On this date in 1970 four students were killed on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. I was a high school junior in Memphis at the time, and was profoundly impacted by the Massacre, as were many members of my generation.
Please pause for a moment to remember these students.
At that time Memphis had mandatory Army ROTC for all high school sophomores and juniors. As an Army ROTC cadet, it was my responsibility to raise the American flag in front of the school each morning.
On May 5th I committed my first act of civil disobedience. Following proper procedure, I raised the flag to full mast, then lowered it to half mast, in honor of the slain.
The response of the Major who was in charge of the school’s ROTC unit could not have been more appropriate. He respected my view, but had the flag raised. I was not disciplined, and I remained in charge of the procedure for the rest of the year. The Major was a good man and also a good teacher. At a hard time he taught me a lot about having a civil debate and respecting others.
Those of us who were around at that time need to pass on what we learned to our younger peers, along with our prayers that they never face a similar situation. It was not always only pies which were thrown about campuses.
Thank you. Just as I saw your diary, I was watching a segment of a documentary on Kent State aired on Democracy Now!
You can watch the video or listen to the audio:
http://www.democracynow.org
It is absolutely chilling in its drama and terrible dread.
I think they changed the name of the school to Kent University as a result of the bad association people have with the words ‘Kent State’. I was 8 months old. How big of a story was it? A lot was going on at the time, but Neil Young’s song seems to have really made the incident imfamous.
This was a very big story at the time (I was 30), covered a lot like major events are today. That incident had a lot to do with pubic opinion reg. the war in Vietnam, lots of backlash, outrage,(this could not be happpening in the US), lots of rethinking about protest, etc. which were pretty common at the time on college campuses, but most notably in Berkeley. It was strange even, that there was an incident in Ohio of this kind, Ohio did not loom large in the protest movement, it did not seem to me, until this incident.
I think there was a lot of fear that protests would bring this reaction in the future and may have caused a tempering that still exists today.
The picture in my diary this weekend went global. Alot going on, but the first time anyone was shot during a student protest. Huge. It didn’t dampen protests, it spawned even more.
Booman, if you go to Four Dead in Ohio: 35th Anniversary of Kent State Shootings, you can watch the excerpts from the documentary, “Kent State: The Day the War Came Home” that includes interview with students and National Guardsmen who were there.
How big?
Within hours, hundreds of thousands of students were massed in demonstrations on campuses across the nation.
Within days, hundred of universities had been shut down, classes suspended and replaced by political meetings, teach-ins, all sorts of things.
It was a big story, but more than that it was a big event that resonated coast to coast.
How big?
Huge.
Bigger than anything else I can remember, at least on university campuses.
So many people, all over the world, would like to see that today.
But in the tens of millions.
You are so well-informed, and so committed. And yet you didn’t know.
You are only about 20 years younger than I am. But this is now ancient history, forgotten except as the topic for a pop song. So much is lost of our collective consciousness, so quickly.
We rant, we rave here. I have opened my front door to find FBI agents standing there – more than once – and felt my heart contract into a hard, cold knot with fear. And I wasn’t an activist, just a hippie chick with friends who were Vietnam vets, who were passionately trying to stop the insanity. And the FBI wanted to know what my roommate knew about them. . . .
(And by the way, it was “wrist rocket slingshots and fried marbles” – I kid you not – that the Republican Convention was so afraid of. And, iirc, their acquittal also had something to do with the FBI agent disguised as an AC technician that was found hiding in the ductwork above the room where they were consulting with their lawyers during the trial. . . )
I had been in high school a short time by May 1970. I don’t think I was aware at the time what had happened, but within a year or two I knew all about Kent State.
I think the news was pretty shocking around the world, to hear that four people had been shot in a US campus protest.
It’s amazing to look back 30 to 35 years later and realise what a bitter struggle was going on in the Western ‘democracies’ from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s. It wasn’t just about the Vietnam War (Western Europe & Britain were not engaged in the American war in Vietnam) and conscription. It was also about a repressive society versus a liberal society in relation to issues like sexual freedom, the role of women, the position of indigenous peoples, use of recreational drugs, body hair, artistic freedom, and censorship.
Overlaid on this was the cold war between the Eastern and Western ‘blocs’: the right wing in the west saw the expression of liberal social values as undermining western society and effectively supporting the enemy in the Cold War.
Many of us who were in the various movements (anti-war, anti-conscription, pro-environment, womens liberation, drug law reform, anti-capitalism) were politically committed lefties rather than just liberal on social questions, or worse still, ‘hippies’.
Being on the political left meant that in a sense you probably were an enemy of the state, because many of us argued the position of the Soviets and/or China versus the US. I remember marching down the main streets of Melbourne in the early 1970s with a crowd of about 100,000 people in one of what was called the Vietnam Moratorium protests. The more radical of us chanted “one, two, three, four, the NLF has won the war – five, six, seven, eight, the US must capitulate!” and “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh: dare to struggle, dare to win!” [NLF = National Liberation Front of South Vietnam.]
The repressive state apparatus in all the western countries kept a close eye on organised dissent. Telephone taps, opened mail, undercover agents joining ‘the movement’ and attending meetings were all quite usual.
The passage of 15 to 20 years and the collapse of the Soviet bloc made all that look a bit simplistic. It was no longer “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” (or as the anti-war side put it: “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”). The left had to acknowledge the reality of the repression and the self-serving bureacratic regime (the ‘nomenklatura’) of the Soviet empire. The struggle became more about civilising and regulating capitalism.
The really worrying thing is that since 11 September 2001 we (at least in the US and Australia – perhaps less so in Britain) have been pushed rapidly down the path of “if you’re not with us, you’re against us”. The rulers of our countries see that it is in their political interest to create fear and division. As domestic political opponents, it is convenient for our reactionary rulers to paint us as supporters of the enemy. Having an ‘enemy within’ may serve to harden up support from the reactionary and the purely naive for repressive measures.
In this climate, we have already seen erosion of many civil liberties and the introduction of unprecedented repressive laws. Liberal bloggers have documented what has happened to individual Arab-Americans and Muslims, the arrest of people with dissenting bumper stickers etc.
We are again involved in a bitter struggle. Beware, because this time the mass media are even more compliant.
Thanks for the link.
I am giving my son in college an extra hug today, along with a history lesson.
God forbid that we ever get as divided as we were in 1970 again.
I was 16 and was on my way to Ann Arbor for a protest against the war, when word came that 4 students were killed in Ohio by the National Guard. It brought the full realization that we and the entire movement to end the war, were having a profound impact on our government, that was being responded to in such a violent fashion. I remember even my grandparents were devastated that their government, the United States Government could do such a thing to protestors exercising their democratic right to assemble and protest. That was the first time I was afraid of my government, and not until GW “the talking head” Bush started dismantling everything I have believed in for the last 30 yrs, I am again afraid of my government.
I remember all too well & it was a defining moment of my life.
I was a High School student. Several of us were sitting in the school library talking when another friend walked-up crying her eyes out. When she told us there was stunned silence then rage, crying, and a feeling of helplessness/hopelessness. For the next several days some of us walked around with black armbands – as if that did any good.
It was from Kent State, and the aftermath, I concluded the US goverment doesn’t give a fuck-damn about the citizens of the US. They will bleat about the “Rights of a Citizen” but if you get in the way too much they will simply gun you down.
It is our right to engage in civil disobedience. And it wasn’t the government, it was a politician with shit for brains:
… Ohio Governor James Rhodes, who was running for US Senate, …. on a “law and order” platform, attempted to use this opportunity to garner votes in the primary election, which was only two days away. [description of events].
We are the government. If I’ve learned nothing else in 40 years, I’ve learned that.
It was a governor, it was a government that caused this tragedy. And Nixon deemed them well deserving of what they received, not unlike GW the talking head Bush, who feels anyone who is reliant on a job just to make ends meet is not worthy of consideration as a member of the True America. I remember Rhodes at the press conference and how he tried to put all the blame on the protestors and even stated that the President had called him and congratulated him on keeping order at the university. Of course Nixon began back tracking immediately.
See EtJ’s comment below about “elites”. “Not worthy of consideration” translates into “no political power base”. Then as now, they found out too late that people had enough time to mark a ballot. The most powerful “X” in the world. And the best way to say “You’re FIRED!”.
RBA,
Well stated: “We are the government.” Sadly in our divided state, with the majority bickering about details, and not the key issue, the elite are trying to overthrow our government. Add an overthrown media, Patriots we have a problem. So good to see an increase in protests, so good to see the creativity of the protestors, especially of our youth. I hope we learn from our past, and hold the soulless bastards accountable this time.
The memorial site is here. I remember that following the Kent State killings, leaders of the anti-war movement (among others) began to rethink how protests were conducted. Confrontation was replaced with communication between protestors and law enforcement. Both sides realized they were doing their jobs, and neither wanted violence.
The protest was one of many in response to Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. Not widely known at the time was that we had been fighting in Cambodia way before the announcement. In 1970, as now, there was no neutral ground.
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Timeline 1860 – 1979
I was searching a recent news clip on Kent State and GOP right-wing group,
instead came across this —
1860 Nov. – Lincoln elected president. Dec. So Carolina secedes.
~
1978 Supreme court hands down Bakke decision US vs. Wheeler.
FWIW
Oui – Liberté – Egalité – Fraternité
Mixed emotions here.
The frustration of knowing four kids gunned down, in an event that never should have happened, while 60,000 young men were killed in another event that never should have happened.
Let me put it like this. Three civil rights workers were killed 40 years ago trying to get people registered to vote. They shouldn’t have had to do that. They were pawns. The government knew damn well that black people weren’t registered to vote, couldn’t register, and sat by until riots and killings. How many people have to die until the government addresses a grievance?
Same with the Kent State protestors, and Jackson State, and all of them. Same with the ones that will die when the Rush’s and the Coulter’s get enough people riled up against so-called liberals (basically a kid will get hurt somewhere who will join the fray on a sunny afternoon because he or she will have nothing else to do). But they won;t be called terrorists, because only leftists can be a threat.
It makes me sick that the Republican Party are all down with possibly permanently alienating half of the country, they are part of this, and it’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt. Irresponsible Foxnews, calling for liberal blood, and an administration who grips the nation in fear and terror as we stumble blind and deaf toward a neo-con theocratic Republic.
Kent State is nothing compared to the liberal bloodbaths in Argentina, Chile, and the same players then are playing the same tune here in the US today.
So how do I feel? Stay safe, be smart, play the game as if your life depended on it. Don’t walk blindly into danger.
You were in high school in Memphis, I was in college at UT. It was a week I will never forget. Trying to post my memories led me to a dissertation written in 1988 that described it exactly as I remembered it, with the exception of what was happening on the main mall during those days. It was all too long to post as a comment, so I made it into a diary.
Thanks for reminding us.
These things must not be forgotten, lest history WILL repeat itself, again.
Would be to fill the Washington Mall, swarm over the buildings, spill out into the city, down the expressway, gridlock for 500 miles, shut the place down from sheer volume of people.
That will not happen, though. No one wants to speculate on how many they would murder today.