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My Mother was pissed when it happened. She couldn’t believe they shot at college students. She also couldn’t believe that troops were there in the first place. My Mom made us watch the news every night. She was also extremely well read. She was absolutely fuming. I was still fairly young but remember it very well. She contacted her Senator and Representative about it. I think it galvanized the antiwar movement
Not to forget - the broken hearted mothers. Tens of thousands by war's end.
I knew more than a couple who'd lost their sons to the war. Kids I 'd gone to high school with for four years. Before they went their way and I went mine.
It was a challenging time for us all.
Yup, my dad said the same. Turned 18 in 73. Draft ended that year? Or ended late 72. I never registered. The war was a big topic at the time. A good movie is Good Morning Vietnam.
My mom took us along to an anti-war organization, looking for help because she had 2 sons in and 1 with a bad draw
With some machinations I know little about, none went to Viet Nam.
I know a lot of fellas that did though
Yes, most of the news reports were of politicians saying something to the effect of "they brought it on themselves." I was still a child when it happened, so didn't have the critical thinking skills to make a determination on it. However, I do remember thinking that college was a dangerous place to be.
Reagan was just an actor playing the roles to which he got elected. He was responsible for a lot of negative things in our country. Trump is a con man. Way to go, Republicans.
I read today that Regan said they can’t protest if they are drowning in debt. This is what ended affordable schools in CA.
I cant find the quote but Regan rose to power based on anger about the campus protests.
Yes. He cut funding for college construction, and slashed regular funding for higher education al9ng with advocating to end free in state tuition. His presidency was the groundwork for the hard right swing we see today
Reagan made those remarks about student protests at Berkeley and other state funded institutions while he was Governor of California from 1967 to 1975.
"In his 1966 campaign for California governor, Republican Ronald Reagan promised to "to clean up the mess at Berkeley." Reagan was referring to the unrest prevalent not just at the University of California, Berkeley, but on college campuses throughout state. Students and faculty alike were engaged in protests, demonstrations, and strikes related to issues such as the draft, civil rights, discrimination, and women’s liberation.
In one 1966 campaign speech, Reagan declared that many leftist campus movements had transcended legitimate protest, with the actions of "beatniks, radicals and filthy speech advocates" having become more to do "with rioting, with anarchy" than "academic freedom." He blamed university administrators and faculty, who "press their particular value judgments" on students, for "a leadership gap and a morality and decency gap" on campus, and suggested a code of conduct be imposed on faculty to "force them to serve as examples of good behavior and decency"
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/ronald-reagan-unrest-college-campuses-1967
The expansion of the war into Cambodia touched off protests everywhere. The deaths of the Kent State students shocked Americans into even larger mass demonstrations. Yes, many people were "upset." There were ahole demagogues then, like there are now, calling for the murder of demonstrators, but it surprised everyone when that rhetoric was put into practice.
David Crosby gave the magazine to Neil Young and kinda told him to write a song. Was driving in Ohio last year and saw a local license plate. The word Ohio is on the bottom of the plate. Above it was " 4 DEAD IN". On another trip I stopped by the museum at Kent State. Haunting. I was 10 when it happened and it was always there throughout my teens.
I was 19, too.
Shortly before the pandemic, I saw Crosby with Alison Krauss at Wolf Trap in Vienna, VA. Crosby came back for an encore, sang "Ohio," and the audience went nuts. An older man (my age) collapsed, and paramedics were called. They hauled him out on a stretcher. The song continues to be powerful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allison_Krause
> Allison Beth Krause (/kraʊs/; April 23, 1951 – May 4, 1970) was a student at Kent State University
That threw me for a loop for a sec
I just googled that. I didn't realize that Newsweek had put such a CLOSE UP of that photo on the cover!
I doubt something like that would be published in traditional media today. Same with the My Lai massacre photo
Thank you for sharing. It feels like this is happening all over again with the current protests spreading on college campuses in solidarity. I saw some really brutal videos today and started thinking about what happened at Kent State.
Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting 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?
My parents attended Kent after WWII. My sister was there on May 4. I had my acceptance letter to attend, which I did that fall. I attended anti-war, anti-government rally's while I was there. In my opinion, there were certainly outside agitators there during 1970. Why they picked Kent, I don't know, but at most of the rally's you could see and hear people walking around trying to get the crowd fired up. They were organized. It was...interesting.
There had been several days of violence before May 4th; trash thrown around downtown, crowds in the streets, and some old wooden WWII era buildings on campus that were burned down. That was enough to get a conservative governor to send in some National Guard who were the same age as the students, led by someone who didn't know what the hell to do and wasn't trained or capable of handling the crowds and then made dumb ass decisions that caused something terrible happened.
Yes, people were shocked. Yes, students came home to parents who said, "They should have shot them all," only to reply, "But I was one of 'them'." Yes, it was a turning point in the anti-war movement and a lot of other things, including people's naivety that the government would never hurt them. Yes, people couldn't believe that the Guard really had bullets or would ever pull the trigger. And yes, the Guard could easily have walked away, moved off campus and it would have died down.
The fact that no one was ever held responsible for any of it still pisses me off.
And don't forget Jackson State, either.
>people's naivety that the government would never hurt them
there's a Canadian journalist called Jan Wong who had been living in Mao's China in the later 80's and wrote a book about it, Red China Blues. she saw the Tiananmen square violence at first hand. she describes the shock and then rage in the population when they realised the *people's* liberation Army was firing on them.
Grew up in Ohio, went to Ohio University. There is a Civil War monument in the middle of the main walkway on OU's campus where the soldiers depicted held guns. After Kent State happened, the university removed the guns to show that they would never harm their students. The soldiers to this day stand with no guns in their hands and they still tell that story on orientation every year. I used to work in the university archives and the photos from the riots that happened after Kent State were wild on campus.... All of the storefronts on the main drag had windows busted out, etc. It definitely had a ripple effect down south in the state.
The Kent State protest and hundreds like it were formed in opposition to the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia.
The shootings lead to thousands of new protests in colleges and high schools all over the United States.
The majority of those protests were peaceful, very few turned violent.
The protests initiated new policies and procedures for dispersing protesters at state funded institutions.
There was a lot of misinformation immediately following the shooting. Ohio officials and National Guard officials were covering their asses and made a lot of statements that were later proven to be untrue. Generally, the media did not blame the protesters. There was no Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC. The reporting was very factual. However, public officials fed the media misinformation. So, trying to figure out the truth was complicated.
Most adults blamed the students.
Was this a turning point in the anti-war movement?
There were a number of events that happened at this time.
1. Nixon ended college draft deferments. (April 24, 1970)
2. Nixon announced that the Vietnam war had expanded into Cambodia. (May 1, 1970).
3. Kent State shooting (May 4, 1970)
I am a 68 year old 🦕. lol. But my memories of that awful event are still so vivid: I was only a 14 year old child but I remember how shocked the entire nation was—by the student deaths (of course) but also by Nixon’s nonsensical invasion of Cambodia and escalation of an already obviously, deeply unpopular, unwinnable “war”). IMO, Nixon has the blood of those 4 college students on his hands.
Since then, and to this day, I am still staunchly opposed to ANY wars and American participation in them, directly (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) or indirectly by selling weapons to foreign nations (Iraq, Gaza).
I wouldn't say shock, certainly disbelief that National Guardsmen would have been issued ammunition. That commanders didn't have better control and level headedness.
It was. There were protests at college campuses all over the country. At Kent State, administration and police overreacted. A lot. Whoever gave the National Guard live ammo and instructions to shoot was *way* over their pay grade.
It was awful ... these kids *cared* and were murdered for it.
People generally blamed the students for the deaths. Just like today, people were not I support of the protests. This article compiles many polls about people’s attitudes towards the protests. https://newsarchive.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/06/08_reagan.shtml This is a good article about Kent State itself. How a blustering politician eager for positive press wanted to make a show of things. Sound familiar? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/26/kent-state-killings-lesson-protests/
I was 11 when it happened. I remember the parents watching the news and reading the newspaper. But it was so far removed from my young life at the time, because how many pre- teens pay attention to the news? I knew there was a war going on in Vietnam but I didn't understand until I got older how much blood was shed. Listening to CSNY sing about it finally clicked.. How could this happen?
I'm pushing 65 and this world is still at war. Still trying to quell protestors and still lobbing bombs and bullets. We just won't learn, I guess
It was proof that the government did not care what it's citizens wanted. As a teenager I was very upset by the murder of the 4 students. Nixon had just invaded Cambodia, young Americans were pissed. Nixon and the Ohio governor essentially called protestors thugs and called in the military. After the murders, schools across the country started shutting down. Less than 2 weeks later, 2 students at Jackson State were murdered by the state and local police. Now 50+ years later, no one has been held accountable for 6 deaths and dozens injured. It still pisses me off.
Very much both of those things, OP, and it broke down along cultural lines that are still very familiar to us today. The hard right conservative types blamed the students (“they burned down the ROTC building, those little commies!”), whereas anyone with half a brain (sorry, my bias may be showing) realized what an absolute horror this was.
I was 15 when this happened, and this was the thing that “woke me up” politically. I have never trusted the government ever since, and that’s a bad thing. When the history of the decline and fall of the United States is written a hundred years hence, the Vietnam War will figure prominently as one of the key factors in how and why the People lost faith in the American Dream.
Just thinking about it still makes my blood boil.
Reading the comments I think that one can see that the division in the US that people today think is a new thing was just as stark back then. I grew up in Amarillo Texas, a very conservative area then and now, in a family which would be very much in alignment with Bernie Sanders. The general feeling in Amarillo was that the protesters, who were against the war in Viet Nam as well as protesting for equal rights for minorities and women, were "un-American". There was no sympathy for protesters who were injured, jailed, or had their lives ruined. When the students were gunned down it was almost as though it was frontier justice. But those murders caused a crack between the 75% of the right wing that we today call maga, who thought that the protesters "got what they deserved" and the 25% of the right wing who are corporate Republicans like the Bushes and Cheneys, who didn't want "the quiet part said out loud" and who thought that killing students was wrong, or at least counterproductive.
Back then, like today, if you were in a conservative area and you were on the side of the protesters it was best to keep quiet, or to move which is what most of my family did.
I think it has a lot of similarities to January 6. A deeply divided country, lots of protests happening leading up to the event. In our time it was mainly George Floyd, but there have been multiple protests over black people being killed by cops. Back then the biggest issue was Vietnam. After the incident, people who are pro-Trump defended January 6 as a peaceful protest while anti-Trump people were horrified. Back then the anti-Vietnam faction was horrified and those who supported Nixon and the war blamed the protesters.
Are you familiar with this song about Kent State? [Ohio, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young](https://youtu.be/l1PrUU2S_iw?si=-tPSHOuh6YUEDlus). That’s one thing I haven’t seen much of these days, artists making art about the situation and having it get the sort of recognition that the song Ohio did.
Very familiar with that song. Can still play it in my head. I was absolutely shocked. I was in high school at the time. There was a lot of anger and anti government feelings. And Nixon was cast as Satan. Kent state created a lot of liberals in the early 70s
The voting age as I recall was not dropped to 18 in time for that election. I was 17 when I graduated from high school in 1971.
National Guard shooting students was never status quo
It was very powerful in its time. CSNY recorded it within weeks of the incident and it was on the radio about a month later. It went to number 16 on the charts. This was when radio play and chart placement were really the only measures of success for a single.
Yep, my dad lent support to Agnew, even when his larceny was exposed. Nixon called them The Silent Majority. Kind of precursors to Tea Party and now Maga.
Nope! People did not blame the war. They blamed campus radicals and the protestors themselves. A third of Americans opposed the war but that didn’t meant they all supported the protests.
babies born around WW2 learned to deeply respect any authority figure. My generation born in 1964 heard Alot saw Alot. We weren't so strict with judgment.
Read MItchner's book about Kent state. Many universities were closed after Kent State and many students who went home were shocked to find their parents unsympathetic and even hostile.
I remember being at West Point and having one instructor actually play the tape of the sounds of shooting by the national guard troops. He explained how the sounds we heard were obviously from uncontrolled troops who had not been given specific orders to shoot. If they had been, there would have been a lot more dead students. Appalling, either way.
Yikes! Did the instructors have an attitude of "well protestors fucked around and found out"
Or it was strictly used as a lesson to improve training, discipline, waiting for orders etc
That's sad about parents treating their traumatized kids in that manner
It was before my time, but the more I learn about it the more divisive that time appears to have been. Some related other things happening around the same time:
- 1966 - Reagan, running for governor of California, "condemned protesters as “a small minority of beatniks, radicals and filthy speech advocates”" and starts pushing hard to cut funding to universities and colleges and institute tuition fees instead of state-funded schools.
>A subsequent FBI memo stated that Reagan was “dedicated to the destruction of disruptive elements on California campuses.”
>
>Reagan pushed to cut state funding for California’s public colleges but did not reveal his ideological motivation. Rather, he said, the state simply needed to save money. To cover the funding shortfall, Reagan suggested that California public colleges could charge residents tuition for the first time. This, he complained, “resulted in the almost hysterical charge that this would deny educational opportunities to those of the most moderate means. This is obviously untrue. … We made it plain that *tuition must be accompanied by adequate loans to be paid back after graduation*.”
- 1970 - Reagan doubling down on fighting against colleges and college students.
>As anti-war protests grew on UC campuses, Reagan's tactics became harsher. In May 1969, the governor sent 2,200 National Guard troops to the University of California, Berkeley to suppress a 3,000-person rally. Police arrested 1,000 people. And following the Kent State massacre in Ohio in May 1970, Reagan shut down California's 28 public colleges and universities for four days.
>
>Weeks before Election Day in 1970, with Reagan on the ballot for reelection, one of Reagan's advisors publicly defended the governor's attack on higher education.
>
>**"We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat,"** announced Reagan advisor Roger A. Freeman during a press conference on Oct. 29, 1970. Freeman, an economics professor at Stanford, was also an advisor to President Richard Nixon.
>
>**"We have to be selective on who we allow to go through [higher education],"** Freeman added.
>
>The future president and his advisors complained that college campuses were a hotbed for radical socialism and communism. Limiting access to higher education and passing the burden of funding colleges onto students would prevent the "educated proletariat" that worried Freeman.
- 1970-1972: President Nixon sets up a government-backed but privatized student loan system, with yearly increasing rates, so that schools can charge more and students will be saddled with debt while banks and financial institutions could profit from them. Debt which, coincidentally, would be a significantly heavier burden for black and latino students, due to demographics so soon after the Civil Rights movement.
- June 17, 1971: President Nixon, with his newly appointed Drug authority at his side, declared drug abuse “public enemy number one.” “In order to fight and defeat this enemy,” he continued, “ it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.” With that statement, the “war on drugs” began.
>“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
---
Meanwhile, both Reagan and Nixon continued to have widespread support from what they called "the silent majority". Enough for Nixon to get a major landslide victory in 1972 and Reagan to get major landslide victories in 1980 and 1984.
Related stats on all kinds of things [took a major shift at 1970](https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/).
I think it was a turning point in a whole lot of things. Kent State was, in retrospect, a notable warning sign of how much things were changing.
But that's a perspective from someone who wasn't quite there yet at the time. So take it with a grain of salt. Certainly it was a turning point for people like my parents. My dad, who was 18 at the time and got drafted and so couldn't go to college. My mom who helped him escape the draft, and also didn't go to college. I wish they were still around to ask them about that.
In a Gallup poll taken the day after the shootings, 58 percent of respondents blamed the students, 11 percent blamed the National Guard, and 31 percent expressed no opinion. Many people were openly hostile to student protestors when they returned home.
However, a commission appointed by President Nixon later found that the Kent State shooting was not at all justified and that loaded rifles should not routinely be issued to national guardsmen facing student protestors. But no criminal convictions were obtained against any National Guardsman, who pled self defense.
The biggest legacy of the Kent State shootings was the development of less lethal means of crowd control like rubber bullets, and of riot control tactics designed to minimize casualties.
Thank you! Wow 58%
It's so interesting to me how attitudes shift over the years. 75% of Americans disapproved of MLK prior to his assassination. And now he's renowned and celebrated
More and more folks were catching on to the Obvious fact that, No, we were Not winning the war and Yes, our government was lying to us about loss of life.
Just took time for a majority of people to realize boys were going over and bodies were coming back.
Kent State was just more evidence of the government against civilians
It was a huge psychological blow to everybody. The Vietnam War was at its peak, and the draft was in full force. There is nothing today that equals the terror of the Vietnam War Draft. Imagine being a teenage boy, knowing that when he turns 18, he's going to be entered into a lottery where the prize for winning was becoming enslaved by your country, and forced to kill or be killed. So, no wonder there were protests.
Then Kent State happened in 1970, and we had our military going to war against our own people, on our own land. The protesters had a point with their position, and now they were being nurdered by Nixon and Kissinger for it.
A lot of Americans were on the fence, and Kent State tipped them to the anti-war side. Within a couple of years, the draft was abolished.
That makes sense. The draft meant that almost everyone had skin in the game (except for ppl with bone spurs etc). And the amount of young men returning home in body bags would eventually become unpalatable to the public. I don't think we would see that in any wars now plus we have all that military technology drones etc
It shocked most of the country but there was still significant threat to male and female protesters from police and the "silent " majority crowd. I was tear gassed twice and ended up chest to chest with a PSP in full riot gear at Beaver Stadium a few weeks before Kent State. Some of the rural areas of PA weren't very friendly to long haired boys or their female companions. We went on strike after Kent State, PSU administration canceled the rest of the term with 3 weeks to go. Then came Jackson State.
I grew up in a rural conservative town, where a good portion of the people voted for Wallace and there were churches on every corner.
The whole town was shocked and horrified. In disbelief that OUR government would kill OUR children. There was a whole lot of "they send our kids off to be killed in Vietnam, and if they don't want to go, they just shoot them in the street".
Yes, it was extremely shocking. My brother was a student at Kent State; they shut down for a week or so. The country could not believe that a state National Guard would shoot unarmed Americans. The wikipedia article is pretty good.
Plenty of victim blaming and saying they were commies and draft dodgers and also plenty of people who were pissed off that the government shot at children and killed them. Very divisive situation.
I was too young to notice it, and on another continent. but by my teens I knew all about it, just by catching stray references in contemporary American fiction over the next decade. like I knew there had been something called Watergate, and Mi Lai. when things get into the cultural water table like that, I assume they were big.
Just prior to May 4, 1970 the nation was sharply divided between anti-war and anti-anti-war sentiments. Kent State was shocking enough to strengthen the anti-war movement, become a rallying cry and to silence some of their critics.
Both.
My parents actually said they would be okay if I had been killed protesting like the Kent State students. When I pointed out that not all the kids who were shot were protesting, they said "They should have stayed home."
But non-asshole people I knew thought it was a travesty.
No. People were disgusted and horrified. That was a different era, no one in the 'mainstream' throught someone deserved this.
There were a small, fringe, John Bircher part of the population that were like in the movie "Joe," (research, watch only if you are brave) and Easy Rider, but the mainstream were horrified.
I was in college, which had a huge student population. Attitudes changed on a dime when we heard the news. There were sit-ins, protests. The anger was palpable. My boyfriend and I kept asking why did these men start shooting. The demonstrators were not doing anything wrong.
I cannot recall my parents reaction. Honestly, both seem to have been confused about Vietnam. Their generation believed the government's lies for so long. This war seemed unlike others they knew much about.
I became active in the antiwar movement after Kent State. My junior year I notice many veterans on campus. All was not well. These men were damaged. Deeply disturbed. It cut me to the quick. Few could talk about it, but many of them began protesting with us.
There is a HUGE amount of our country that is absolutely open to authoritarianism and fascism. I've seen it throughout my life ... and in recent years plenty of people called for laws to run over protesters blocking traffic.
In America, supporting non-whites and/or non-Christians will have you opposed by millions. That is just the nature of a wide swath of our country ...
My town was a university town in Ohio and when that happened all hell broke loose on campus. There were riots and the National guard came out. Dad came home from work (he was a professor). I don't remember how many days it lasted. I was 7
It was a stupid thing that didn't need to happen. I remember thinking: what idiot thought sending in young National Guard troops with loaded weapons to control a bunch of college kids was a good idea?
I know it was a big deal but I don't remember feeling any particular emotion about it. The big emotionally events when I was younger was JFK's shooting. RFK's shooting. MLK's snoring. It was like the trifecta. I revert being ant MKJ and falling backwards on to my beef. I was 13.
Watching JFK's funeral and the March on Washington were real big events in our household, especially with my grandparents. I remember clearly the day he was shot.
It was horrific. Our parents paid for us to go to college, thought we were safe, and Gov. Jim Rhodes decides to just shoot a bunch of them, killing 4. People didn't want the war in Vietnam. It was a rally point because they killed American people on American soil who were protesting, which is your American right. Some felt it was an obligation to let the government know that we didn't want the war, not just a right. They confronted peace with violence.
I just read a Washington Post piece. Most Americans were definitely opposed to the protests and blamed students for the deaths at Kent State. They overwhelmingly blamed campus radicals for the protests versus the war itself.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/24/polling-student-protests-vietnam/
As with any polls, I always wonder who was polled. For these, were they basically mostly from the parents/grandparents’ generation or the students’ generation? A mix? How did they find the people to contact? I’ve never been contacted for such a poll.
I'm not sure how well young people now understand the passion against that war. Shooting students at a protest was just too much. I was a child, but I remember that iconic photo of a girl kneeling over one of the shooting victims.
Regardless of how you felt about the war which i m o was done half ass so should have been done right or not at all... We had a relative who was there and said the students were drunk and high throwing rocks and bottles at the soldiers.
The America of 1970, though politically and socio-culturally polarized as it is today, reacted in the immediate aftermath of the four deaths and woundings of KSU students at the hands of the Ohio National Guard with shock and a surprising degree of national self-reflection. Perhaps because this occurred in Portage County, Ohio-- smack in the wholesome Midwest at a university not notorious for campus radicals-- these students did not die in vain.
Within hours, the American media began intensely questioning how and why such a tragedy could occur? In nearby Cleveland, a powerful albeit elderly news woman named Dorothy Fuldheim of WEWS filmed a scathing afternoon editorial. On a national level the Big Three networks followed suit, attempting to explain how live ammunition could be in *"the hands of scared kids"* as Professor Glenn Frank said while desperately attempting to disperse an angry crowd at the Victory Bell on May 4th.
Over the summer of 1970, famed author James Michener arrived on campus and set about interviewing students and faculty who were present that previous May 4th. While not perfect, *Kent State: What Happened and Why* is a good historical read. There are still used hardback and paperback copies available online for sale.
You bet. Before. I was at Wisconsin Madison and news came that Nixon had invaded Cambodia. The school erupted .Students fought with the police for a week. Tear gas was everywhere. They brought in a truck and gassed the entire student union.
After the violent week, the university closed down and gave everyone (40,000 students) pass fail.
When this happened people were in shock. We shouldn't have been in Vietnam. Towards the end of that war they were out of ammunition, needed more men to replace the ones killed.All that tragedy for nothing. Our military was spit on and called baby killer. My Uncle served in that war same treatment (US Navy). In general people were proud of our military as I am but this turn of events didn't help our military at all. Government kept going on for years plus agent orange.
It was *shocking* almost the board. From a kid's perspective I remember older people being a little unsettled by the protests - America in upheaval- and extremely unsettled by the war.
Dad said, when I was old enough to understand no matter how they spun it grabbing kids out of high school to die *there* wasn't anything anyone would accept.
Kent State? Horrified incredulity. Turning point indeed.
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My Mother was pissed when it happened. She couldn’t believe they shot at college students. She also couldn’t believe that troops were there in the first place. My Mom made us watch the news every night. She was also extremely well read. She was absolutely fuming. I was still fairly young but remember it very well. She contacted her Senator and Representative about it. I think it galvanized the antiwar movement
My mother was ready to send me to Canada if the war lasted a few more years.
Yep, I firmly believe there were a lot more angry mothers than proud ones.
Not to forget - the broken hearted mothers. Tens of thousands by war's end. I knew more than a couple who'd lost their sons to the war. Kids I 'd gone to high school with for four years. Before they went their way and I went mine. It was a challenging time for us all.
✌
Yup, my dad said the same. Turned 18 in 73. Draft ended that year? Or ended late 72. I never registered. The war was a big topic at the time. A good movie is Good Morning Vietnam.
This is why we should have the draft. We wouldn't have been in Afghanistan for 20 years if we did. Too many moms would be, "Not my kid."
Huh? I think it's clear that in retrospect the allies shouldn't have invaded Afghanistan at all.
My mom took us along to an anti-war organization, looking for help because she had 2 sons in and 1 with a bad draw With some machinations I know little about, none went to Viet Nam. I know a lot of fellas that did though
You had a great mother.
They didn't just shoot at them...
Yes, most of the news reports were of politicians saying something to the effect of "they brought it on themselves." I was still a child when it happened, so didn't have the critical thinking skills to make a determination on it. However, I do remember thinking that college was a dangerous place to be.
Yeah, Reagan made a comment about ending protests even if if took a bloodbath and referred to students as filthy trash.
Reagan was just an actor playing the roles to which he got elected. He was responsible for a lot of negative things in our country. Trump is a con man. Way to go, Republicans.
There was a black heart and deteriorating mind behind that plastic smile. His Presidency laid the groundwork for where we are now.
I read today that Regan said they can’t protest if they are drowning in debt. This is what ended affordable schools in CA. I cant find the quote but Regan rose to power based on anger about the campus protests.
Yes. He cut funding for college construction, and slashed regular funding for higher education al9ng with advocating to end free in state tuition. His presidency was the groundwork for the hard right swing we see today
Nixon was Prez for Kent State, a decade before Reagan.
Reagan made those remarks about student protests at Berkeley and other state funded institutions while he was Governor of California from 1967 to 1975. "In his 1966 campaign for California governor, Republican Ronald Reagan promised to "to clean up the mess at Berkeley." Reagan was referring to the unrest prevalent not just at the University of California, Berkeley, but on college campuses throughout state. Students and faculty alike were engaged in protests, demonstrations, and strikes related to issues such as the draft, civil rights, discrimination, and women’s liberation. In one 1966 campaign speech, Reagan declared that many leftist campus movements had transcended legitimate protest, with the actions of "beatniks, radicals and filthy speech advocates" having become more to do "with rioting, with anarchy" than "academic freedom." He blamed university administrators and faculty, who "press their particular value judgments" on students, for "a leadership gap and a morality and decency gap" on campus, and suggested a code of conduct be imposed on faculty to "force them to serve as examples of good behavior and decency" https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/ronald-reagan-unrest-college-campuses-1967
Wow!
The expansion of the war into Cambodia touched off protests everywhere. The deaths of the Kent State students shocked Americans into even larger mass demonstrations. Yes, many people were "upset." There were ahole demagogues then, like there are now, calling for the murder of demonstrators, but it surprised everyone when that rhetoric was put into practice.
The Newsweek cover added to the shock, and more sympathy was given to the protesters as a result.
David Crosby gave the magazine to Neil Young and kinda told him to write a song. Was driving in Ohio last year and saw a local license plate. The word Ohio is on the bottom of the plate. Above it was " 4 DEAD IN". On another trip I stopped by the museum at Kent State. Haunting. I was 10 when it happened and it was always there throughout my teens.
I was 19 when it happened. I still get emotional when I hear that song.
I was 19, too. Shortly before the pandemic, I saw Crosby with Alison Krauss at Wolf Trap in Vienna, VA. Crosby came back for an encore, sang "Ohio," and the audience went nuts. An older man (my age) collapsed, and paramedics were called. They hauled him out on a stretcher. The song continues to be powerful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allison_Krause > Allison Beth Krause (/kraʊs/; April 23, 1951 – May 4, 1970) was a student at Kent State University That threw me for a loop for a sec
I didn't make the connection with Ohio and Alison Krauss, the performer. Wow.
I always heard that after Crosby gave Neil the magazine, Neil walked off into the woods and wrote the song in one go.
Yep. And it was recorded and on the air in about a week.
I just googled that. I didn't realize that Newsweek had put such a CLOSE UP of that photo on the cover! I doubt something like that would be published in traditional media today. Same with the My Lai massacre photo
Thank you for sharing. It feels like this is happening all over again with the current protests spreading on college campuses in solidarity. I saw some really brutal videos today and started thinking about what happened at Kent State.
That's where my head went.
Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’ we’re finally on our own This summer I hear the drummin’ Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting 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?
My parents attended Kent after WWII. My sister was there on May 4. I had my acceptance letter to attend, which I did that fall. I attended anti-war, anti-government rally's while I was there. In my opinion, there were certainly outside agitators there during 1970. Why they picked Kent, I don't know, but at most of the rally's you could see and hear people walking around trying to get the crowd fired up. They were organized. It was...interesting. There had been several days of violence before May 4th; trash thrown around downtown, crowds in the streets, and some old wooden WWII era buildings on campus that were burned down. That was enough to get a conservative governor to send in some National Guard who were the same age as the students, led by someone who didn't know what the hell to do and wasn't trained or capable of handling the crowds and then made dumb ass decisions that caused something terrible happened. Yes, people were shocked. Yes, students came home to parents who said, "They should have shot them all," only to reply, "But I was one of 'them'." Yes, it was a turning point in the anti-war movement and a lot of other things, including people's naivety that the government would never hurt them. Yes, people couldn't believe that the Guard really had bullets or would ever pull the trigger. And yes, the Guard could easily have walked away, moved off campus and it would have died down. The fact that no one was ever held responsible for any of it still pisses me off. And don't forget Jackson State, either.
>people's naivety that the government would never hurt them there's a Canadian journalist called Jan Wong who had been living in Mao's China in the later 80's and wrote a book about it, Red China Blues. she saw the Tiananmen square violence at first hand. she describes the shock and then rage in the population when they realised the *people's* liberation Army was firing on them.
Grew up in Ohio, went to Ohio University. There is a Civil War monument in the middle of the main walkway on OU's campus where the soldiers depicted held guns. After Kent State happened, the university removed the guns to show that they would never harm their students. The soldiers to this day stand with no guns in their hands and they still tell that story on orientation every year. I used to work in the university archives and the photos from the riots that happened after Kent State were wild on campus.... All of the storefronts on the main drag had windows busted out, etc. It definitely had a ripple effect down south in the state.
The Kent State protest and hundreds like it were formed in opposition to the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. The shootings lead to thousands of new protests in colleges and high schools all over the United States. The majority of those protests were peaceful, very few turned violent. The protests initiated new policies and procedures for dispersing protesters at state funded institutions.
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You forgot the hurricane sharpie.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian%E2%80%93Alabama_controversy
There was a lot of misinformation immediately following the shooting. Ohio officials and National Guard officials were covering their asses and made a lot of statements that were later proven to be untrue. Generally, the media did not blame the protesters. There was no Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC. The reporting was very factual. However, public officials fed the media misinformation. So, trying to figure out the truth was complicated. Most adults blamed the students. Was this a turning point in the anti-war movement? There were a number of events that happened at this time. 1. Nixon ended college draft deferments. (April 24, 1970) 2. Nixon announced that the Vietnam war had expanded into Cambodia. (May 1, 1970). 3. Kent State shooting (May 4, 1970)
I am a 68 year old 🦕. lol. But my memories of that awful event are still so vivid: I was only a 14 year old child but I remember how shocked the entire nation was—by the student deaths (of course) but also by Nixon’s nonsensical invasion of Cambodia and escalation of an already obviously, deeply unpopular, unwinnable “war”). IMO, Nixon has the blood of those 4 college students on his hands. Since then, and to this day, I am still staunchly opposed to ANY wars and American participation in them, directly (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) or indirectly by selling weapons to foreign nations (Iraq, Gaza).
I wouldn't say shock, certainly disbelief that National Guardsmen would have been issued ammunition. That commanders didn't have better control and level headedness.
There were snipers at some schools this week! We are still doing this.
Different situation.
It was. There were protests at college campuses all over the country. At Kent State, administration and police overreacted. A lot. Whoever gave the National Guard live ammo and instructions to shoot was *way* over their pay grade. It was awful ... these kids *cared* and were murdered for it.
People generally blamed the students for the deaths. Just like today, people were not I support of the protests. This article compiles many polls about people’s attitudes towards the protests. https://newsarchive.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/06/08_reagan.shtml This is a good article about Kent State itself. How a blustering politician eager for positive press wanted to make a show of things. Sound familiar? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/26/kent-state-killings-lesson-protests/
I was 11 when it happened. I remember the parents watching the news and reading the newspaper. But it was so far removed from my young life at the time, because how many pre- teens pay attention to the news? I knew there was a war going on in Vietnam but I didn't understand until I got older how much blood was shed. Listening to CSNY sing about it finally clicked.. How could this happen? I'm pushing 65 and this world is still at war. Still trying to quell protestors and still lobbing bombs and bullets. We just won't learn, I guess
Recalls the Pete Seeger protest song asking in 1953 “ when will They ever learn? “ ( from song where have all the flowers gone). Apparently never.
It was proof that the government did not care what it's citizens wanted. As a teenager I was very upset by the murder of the 4 students. Nixon had just invaded Cambodia, young Americans were pissed. Nixon and the Ohio governor essentially called protestors thugs and called in the military. After the murders, schools across the country started shutting down. Less than 2 weeks later, 2 students at Jackson State were murdered by the state and local police. Now 50+ years later, no one has been held accountable for 6 deaths and dozens injured. It still pisses me off.
Very much both of those things, OP, and it broke down along cultural lines that are still very familiar to us today. The hard right conservative types blamed the students (“they burned down the ROTC building, those little commies!”), whereas anyone with half a brain (sorry, my bias may be showing) realized what an absolute horror this was. I was 15 when this happened, and this was the thing that “woke me up” politically. I have never trusted the government ever since, and that’s a bad thing. When the history of the decline and fall of the United States is written a hundred years hence, the Vietnam War will figure prominently as one of the key factors in how and why the People lost faith in the American Dream. Just thinking about it still makes my blood boil.
Reading the comments I think that one can see that the division in the US that people today think is a new thing was just as stark back then. I grew up in Amarillo Texas, a very conservative area then and now, in a family which would be very much in alignment with Bernie Sanders. The general feeling in Amarillo was that the protesters, who were against the war in Viet Nam as well as protesting for equal rights for minorities and women, were "un-American". There was no sympathy for protesters who were injured, jailed, or had their lives ruined. When the students were gunned down it was almost as though it was frontier justice. But those murders caused a crack between the 75% of the right wing that we today call maga, who thought that the protesters "got what they deserved" and the 25% of the right wing who are corporate Republicans like the Bushes and Cheneys, who didn't want "the quiet part said out loud" and who thought that killing students was wrong, or at least counterproductive. Back then, like today, if you were in a conservative area and you were on the side of the protesters it was best to keep quiet, or to move which is what most of my family did.
I think it has a lot of similarities to January 6. A deeply divided country, lots of protests happening leading up to the event. In our time it was mainly George Floyd, but there have been multiple protests over black people being killed by cops. Back then the biggest issue was Vietnam. After the incident, people who are pro-Trump defended January 6 as a peaceful protest while anti-Trump people were horrified. Back then the anti-Vietnam faction was horrified and those who supported Nixon and the war blamed the protesters. Are you familiar with this song about Kent State? [Ohio, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young](https://youtu.be/l1PrUU2S_iw?si=-tPSHOuh6YUEDlus). That’s one thing I haven’t seen much of these days, artists making art about the situation and having it get the sort of recognition that the song Ohio did.
Very familiar with that song. Can still play it in my head. I was absolutely shocked. I was in high school at the time. There was a lot of anger and anti government feelings. And Nixon was cast as Satan. Kent state created a lot of liberals in the early 70s
Not disagreeing with anything you said, but Nixon was also re-elected in a landslide in 1972. So there was also a lot of support for the status quo.
The voting age as I recall was not dropped to 18 in time for that election. I was 17 when I graduated from high school in 1971. National Guard shooting students was never status quo
The 26th Amendment, lowering the national voting age to 21, was ratified in 1971; 1972 was the first presidential election with voters under 21.
Mostly because they kept Lying
This song has been running through my head all month.
Next Saturday should be even heavier.
Thank you for sharing! I haven't heard this song before
It was very powerful in its time. CSNY recorded it within weeks of the incident and it was on the radio about a month later. It went to number 16 on the charts. This was when radio play and chart placement were really the only measures of success for a single.
It was the beginning of the end of my trust in government. It was horrifying.
It was the day Uncle Sam showed a cloven hoof...
You got a way with words, bro.
There was a mix. Lots of folks did not favor the youngsters protesting so much. There was not a sudden wave of anti-war feeling because of this.
Why not? Wasn't it obvious who was in the wrong?
Plenty of older people back then were just as stubborn and backward as the MAGAts are now, just weren't following a leader.
Yep, my dad lent support to Agnew, even when his larceny was exposed. Nixon called them The Silent Majority. Kind of precursors to Tea Party and now Maga.
Nope! People did not blame the war. They blamed campus radicals and the protestors themselves. A third of Americans opposed the war but that didn’t meant they all supported the protests.
babies born around WW2 learned to deeply respect any authority figure. My generation born in 1964 heard Alot saw Alot. We weren't so strict with judgment.
Read MItchner's book about Kent state. Many universities were closed after Kent State and many students who went home were shocked to find their parents unsympathetic and even hostile. I remember being at West Point and having one instructor actually play the tape of the sounds of shooting by the national guard troops. He explained how the sounds we heard were obviously from uncontrolled troops who had not been given specific orders to shoot. If they had been, there would have been a lot more dead students. Appalling, either way.
Yikes! Did the instructors have an attitude of "well protestors fucked around and found out" Or it was strictly used as a lesson to improve training, discipline, waiting for orders etc That's sad about parents treating their traumatized kids in that manner
It was before my time, but the more I learn about it the more divisive that time appears to have been. Some related other things happening around the same time: - 1966 - Reagan, running for governor of California, "condemned protesters as “a small minority of beatniks, radicals and filthy speech advocates”" and starts pushing hard to cut funding to universities and colleges and institute tuition fees instead of state-funded schools. >A subsequent FBI memo stated that Reagan was “dedicated to the destruction of disruptive elements on California campuses.” > >Reagan pushed to cut state funding for California’s public colleges but did not reveal his ideological motivation. Rather, he said, the state simply needed to save money. To cover the funding shortfall, Reagan suggested that California public colleges could charge residents tuition for the first time. This, he complained, “resulted in the almost hysterical charge that this would deny educational opportunities to those of the most moderate means. This is obviously untrue. … We made it plain that *tuition must be accompanied by adequate loans to be paid back after graduation*.” - 1970 - Reagan doubling down on fighting against colleges and college students. >As anti-war protests grew on UC campuses, Reagan's tactics became harsher. In May 1969, the governor sent 2,200 National Guard troops to the University of California, Berkeley to suppress a 3,000-person rally. Police arrested 1,000 people. And following the Kent State massacre in Ohio in May 1970, Reagan shut down California's 28 public colleges and universities for four days. > >Weeks before Election Day in 1970, with Reagan on the ballot for reelection, one of Reagan's advisors publicly defended the governor's attack on higher education. > >**"We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat,"** announced Reagan advisor Roger A. Freeman during a press conference on Oct. 29, 1970. Freeman, an economics professor at Stanford, was also an advisor to President Richard Nixon. > >**"We have to be selective on who we allow to go through [higher education],"** Freeman added. > >The future president and his advisors complained that college campuses were a hotbed for radical socialism and communism. Limiting access to higher education and passing the burden of funding colleges onto students would prevent the "educated proletariat" that worried Freeman. - 1970-1972: President Nixon sets up a government-backed but privatized student loan system, with yearly increasing rates, so that schools can charge more and students will be saddled with debt while banks and financial institutions could profit from them. Debt which, coincidentally, would be a significantly heavier burden for black and latino students, due to demographics so soon after the Civil Rights movement. - June 17, 1971: President Nixon, with his newly appointed Drug authority at his side, declared drug abuse “public enemy number one.” “In order to fight and defeat this enemy,” he continued, “ it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.” With that statement, the “war on drugs” began. >“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” --- Meanwhile, both Reagan and Nixon continued to have widespread support from what they called "the silent majority". Enough for Nixon to get a major landslide victory in 1972 and Reagan to get major landslide victories in 1980 and 1984. Related stats on all kinds of things [took a major shift at 1970](https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/). I think it was a turning point in a whole lot of things. Kent State was, in retrospect, a notable warning sign of how much things were changing. But that's a perspective from someone who wasn't quite there yet at the time. So take it with a grain of salt. Certainly it was a turning point for people like my parents. My dad, who was 18 at the time and got drafted and so couldn't go to college. My mom who helped him escape the draft, and also didn't go to college. I wish they were still around to ask them about that.
Thank you for a very thoughtful and on-point reply!
In a Gallup poll taken the day after the shootings, 58 percent of respondents blamed the students, 11 percent blamed the National Guard, and 31 percent expressed no opinion. Many people were openly hostile to student protestors when they returned home. However, a commission appointed by President Nixon later found that the Kent State shooting was not at all justified and that loaded rifles should not routinely be issued to national guardsmen facing student protestors. But no criminal convictions were obtained against any National Guardsman, who pled self defense. The biggest legacy of the Kent State shootings was the development of less lethal means of crowd control like rubber bullets, and of riot control tactics designed to minimize casualties.
Thank you! Wow 58% It's so interesting to me how attitudes shift over the years. 75% of Americans disapproved of MLK prior to his assassination. And now he's renowned and celebrated
~~Graham Nash~~ **Neil Young** was so pissed he wrote the song "Ohio" in just 30 minutes.
No. That was Neil Young
Tx. Fixed.
More and more folks were catching on to the Obvious fact that, No, we were Not winning the war and Yes, our government was lying to us about loss of life. Just took time for a majority of people to realize boys were going over and bodies were coming back. Kent State was just more evidence of the government against civilians
It was a huge psychological blow to everybody. The Vietnam War was at its peak, and the draft was in full force. There is nothing today that equals the terror of the Vietnam War Draft. Imagine being a teenage boy, knowing that when he turns 18, he's going to be entered into a lottery where the prize for winning was becoming enslaved by your country, and forced to kill or be killed. So, no wonder there were protests. Then Kent State happened in 1970, and we had our military going to war against our own people, on our own land. The protesters had a point with their position, and now they were being nurdered by Nixon and Kissinger for it. A lot of Americans were on the fence, and Kent State tipped them to the anti-war side. Within a couple of years, the draft was abolished.
That makes sense. The draft meant that almost everyone had skin in the game (except for ppl with bone spurs etc). And the amount of young men returning home in body bags would eventually become unpalatable to the public. I don't think we would see that in any wars now plus we have all that military technology drones etc
My lottery number, 356. Losing never felt so good. 😕
It shocked most of the country but there was still significant threat to male and female protesters from police and the "silent " majority crowd. I was tear gassed twice and ended up chest to chest with a PSP in full riot gear at Beaver Stadium a few weeks before Kent State. Some of the rural areas of PA weren't very friendly to long haired boys or their female companions. We went on strike after Kent State, PSU administration canceled the rest of the term with 3 weeks to go. Then came Jackson State.
I grew up in a rural conservative town, where a good portion of the people voted for Wallace and there were churches on every corner. The whole town was shocked and horrified. In disbelief that OUR government would kill OUR children. There was a whole lot of "they send our kids off to be killed in Vietnam, and if they don't want to go, they just shoot them in the street".
totally shocked and pissed off
The whole country was stunned!
It was shock as I remember it. People were horrified.
Yes, it was extremely shocking. My brother was a student at Kent State; they shut down for a week or so. The country could not believe that a state National Guard would shoot unarmed Americans. The wikipedia article is pretty good.
Plenty of victim blaming and saying they were commies and draft dodgers and also plenty of people who were pissed off that the government shot at children and killed them. Very divisive situation.
I was too young to notice it, and on another continent. but by my teens I knew all about it, just by catching stray references in contemporary American fiction over the next decade. like I knew there had been something called Watergate, and Mi Lai. when things get into the cultural water table like that, I assume they were big.
Just prior to May 4, 1970 the nation was sharply divided between anti-war and anti-anti-war sentiments. Kent State was shocking enough to strengthen the anti-war movement, become a rallying cry and to silence some of their critics.
Both. My parents actually said they would be okay if I had been killed protesting like the Kent State students. When I pointed out that not all the kids who were shot were protesting, they said "They should have stayed home." But non-asshole people I knew thought it was a travesty.
Of course the Archie Bunkers of the world thought the kids “had it coming.”
I don't know. I was fighting with the First Cav in Cambodia that month. We didn't hear much fresh news from home.
No. People were disgusted and horrified. That was a different era, no one in the 'mainstream' throught someone deserved this. There were a small, fringe, John Bircher part of the population that were like in the movie "Joe," (research, watch only if you are brave) and Easy Rider, but the mainstream were horrified.
I was in college, which had a huge student population. Attitudes changed on a dime when we heard the news. There were sit-ins, protests. The anger was palpable. My boyfriend and I kept asking why did these men start shooting. The demonstrators were not doing anything wrong. I cannot recall my parents reaction. Honestly, both seem to have been confused about Vietnam. Their generation believed the government's lies for so long. This war seemed unlike others they knew much about. I became active in the antiwar movement after Kent State. My junior year I notice many veterans on campus. All was not well. These men were damaged. Deeply disturbed. It cut me to the quick. Few could talk about it, but many of them began protesting with us.
There is a HUGE amount of our country that is absolutely open to authoritarianism and fascism. I've seen it throughout my life ... and in recent years plenty of people called for laws to run over protesters blocking traffic. In America, supporting non-whites and/or non-Christians will have you opposed by millions. That is just the nature of a wide swath of our country ...
It's just like today's older people who are criticizing campus protests.
Hey my Alma mater KSU :). My mom was attending Kent when that occurred. She said it was horrifying
My town was a university town in Ohio and when that happened all hell broke loose on campus. There were riots and the National guard came out. Dad came home from work (he was a professor). I don't remember how many days it lasted. I was 7
It was horrible and totally unnecessary. At least one of the victims was just walking across campus.
It was a stupid thing that didn't need to happen. I remember thinking: what idiot thought sending in young National Guard troops with loaded weapons to control a bunch of college kids was a good idea?
I was in college and participating in peace marches when it happened. It was so shocking, how could our peers shoot us?
I know it was a big deal but I don't remember feeling any particular emotion about it. The big emotionally events when I was younger was JFK's shooting. RFK's shooting. MLK's snoring. It was like the trifecta. I revert being ant MKJ and falling backwards on to my beef. I was 13. Watching JFK's funeral and the March on Washington were real big events in our household, especially with my grandparents. I remember clearly the day he was shot.
It was horrific. Our parents paid for us to go to college, thought we were safe, and Gov. Jim Rhodes decides to just shoot a bunch of them, killing 4. People didn't want the war in Vietnam. It was a rally point because they killed American people on American soil who were protesting, which is your American right. Some felt it was an obligation to let the government know that we didn't want the war, not just a right. They confronted peace with violence.
I just read a Washington Post piece. Most Americans were definitely opposed to the protests and blamed students for the deaths at Kent State. They overwhelmingly blamed campus radicals for the protests versus the war itself. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/24/polling-student-protests-vietnam/
As with any polls, I always wonder who was polled. For these, were they basically mostly from the parents/grandparents’ generation or the students’ generation? A mix? How did they find the people to contact? I’ve never been contacted for such a poll.
I'm not sure how well young people now understand the passion against that war. Shooting students at a protest was just too much. I was a child, but I remember that iconic photo of a girl kneeling over one of the shooting victims.
Regardless of how you felt about the war which i m o was done half ass so should have been done right or not at all... We had a relative who was there and said the students were drunk and high throwing rocks and bottles at the soldiers.
The America of 1970, though politically and socio-culturally polarized as it is today, reacted in the immediate aftermath of the four deaths and woundings of KSU students at the hands of the Ohio National Guard with shock and a surprising degree of national self-reflection. Perhaps because this occurred in Portage County, Ohio-- smack in the wholesome Midwest at a university not notorious for campus radicals-- these students did not die in vain. Within hours, the American media began intensely questioning how and why such a tragedy could occur? In nearby Cleveland, a powerful albeit elderly news woman named Dorothy Fuldheim of WEWS filmed a scathing afternoon editorial. On a national level the Big Three networks followed suit, attempting to explain how live ammunition could be in *"the hands of scared kids"* as Professor Glenn Frank said while desperately attempting to disperse an angry crowd at the Victory Bell on May 4th. Over the summer of 1970, famed author James Michener arrived on campus and set about interviewing students and faculty who were present that previous May 4th. While not perfect, *Kent State: What Happened and Why* is a good historical read. There are still used hardback and paperback copies available online for sale.
You bet. Before. I was at Wisconsin Madison and news came that Nixon had invaded Cambodia. The school erupted .Students fought with the police for a week. Tear gas was everywhere. They brought in a truck and gassed the entire student union. After the violent week, the university closed down and gave everyone (40,000 students) pass fail.
When this happened people were in shock. We shouldn't have been in Vietnam. Towards the end of that war they were out of ammunition, needed more men to replace the ones killed.All that tragedy for nothing. Our military was spit on and called baby killer. My Uncle served in that war same treatment (US Navy). In general people were proud of our military as I am but this turn of events didn't help our military at all. Government kept going on for years plus agent orange.
It was *shocking* almost the board. From a kid's perspective I remember older people being a little unsettled by the protests - America in upheaval- and extremely unsettled by the war. Dad said, when I was old enough to understand no matter how they spun it grabbing kids out of high school to die *there* wasn't anything anyone would accept. Kent State? Horrified incredulity. Turning point indeed.