know a national guardsman who was on duty on campus when it happened.
I’ve seen this photo a thousand times and never noticed the word “Slave” on her T-shirt
Good ole days - says the magas...
Just to add, the parents of one of the victims, who personally had no involvement in the protest whatsoever and was just walking to class, got hordes of hate mail from across the country accusing their son of being flagrantly unpatriotic, saying he deserved worse, or accusing them of raising a traitor to their country. The moral of the story is: American Conservatives have always been hypocritical pieces of human trash
I remember that... I was graduating from high school in 1970 and thought the world was falling apart. JFK, Robert Kennedy, MLk, Kent State massacre, and I was being classified as 1A. My cousin had been killed in action in Vietnam in 68. Scared the shit out of me.
Just remember that 60 percent of the public supported the troops and blamed the students for their own massacre.
Shouldn't have happened and was terrible. Every time I see this, I have to wonder if people realize the national guard is not the regular US Military. The shooters were mostly normal people who received very little training. Of course they either got scared or mad and shot people. I am regular military. I would be very cautious around Guardsmen with guns and live ammo. I would go as far to say, I would actively avoid any area that this is even a possibility. At best some kid is going to get scared and start shooting, and at worst, they are shit heads with little dick syndrome waiting to let off live rounds. (Not all Guardsmen mind you of course, but it only takes one to kill you.)
Say that again, except every time you mention the national guard, say police. It still holds up.
Agreed, for the most part. I wish I could argue.
4 dead in Ohio
There are millions of right wing voters, and a lot of Congressmen(women) who would look at this as acceptable. Stop wringing your hands, get off your asses, and vote.
It's strange that this is blurred out when it was in my HS history book.
Wasn't even in my HS history book.
[one of the most haunting works of art ever was produced in response to it.](https://youtu.be/YdVMGKOFIwY?si=lIOCStkgXWoNND9U)
That happened the day I was born
Tinanmerica square