On this day May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of unarmed anti-war protestors at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four students and wounding nine others peacefully protesting against President Richard Nixon's bombing of Cambodia as part of the Vietnam War.
On April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon gave a nationalised, televised address and said “attacks are being launched this week to clean out major sanctuaries on the Cambodian-Vietnam border.” The announcement came 10 days after Nixon announced the withdrawal of 150,000 troops from Vietnam, and controversially, the president made his decision without notifying his Secretary of State William Rogers or Defense Secretary Melvin Laird. .
The decision sparked unrest at college campuses nationally, including Kent State, which had a small, militant chapter of Students for a Democratic Society.In Kent, there was a violent confrontation between protestors and local police on Friday, May 1. Bonfires were built downtown, bottles were thrown at police cars, and rocks were thrown through glass windows.
The mayor of Kent Leroy Satrom "heard rumors of a radical plot, declared a state of emergency, and telephoned the governor in Columbus for assistance." Bars were closed, and those in the street were tear-gassed by riot police. On May 2, the mayor made the decision to call in the National Guard to help keep the peace after hearing about threats to local businesses and rumors of radical protestors trying to destroy the city. That evening, there was a large demonstration happening on campus, and the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) building was set on fire. Another demonstration on campus occurred on May 3, where tear gas was fired. As part of the protest, they buried a copy of the Constitution, a symbol of their outrage that Congress had never formally declared war on Vietnam or Cambodia.
Though resentful of the heavy handedness used by law enforcement the night before, many Kent students assist with the downtowb cleanup. Some view Kent Mayor Leroy Satrom’s declaration of a state of emergency exaggerated. With no way to dispel circulating rumours about radicals intent on destroying the town, all students are forced to obey a day long curfew though plans are in motion for a second student protest that evening. With Nuxon calling them "Bums", the students show the world they deserve respect and cannot be silenced.
The
new presence of 1,000 National Guard soldiers on campus is an unwelcome
attempt at intimidation, as is Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes’s inflammatary speech in which he declared that the protesters were "worse
than the brown shirts and the communist element and also the night
riders and the vigilantes .. the worst type of people that we harbor in
America. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained,
militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America." The
authorities purposely lumped all student protestors together with
radicals.
On Monday, May 4, 1970 feeling like Kent State had become a war zone, some 2,000 antagonized students gather
to protest both the National Guard and Vietnam War, as well as Nixon’s Cambodia invasion. But
with the guard in control of the campus, the university announced the
rally was prohibited. The students gathered anyway, facing off across a
hilly green against a phalanx of guard soldiers.
Initially peaceful, the rally quickly turns violent and then deadly shortly after noon, when protestors, hit with tear gas, are set upon by 77 Guards marching at them with fixed bayonets. Twenty-eight of the Guards suddenly, with no warning, open fire into the crowd of innocent, unarmed students protesting against an immoral, unjust war. unleashing 60-70 rounds in 13 horrific seconds, leaving 4 students dead, and wounding 9 others . One individual Dean Kahler, was shot in the back and left permanently paralyzed from the waist down. in what came to be known as the Kent State Massacre.
Initially peaceful, the rally quickly turns violent and then deadly shortly after noon, when protestors, hit with tear gas, are set upon by 77 Guards marching at them with fixed bayonets. Twenty-eight of the Guards suddenly, with no warning, open fire into the crowd of innocent, unarmed students protesting against an immoral, unjust war. unleashing 60-70 rounds in 13 horrific seconds, leaving 4 students dead, and wounding 9 others . One individual Dean Kahler, was shot in the back and left permanently paralyzed from the waist down. in what came to be known as the Kent State Massacre.
The victims were Jeffrey Miller and Sandra Scheuer, both 20, and
Allison Krause and William Schroeder, both 19.
John Paul Filo's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo below of the incident is considered one of the historically most significant images of the era. It hauntingly shows Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of one of the victims, Jeffrey Miller.
.
The students shot on May 4, all white, became martyrs; most people have forgotten that less than two weeks later, Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green, two students in Missisippi were killed by police officers in the wake of a false rumor about the death of a civil rights leader. And while Kent State stands out as an exception , National Guardsmen killing white college students , over the years, state authorities have killed far more African-American protesters than whites.
John Paul Filo's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo below of the incident is considered one of the historically most significant images of the era. It hauntingly shows Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of one of the victims, Jeffrey Miller.
The students shot on May 4, all white, became martyrs; most people have forgotten that less than two weeks later, Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green, two students in Missisippi were killed by police officers in the wake of a false rumor about the death of a civil rights leader. And while Kent State stands out as an exception , National Guardsmen killing white college students , over the years, state authorities have killed far more African-American protesters than whites.
The Scranton Commission in October 1970 found that “The indiscriminate
firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed
were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable,"and that the shootings at
Kent State were unjustified, and excessive as there had been no order to fire and the
danger the Guardsmen faced did not call for lethal force. It was welcomed at the time but would not bring back the lives of the
four murdered students , nor were these facts enough to convict the Guardsmen. For the supporters of those murdered, this acquittal stifled justice.
The killings shocked the nation and the incident had a great impact on the political atmosphere both in the U.S. and internationally, becomng a benchmark in American history, radicalizing the opposition to the military engagement in the Vietnam conflict. Following the event, about 8 million students took part in a national student strike, closing down hundreds of universities and schools across the United States. and within five days a protest of 100,000 in Washington DC which saw significant rioting forcing Nixon to flee the city to Camp David. Nixon's speechwriter later said that "The mobs were smashing windows, slashing tires, dragging parked cars into intersections, even throwing bedsprings off overpasses into the traffic down below. This was the quote, student protest. That's not student protest, that’s civil war." Back in Kent the state prosecuted 24 students and one member of staff although charges were eventually dropped.
The killings shocked the nation and the incident had a great impact on the political atmosphere both in the U.S. and internationally, becomng a benchmark in American history, radicalizing the opposition to the military engagement in the Vietnam conflict. Following the event, about 8 million students took part in a national student strike, closing down hundreds of universities and schools across the United States. and within five days a protest of 100,000 in Washington DC which saw significant rioting forcing Nixon to flee the city to Camp David. Nixon's speechwriter later said that "The mobs were smashing windows, slashing tires, dragging parked cars into intersections, even throwing bedsprings off overpasses into the traffic down below. This was the quote, student protest. That's not student protest, that’s civil war." Back in Kent the state prosecuted 24 students and one member of staff although charges were eventually dropped.
