what happened at kent state that was so shocking?

'', I stayed until the wounded were removed. Kent State massacre: 50 years since the shooting that changed America - CNN The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. View history Tools The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre and the Kent State massacre [3] [4] [5]) resulted in the killing of four and wounding of nine unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard, on the Kent State University campus. But then the tear gas ran out. I had students screaming at me, What kind of pig are you? I knew they were firing real bullets because I saw smoke. The guard marched back up the hill. Nixons Cambodia speech led to antiwar protests at hundreds of colleges across the country. What was Neil Young's lament over the Kent State shootings? Next thing I knew, I was in the hospital. I was placed on a gurney and wheeled into an ambulance. During the student demonstration, I ended up in a parking lot. The Kent State Massacre In 24 Heartbreaking Photos - All That's Interesting Gibbs went to Jackson State, a historically black college, and majored in political science. Eight guardsmen would be indicted by an Ohio grand jury. . May 3 By Sunday, more than 1,000 National Guardsmen have arrived on campus. The explosion occurred in the fifth arrondissement in the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank of the River Seine. We are currently contacting students and faculty there for an update. I didn't know they had loaded weapons. I had no fear anything would happen. I have spoken to some of the injured. POW!. . Here are some accounts of eye witnesses. twitter, Kent State Kent Campus - The photo became the lasting symbol of the tragedy. One of the dead was about 90 yards away from the guardsmen. Then the firing started. Anti-Vietnam campaigns became bigger than ever and the way the United States responded to protests changed forever. He was killed before he could take his seat, but that seat would have been two hundred miles away in the state capitol, in Jackson, a city named for Andrew Jackson, who ran a slave plantation, fought in the War of 1812, was famous for killing Indians, shot a man to death and got away with it, and was elected President of the United States. I was about 100 feet away from the guard. All of the slain students were in the parking lot. We had armored vehicles and a helicopter the idea was a show of force. In some places, including Kent, students rioted, smashing shop windows, pelting cars, setting fires, and throwing firebombs. The political commentator I.F.Stone cranked out a short bookreally, a long essaytitled The Killings at Kent State: How Murder Went Unpunished. So many books were published about the shooting, so fast, that when NBCs Today show featured their authors the result was a screaming match. No one moved. The Kent State killings, by contrast, were shocking because they happened in the very heart of middle America. Even the most trivial aspects of the event connected to larger developments. As the mourners marched through the city, scattered groups of construction workers, up on girders, threw beer cans at them. February 27, 2014 38 mins On May 4, 1970, four days of anti-war protests at Kent State University in Ohio culminated in the unthinkable when Ohio guardsmen opened fire on protesters, killing four students. Four Kent State University students were killed and nine were injured on May 4, 1970, when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd gathered to protest the Vietnam War. Students rushed everywhere. The next morning, May 4, we received intelligence updates. Nixon was well on his way to becoming the hero of the white working class, men and women, but especially men, who left the Democratic Party for the G.O.P. Ten others were wounded. We dont want your fascist state! They were met by construction workers, many of whom had come down from the Twin Towers and not a few of whom had buried their soldier sons, or their neighbors sons, in flag-draped coffins. I ran and hid behind a pile of gravel. She was 14 and a runaway at the time of the killings. The day before, a hundred and fifty thousand New York construction workers, teamsters, and longshoremen marched through the streets of the city. Kent State: A Requiem. William K. Schroeder, 19, had been a spectator. I rubbed tear gas from my eyes. The Kent State Shootings, 35 Years Later : NPR If it was a fantasy, it was also Martin Luther King, Jr.,s fantasy. The killings on May 4,. Sandra Scheuer, a 20-year-old honors student, was crossing the green to her next class. The rightwing backlash following Kent State was shocking: . That is where I got the nickname Capain Gas. Stay down! Then I saw this young girl run up Mary Ann Vecchio. Students on college campuses had been protesting the war since 1965, beginning with teach-ins at the University of Michigan. CAMBODIA? At the hospital, my pain worsened. When nearly 1,000 students staged a sit-in that night, it was against his order banning all protests. There was no threat to the guard at that point. Michener: Because it has been the history throughout our country. This one, Demetrius, graduated from Jackson State in 1995, and has had a hard time explaining what happened to the father he never knew. They were protesters demonstrating against the Vietnam War and against Americas intention to move into Cambodia. Protests, populism, and progressivism all clashed in a battle royal. It is not so much the unrest of the past half-dozen years that is exceptional as it is the quiet of the 20 years which preceded them, the report asserted, noting that Americans who attended college from the nineteen-forties to the early nineteen-sixties had formed a silent generation. As far as the commission was concerned, the modern era of campus unrest began on February 1, 1960, when four students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College sat down at a Whites Only lunch counter in Greensboro. While the short-term effects of May 4 were clear, there were long-term effects for Ohio universities and for the students who populated them. 230 Annie & John Glenn Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, Visit our sister sites:A Well-Informed People. By the time I got to Prentice Hall, girls moistened paper towels for us. Professor [Glenn] Frank was in tears. (Its worth noting that both Trump and Biden avoided the draft: Trump said he had bone spurs; Biden got five student deferments and later cited asthma.). The National Guard launched tear gas canisters into the crowd. While police officers looked on, more or less approvingly, the workers attacked the protesters, clubbing them with tools, kicking them as they lay on the ground. Two nights earlier, they burned the ROTC building to the ground. It prompted a nationwide student strike that forced hundreds of colleges and universities to. Jackson States president, an alumnus, met with students the next morning; they told him that they were angry about Cambodia, the draft, and Kent State, and also about the curfew for students in the womens dormitory and the lack of a pedestrian bridge over Lynch Street. The Readers Digest had hired him to write Kent State: What Happened and Why, providing him with reams of research from on-the-spot reporters. If one guy shoots, another trooper is coming behind him [to shoot]. All charges were eventually dropped. The students were calling for peace. Demonstrators at the University of New Mexico who were protesting the Kent State shootings in the immediate aftermath run for safety as National Guardsmen move in. I already had the best picture I ever shot. Kent State Shooting - Causes, Facts & Aftermath | HISTORY A small crowd showed up. I am the luckiest person on earth. In the days between the shootings at Kent State and Jackson State, police in Augusta, Georgia, killed six unarmed black men, shot in the back, during riots triggered by the death of a. Yet he also told university president Robert White not to close the university. Some students picked up the canisters and threw them back. The police used tear gas to get the students back to campus, but the conflict was still fresh when an administration-approved rally began the next day, a Saturday. What Really Happened at Kent State. If the bullet had been a couple of inches one way or the other, I wouldn't be here. In 1967, after Gibbs and Adams started dating, hed take her out to the movies in a car that he borrowed from his uncle, a car with no key; he had to jam a screwdriver into the ignition to start it up. The Sixties had its share of these allegorical moments. Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Kent State: What Happened and Why AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that empowers people to choose how they live as they age. There was death, but not murder, Michener insisted. The firehoses at Birmingham, Mario Savio on the steps at Sproul Hall, the 1968 police riot in Chicagoall captured the periods fraught social dynamics. About half past noon, Monday, May 4th, 1970, on the grassy campus Commons of Kent State University, 21-year-old Jeffrey Glenn Miller from Long Island, New York was protesting the American incursion into Cambodia. But if one guy shoots, they're all gonna shoot. I really dont want to go to the air force but I want you and my man to be staying with me, he wrote to Dale, after she and the baby had moved back home to Ripley to save money. I became a county commissioner. By the end of the hour, the guests had nearly come to blows. A week short of the first anniversary of the shootings at Kent State, Michener, Eszterhas, Roberts, and I.F.Stone appeared on that panel on the Today show. The Guardsmen at Kent State started firing not long after noon, while students were crossing campus; there seems to be some chance that they mistook the students spilling out of buildings for an act of aggression, when, actually, they were leaving classes. Few imagined that the Guards rifles carried live rounds. A T 9:55 P.M. on a Friday the last truckload of National Guards men rolled in. The National Guard got into a V formation. One came over and asked if I was hurt. We (faculty marshals) were peacekeepers. The guard huddled, then retraced their steps. POSTED: Wednesday, June 21, 2023 01:27 PM, Updated: Wednesday, June 21, 2023 02:56 PM. As the National Guard had done at Kent State, the authorities at Jackson State insisted that the police and patrolmen had identified a sniper. How Nixon's Presidency Became Increasingly Erratic After Kent State These blanks are going to put out someone's eyes. This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio. I was in charge of 60 to 80 troops. 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio screams over the body of 20-year-old Kent State student Jeffrey Miller, shot dead by the National Guard. The most insane suggestion I have heard about here in recent days was to the effect that we should somehow go prosecute the hardhats to win favor with the kiddies. He advised the opposite tack: abandon the kiddies, and court the hardhats. It was her youth. 599 pp. We took position between two buildings. As a sociologist, I try to bring a scientific demeanor. snapchat, Kent State Kent Campus - There was tear gas, a lot of obscenities and a few rocks thrown. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our, Digital Did we ever leave it? I remember jumping on the ground and praying that I wouldn't get shot. There was so much blood, I couldn't believe it. After Dale got pregnant, they were married, at his sisters house. Kent State students were shattering shop windows and burying the Constitution and telling National Guardsmen to go fuck themselves? It was so big that I don't think anything could have been thrown and hit the National Guard. Eventually, I saw eight to 10 soldiers turn and fire. Why did they shoot me? I've thought a lot about what happened. The Guardsmen's View Of the Tragedy At Kent State In 1961, students at Mississippis Tougaloo Collegeanother historically black schoolhad held a sit-in in an attempt to desegregate the Municipal Library, in nearby Jackson. They fired as many as sixty-seven shots in thirteen seconds. About 75 of them on the hillside did not fire. 49 Years After the Kent State Shootings, New Photos Are Revealed - TIME I needed time to change film, but I didn't have time. The troops walked by me to the practice football field. instagram, Kent State Kent Campus - My fellow Americans, we live in an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home, he said. I fled up the hillside. These, quite candidly, are our people now, Buchanan told Nixon. After 13 seconds, they stopped firing. Mary Ann screamed. The university currently has about nine students, plus faculty and staff located at the Academy. It was the most afraid I've ever been. By May 4, the day of the Kent State Massacre, there were 2,000 people on the campus handing out leaflets, making speeches, and standing up to demand peace. My concern was that I knew that if I turned my company loose, there was going to be a lot of hurt and blood. No one has been punished, and no one is going to be. Student protests, already widespread, swelled in number and intensity on the nation's college campuses. According to the Report of the Presidents Commission on Campus Unrest, known as the Scranton Report after its chair, William Scranton, some came to protest the presence of the Guard. Leave now.". Joe Kelly, six feet four and from Staten Island, was working on building the elevators at the World Trade Center. They were Nixons, and they were Reagans, and they are Trumps. But that is precisely why the shootings reverberated so powerfully. Today he lives in Buffalo, New York. Remembering the May 4, 1970, shootings at Kent State University That made students chant even more. Some men claimed theyd heard an order; others thought they heard one; and still others explained that they fired because others did. Very, 10 Key Moments That Shaped Environmental History, Spanish Flu: How America Fought a Pandemic a Century Ago, Exclusive Walgreens Cash rewards for members, AARP Travel Center Powered by Expedia: Vacation Packages, $50 gift card of your choice when booking any flight package, AARP Identity Theft Protection powered by Norton, Up to 53% off comprehensive protection plans, AARP Online Fitness powered by LIFT session, Customized workouts designed around your goals and schedule, SAVE MONEY WITH THESE LIMITED-TIME OFFERS. Kent State after Fifty Years | Origins The students wanted the killings to stop. Two days later, only about a dozen Jackson State students went to a rally in downtown Jackson. I didn't realize I was so close to one National Guard company maybe 50 yards. Jesus Christ, I dont want to be a part of this! Finally, the students sat down. Arthur J. Morris Law Library/University of Virginia School of Law. I wanted to get a picture of them firing, but a guardsman was pointing his rifle at me. A lot of damage was done to my foot. A detailed examination by the History Channel. 25% off sitewide and 30% off select items. Lynch Street had been closed to traffic, but with a tall chain-link fence, which made the campus feel like a prison. The National Guard move in on the students, now with gas masks covering their faces. A fellow student, Micheal Goldstien stood up and said, "Who thought the revolution would start at Kent State." Kent State was only seventy miles from Mansfield. On Saturday, May 2nd, the R.O.T.C. If it takes a bloodbath, he said, lets get it over with.. All of those students are safe and will return to the United States a few . Brig. The National Guard regrouped toward Taylor Hall and left my vision. Four dead in Ohio, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young would sing, in a ballad that became an anthem. No one was ever convicted of the shootings. Allison Krause, a freshman honor student from outside Pittsburgh, was about to transfer. "Ohio," a protest song written by Neil Young in response to the Kent State shooting and released by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in May 1970. He had long urged a hard line on student protesters: antiwar protesters, civil-rights activists, all of them. In either case, not even U.S. If I try to tell people about the shootings at Jackson State, they dont know about it, he has said. With my family's military background, I looked at soldiers as professionals. Sunday Worship June 25, 2023 | Stream CCLI #21810036 - Facebook This was a Monday. Shed refused to join groups like Students for a Democratic Society, which, by 1969, had become increasingly violent. The Jackson State campus was divided by a four-lane road called Lynch Street, named for Mississippis first black congressman, John Roy Lynch, who was elected during Reconstruction, in 1872, though a lot of people thought that the street honored another Lynch, the slaveholding judge whose name became a verb. And it will require a history that can account for Greensboro, and Berkeley, and Kent State, and the Hardhats, and Jackson State, all at once. The ONG units arrived in Kent late Saturday night as fire gutted the campus ROTC building. Really, it is not complicated. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. We had used them in Akron during the 1968 racial riots. Stephen Johnson Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Kent State massacre, in which the National Guard killed four students during a protest against the Vietnam War. Moments later, I saw the guardsmen kneeling and pointing [guns] toward the parking lot. Sandy Scheuer had been training to become a speech therapist. Emerson College students taking a course on the Kent State massacre recently visited the Ohio school's campus thanks to the generosity of Lee Schwebel '90. Before introducing them, the host, Hugh Downs, gave a grave, concise, newsmans account of the sequence of events: On Thursday, April 30th, 1970, President Richard Nixon announced that American forces were moving into Cambodia. And they marched on Washington. I immediately reloaded my camera. Ohio National Guardsmen surround the remains of Kent State's ROTC building on May 3, 1970. I have been in a wheelchair since, paralyzed below the waist. I heard the bullet go by my head, whizzing like a bee. The Ohio National Guard give up on tear gas and open fire. I spent 13 days in the hospital. As the violence intensifies, Backderfs drawings grow darker and more cinematic: the intimate, moody panels of smart, young, good people, muddling through the inanity and ferocity of American politics yield to black-backed panels of institutional buildings, with the people around them saying completely crazy things, then to explosive splash pages of soldiers, their guns locked and loaded, and, finally, to a two-page spread of those fateful thirteen seconds: BOOM! BANG! BANG! In 2012, Kent State had what was a Halley's Comet season. As they became more disorderly, they were again ordered to leave the Commons. It didn't make sense that they fired. A perspective on the tragedy from National Guardsmen's point of view. Kent State shooting, the shooting of unarmed college students at Kent State University, in northeastern Ohio, by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970, one of the seminal events of the anti- Vietnam War movement in the United States. Shot some more in Jackson, the Steve Miller Band sang, in 1970, in the Jackson-Kent Blues. In the days between the shootings at Kent State and Jackson State, police in Augusta, Georgia, killed six unarmed black men, shot in the back, during riots triggered by the death of a teen-ager who had been tortured while in police custody. I thought it was winding down. A question, lately, is: Which world do Americans remember? Mr. Michener and his team seem to have tracked down every possible lead, talked to every con ceivable informant. When National Guardsmen fired indiscriminately into a crowd of unarmed civilians, killing four students, the bullets wounded the nation.. facebook, Kent State Kent Campus - She came [to Kent State from out of town] and convinced the surgeon to try to save the foot. "It appeared to go on, as a solid volley, for perhaps a full minute or a little longer." The impact of the shootings was dramatic. Hughobviously, this will be a free-swinging affair, Downss producer noted, in the show overview. And suddenly, it happened. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. She wanted to save this person. We know that if we are eyeball to eyeball, somebody's going to get hurt. Students chanted, 1-2-3-4, we don't want your f-----g war.''. I thought it was a new scare tactic. The National Guard presses forward toward the protesters. The U.S . Kent State, by James A. Michener Based on exhaustive local interviews and minutest scrutiny of all available evidence, Kent State was intended to be--and in a by Stanley M. Elkins Lessons & Judgments Kent State: What Happened and Why. It wasnt a bunch of whitewashers. On Sunday, May 3rd, students and Guardsmen traded insults, rocks, and tear gas. AARP Membership $12 for your first year when you sign up for Automatic Renewal. Bullets whizzed by me. A photo by student journalist John Filo, of a young woman kneeling over the body of a student, became an indelible image of the era. I can tell you that, based on what I have read, every guy who fired thought his life was in danger. Back in the dorm, I remember girls screaming. There was marching and counter-marching. Kifner watched as the students next to him fell to the ground, one shot in the head, another hit in the back, and saw them bleed out onto the concrete of their school parking lot. She reacted differently that day. I shot the picture, then two more. Nixon rejected the report. The scene of Kent State University becomes a battlefield as National Guardsmen unleash tear gas and bullets on the students. Slowly, the screaming started again. A map showing the location of the events of the Kent State shooting on May 4, 1970. It would be an exercise in futility, he said during his commencement address at Kent State, in December, 1970. The Daily News called it a PARADE FOR NIXON. They were trying to make America great again. I am begging you right now. Kent State Shooting: US History for Kids - American Historama By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. You must get out of here.'. The university currently has about 20 students, plus faculty and staff located at the Academy. Today is the 50th anniversary of the Kent State shooting. Here's what A national touring play by J. Gregory Payne in 1976 to convey all aspects of the fateful day. We woke Sunday, May 3, and restocked our tear gas for the grenade launchers. Many again, about 1,000 assembled on campus, flaunting the ban and prompting the National Guard to respond with tear gas. Photograph: Douglas Moore/AP I watched as the National Guard went up the hill, then retraced their steps. John Filo hugs Mary Ann Vecchio, the young woman featured in his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph. But it was a windy day, and the gas blew, as gas does, along the winds whimsy. I competed in tennis, basketball, track and field and ran' marathons. Most demonstrations were peaceful, but others were violent, even terrifying. WHAT NEXT? Pace was next. Local leaders insisted that outside agitators and radical elements, long presumed active in the campus area, were to blame. I checked everybody's weapons in my company to ensure they had not been fired. At each step along the way, young people aggressively testing boundaries, challenging restrictions, and engaging in political protest ran into ham-handed authorities who overreacted in an effort to impose rules for their own sake. President Richard Nixon in his April 30, 1970 television address announcing the United States invasion of Cambodia. Kent State, by James A. Michener - Commentary Magazine My father had been in the National Guard. Intriguing National Geographic documentary film in 2008 featuring archival footage and interviews of two wounded students. So well film the show without an audience, and edit in the gasps of wonder later., Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College, 13 Seconds: A Look Back at the Kent State Shootings, The Killings at Kent State: How Murder Went Unpunished, The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution. Kent State Shooting Facts - 37: No official apology was ever issued for the Kent State Shooting. Nixon, who had campaigned on a promise to restore law and order, warned Americans to brace for protest. I heard nothing like [a command to fire]. A 21-year-old journalism student then, Filo snapped the iconic photograph of a slain youth at Kent State and won a Pulitzer Prize. Kent State, May 4, 1970: Was It about Civil Rights or Murdering Student Four Kent State University students were killed and nine were injured on May 4, 1970, when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd gathered to protest the Vietnam War. On Friday, May 1st, students at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, expressed their displeasure at the Presidents announcement. We know all the circumstances. Today he lives in Hudson, Ohio. Stay down! I walked down the sidewalk and, all of a sudden, the guard reappeared. The National Guardsmen hurled tear gas into the crowd and chased the people who fled. Some shot into the air, some plainly in the direction of the crowd below. Lindsay had called for the flag at City Hall to be lowered to half-mast. A 33-year-old officer in the National Guard then, Snyder was captain of his unit, but it was not involved in the shootings. Through the grapevine, I knew there was a rally and that the National Guard was there. A crowd of 9,000 students on strike, protesting the massacre at UCLA, boo their chancellor as he comes out to plead for them to calm down. Only a subsequent text, written in 1973, appropriately titled "The Truth About Kent State: A challenge to the American Conscience" by Peter Davies wherein he called for a reopening of all official information on what one Ohio National Guardsman called "the four murders at Kent State." A tragedy that did not need to happen. Students help paramedics get their bleeding friend into an ambulance. Kent State Shooting Facts - 38: The U.S. military involvement at the End of the Vietnam War came on 15 August 1973 with the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Vietnam Kent State Shooting - President Richard Nixon Video The article on the Kent State Shooting provides detailed facts and a summary of one of . Magazines, Digital Urban Outfitters Kent State Shooting Sweatshirt Controversy: History - TIME It is contained as a chapter in the authors Project Censored book published in 2013. . A National Guardsman throws a can of tear gas into the crowd. Governor Rhodes, who had been in Cleveland, stopped at Kent on his return to the state capital, Columbus. Javascript must be enabled to use this site. They launched tear gas canisters with grenade launchers. . No one had been injured in the ROTC fire at Kent State. Alum's Generosity Sends Emersonians to Kent State Massacre No one is going to be: No oneleast of all Jacksons blacksexpected a different outcome. That was a bad situation. If you have a disability and experience difficulty accessing this site, please contact us for assistance Its not clear that Phillip Gibbs went to any of those rallies, but, in high school, in Ripley, hed joined sit-ins aiming to integrate the town swimming pool, an ice-cream shop, and the Dixie Theatre. Our job is to provide brutal force. Ohio National Guardsmen aim their weapons at protestors on the Kent State University campus. In 1967, near Jackson State, police killed a twenty-two-year-old civil-rights activistshot him in the back and in the back of the headafter the Mississippi National Guard had been called in to quell student demonstrations over concerns that ranged from police brutality to the Vietnam War.

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