May 4, 1970 Kent State ... 34 years ago 4 students killed, 9 wounded

by the National Guard under Nixon's watch. No one was ever been charged and many questions surrounding the calamity remain unanswered.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/polner.php?articleid=2466

I just finished watching a very moving documentary on the History Channel (Canadian). It was the first time I have ever heard one of the NG that participated in the slaying share the details of that horrid 13 seconds. He said "they (the NG)were out of control ... we had lost all command and control ... no one knew who was in charge ... no one knew who gave the order to fire" .

Sound familiar?

It was horrible.

National guard Killing college kids.

Is this what its gonna take to get us out of IraqNam. I hope to hell not.

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 gunning us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio


ARTIST: Neil Young
TITLE: Ohio
http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/ohio.htm

I was just listening to that song a few days ago on a cassette tape I made of 1970 songs. It still hits an emotional chord.

Christ...

One of the girls killed was from our area... Horrible time!!!

Many in Ohio still blame former Gov. Jim Rhodes...

We were all worried sick. To this day, I still blame Rhodes.

...in my life other than when JFK was assassinated. And I also remember the student marches and the clashes that occurred following the Kent State shootings between students, the authorities and the followers of the Nixon Vietnam war doctrine. It was a sad time in America, because not only was young blood being spilled in a foreign country 10,000 miles away, but the blood of young and old were being spilled right here in America on our streets. God, I hope and pray we don't come down to that. :scared: :cry:

around the world was the turning point for Americans and the rest of the world.

The American torture pictures have the capacity to stop the war in Iraq. The fall out will be enormous.

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,350584,00.jpg


"The Torturers of Baghdad

I always pause to remember this day... I thought it was the End The "Establishment"... the "Power Structure" whomever, had lost their sanity. They were ready to kill anyone one who opposed them.

before things change in Iraq.

And that it may take people dying over here, as it did back then.

Pause today to remeber the four students who died and the 9 that were wounded (one permanently paralized) All were full-time students.

Position of students at the time of the shooting

Joseph Lewis, Jr. 71 feet away Wounded
John R. Cleary 110 feet away Wounded
Thomas Grace 200 feet away Wounded
Alan Canfora 225 feet away Wounded
Jeffrey G. Miller 265 feet away Died
Dean R. Kahler 300 feet away Permanently Paralized
Douglas A. Wrentmore 329 feet away Wounded
Allison B. Krause 343 feet away Died
James D. Russell 375 feet away Wounded
William K. Schroeder 382 feet away Died
Sandra L. Scheuer 390 feet away Died
Robert F. Stamps 495 feet away Wounded





Mary Vecchio 15, with Jeffrey Miller, one of the four students who died in the protest





John Cleary lies wounded after being shot by the National Guard, who left the area without offering to assist the students


Dean Khaler (1 year after the shootings)



The National Guard



The National Guard begin their ascent up the commons



Tear Gas Photo

was 15, a 'run-away,' not a Kent State student.

How all the anti-war student protests were a 'liberal media' lie.

Repug conv in 64 really started the 'liberal media' meme. The people at the convention at one point turned and booed and hissed at the press-box.

I don't get it?

How could anyone not see how bad the Nixon-culture was after that day? How could they continue to support him?

out. Viet Nam still raging, college students getting killed, tried to get into national guard(couldn't find one), friends coming back from Viet Nam really f.....ed-up..either wounded or mentally trashed out....it was a scary time.

The period from 1962 to 1972 was an absolutely an unbelievable time for our country..JFK, King, Bobby, race riots, Viet Nam, Kent State......I thought the country was coming unhinged.

i had my first LTTE published in the cleveland plain dealer after the NG was tried and aquitted.

to speak at the commemoration. Last night, in the candlelight procession which crossed the campus and ended where those four students died, I was honored to carry the light of Sandy Scheuer, who was killed 34 years ago today. Four large candles led the procession, one to mark each victim, and they gave me hers.

I don't have the words. She was crossing from one class to another, not even in the protest, and they shot her down.

http://may4archive.org/sandy_scheuer.shtml

that said in addition to the commemoration there was also a protest against the current quagmire at Kent State today. How did that go? About how many people were there?

the President had quite a bit to say (about the shootings) – and was less concerned with the human implications of the bloodshed than with the political ramifications for his administration. The journal entry also betrays more than a hint that he hoped this show of force might help achieve a primary goal of his presidency: to crush the student antiwar movement that had driven his predecessor Lyndon Johnson from office:

"He…kept after me all day for more facts. Hoping rioters had provoked the shooting…"

"There’s an opportunity in this crisis as in all others – but it’s very hard to identify & know how to handle it. Main need right now is to maintain calm & hope this serves to dampen other demonstrations rather than firing them up."<2>

At 5:30 p.m. – after Wall Street, already on the decline since the President’s invasion of Cambodia four days before, closed on its single worst day’s finish since the Kennedy assassination – White House press secretary Ronald Zeigler read the official administration statement on the killings in Ohio:

"This should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy. It is my hope that this tragic and unfortunate incident will strengthen the determination of all the Nation’s campuses – administrators, faculty, and students alike -- to stand firmly for the right that exists in this country to dissent and just as firmly against the resort to violence as a means of such expression."

http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/MissionBetrayed.htm

Horribly sad. Students expressing their opinion, shot to death. Unfrigging-believable.

It is was what politicized and radicalized me, all at the tender age of nine. The day after the shootings, I joined the protest of the shootings in what was then McAlester Park on the University of Mo campus(no, my mom didn't know what I was doing, I told her I was going to the library). The protest lasted for three days, and the park was completely taken over. A stone memorial to those killed and wounded at Kent State was built in the shape of a peace symbol, and the park was renamed Peace Park(and later the name was made official).
The local, university, and state police were rather intimidated, and didn't do much more than confine the protests to Peace Park and the quad.

I think that Kent State woke America up to the horror that was being committed in their name. Will we have to experience something as equally tragic to bring the point home about Iraq? I really hope not, but I don't have much confidence in the future right now. But Peace Park is still here, and hope always springs eternal.

RIP for those who died there and elsewhere protesting that illegal, immoral war. And pray that none die protesting the current one.

never forget. And Nixon's proving to be comparitive small change relative to these monsters.
I'll never forget coming home from HS and turning on the tv.......

on a college campus in Ohio.

the killings at Jackson State that followed...

http://www.may41970.com/Jackson%20State/jackson_state_may_1970.htm

And those of us who were young adults at the time

...we have to admit one reason that Kent State was such a shock to many in the country was that WHITE STUDENTS were shot by National Guard.

Had the Ohio Highway Patrol not been forced aside by the Ohio National Guard, the shooting at Kent State probably wouldn't have happened. Had the Mississippi National Guard been allowed to intervene at Jackson State, rather than the Mississippi Highway Patrol, those shootings quite likely wouldn't have happened. In both cases, the most extreme faction was allowed to tae power.

I happened to be in Portland, Oregon at the time of Kent State. I was there to participate in protests against Nixscum's bombing of Cambodia. When we learned of the Kent State killings all hell broke loose. The killing of those four students changed my life because they made me a truly political person - something that remains to this day.

I am proud to say that four years after the events at Kent State, on May 4, 1974, I had the privilege of leading the last demonstration against Nixscum when he came to my hometown of Spokane, Washington for the opening ceremonies of the world's fair, Expo '74.

I hate to admit it but when we heard about it we laughed and hoped that they would shoot a couple dozen more.

and all of the victims at Kent State this day in 1970.

I guess we are. Are there still college demonstrations to protest the war?

:cry:

...too young to have any recollection, only the effects afterwards.

...but oh , jeez, that makes me 40 today.

I'm a writer and researcher. In the mid-1970s, I met the families of the dead students and the students who survived their wounds. I became involved in researching the incident. I think I may be the only person on earth who's ever read through all 6 reels of microfilmed FBI reports on Kent State.

Earlier today, I posted an article I wrote in 1990 for American History Illustrated which summarizes the results of my research. If you're interested, you can find it on the Stand Up for Peace Wyoming website, here: http://www.speakingformyself.net/wyomingdissent/kentstate.pdf

Kent State has been allowed to pass into history with very little accountability. The fact that an FBI agent was running around there with a gun is scarcely known and never mentioned. Was Kent State the reason John Mitchell talked about "horror stories," rather than "dirty tricks"?

Lots of questions, still. Very few solid answers and a surprising slim bibliography for the major impact it had at the time. It all got swept away by Watergate ... but I still want answers.

RIP, dear Sandy, dear Jeff, dear Allison, and dear Bill. Dean & Joe -- I'm sure glad you survived. In my heart, I've lit four candles in that wretched parking lot, now boxed in by the gymnasium and even more cluttered with endless memorials erected in place of delving too hard for the truth.

just went into shock, sat down with tears running down my cheeks, saying to myself--now they are killing us too. Why? Why?

My ex-husband attended Kent the following year; his best friend was there during the shootings, though -- and would never talk about it.

I was younger, and my memory is of my father, a college professor at a different school in a different state. He was a reserved and quiet man, and that day he was shaken. I remember him saying something to the effect that it had gone beyond all comprehension when it reached the point of shooting students... It really hit home on every campus. The youth movement collided with the government, and there was no way to go back or to keep going as it had been.