(USA Today) Today marks 40 years since the dreadful shootings at Kent State University in Ohio. In the article that I'm taking this story from in the USA Today, there's a picture of a college student named Mary Ann Vecchio, who's crying and kneeling over the dead student's body. She had found Jeffrey Miller dead on the ground, which was a moment that was captured by a student photographer. At Kent State, where the ROTC building was burned down two days earlier, National Guardsmen fired into a crowd and killed four unarmed students, the closest of whom was just a football field away. Vecchio found Miller dead on the ground. Forty years ago America was in the midst of turmoil fighting an ongoing war in Vietnam and nationwide students were protesting at college campuses against the war. There was a strong anti-war sentiment amongst many college students at that time. Never was there such a period in American history where there was such a high rate of student activism as was during that time. This was the age of the hippie movement where the hippies were experimenting with drugs and alcohol and protesting against the "Establishment" in America. There were slogans that said, "Make love, not war." There were all kinds of social movements among the college students in the 60's such as the Free Speech Movement, the Feminist Movement, the sexual revolution, the peace movement, etc. The American youth were trying to determine what their purpose was for their existence. Rarely has an American home front been so traumatized as the Kent State shootings. Jay Winter calls the Kent State shootings, "a wound in the nation's history."
A few days prior to the dreadful shootings on May 4, President Richard Nixon, who had campaigned on ending the war in Vietnam, announced on April 30 that he was widening the war by invading Cambodia. Campuses erupted as a result of his announcement. At Kent, some students rioted outside the bars downtown the following night, on Friday. On Saturday evening, protesters set fire to the ROTC building, and slashed firefighters' hoses. Even before that happened, Republican Gov. James Rhodes, called out the Ohio National Guard. He referred to the protesters as "the worst type of people that we harbor in America," and said: "We are going to eradicate the problem. We are not going to treat the symptoms." On that Monday, several students on the campus commons rallied against the war and the Guard's presence. The soldiers used tear gas to move the students off the commons. They followed the students over a small hill, and formed ranks in a practice football field. A standoff ensued. Students kept their distance, chanting slogans, "Pigs off campus!" They hurled rocks and bottles, few of which reached their targets. Then the Guardsmen retraced their steps up the hill, heading back toward the commons. The crowd had grown to several thousand, including protest supporters, observers, and bystanders. Many of them had now relaxed assuming the confrontation was over. Vecchio says it was OK until they got up the hill. Then suddenly, about 12 Guardsmen turned 130 degrees, raised their rifles and fired. Vecchio says she heard the shots and kissed the ground. She found Jeff Miller bleeding to death on the ground. She screamed. Others killed were protester Allison Krause; Bill Schroeder, an ROTC student who had been watching the protest and was shot in the back; Randy Scheur, who was walking to class. Nine students were wounded. Dean Kahler was shot in the back as he lay on the ground. He was paralyzed for life. Another one, Alan Canfora, ducked behind an oak tree as a bullet passed through his wrist.
The shootings provoked America's first national student strike, closing hundreds of campuses, and inspired an anti-war anthem--Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Ohio, which asked, "What if you knew her/and found her dead on the ground?" Newsweek put the photo of Vecchio on its cover under the headline, "Nixon's Home Front." A Gallup Poll found only 11% faulted the Guard; 58% thought the demonstrators were partly responsible for the carnage. According to an FBI investigation, the Justice Department concluded that the Guardsmen were never in danger and that their explanation--they were surrounded, outnumbered, and fired in self-defense--was a fabrication. Later that year, a presidential commission said the shootings were "unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable." A state grand jury declined to indict any Guardsmen, a federal judge dismissed civil rights charges, and no one spent a day in jail. In 1979, the state paid $675,000 to the wounded students and the families of the dead to settle a civil suit. The Guardsmen signed a statement of regret, not apology. Many felt there was nothing for which to apologize.
Kent State's enrollment declined almost 20% over the next decade and didn't pass the 1970 level for 17 years. Around Ohio it was known as "Chaos U." The shootings marked a turning point in the student anti-war movement. It radicalized some and frightened off others. It helped seal the eventual demise of the military draft in 1973. Bob Haldeman, Nixon's aide stated he believed that incident marked the descent into the political paranoia that led to the Watergate scandal. Although the incident happened in broad daylight before thousands of witnesses and was captured on hundreds of photographs and on film and audiotape, Kent State remains what William A. Gordon calls "a murder mystery."
There have been numerous questions about the shootings since they happened. Did the Guardsmen fire out of fear, or anger, or on command? What explained the reason for their sudden firings? No one may never know. From what I read, I believe Gov. Rhodes played a role in organizing this incident when he decided to call out the Guard and said he was going to fix this problem. What role he may have played I can't say. Whether or not he instructed the Guardsmen to fire into the student protesters if the protesters got too wild, I don't know. Jerry Lewis, a sociology professor, was in the parking lot when the Guard opening fire. He's been studying that question ever since and doesn't have any answers. The Kent State shootings undoubtedly challenged Americans' thinking in regards to the ongoing Vietnam War.
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