In light of the recent events at Virginia Tech, I hesitated for a bit before posting this diary, but the shootings at Kent State University were a defining moment, both in our history and in my life, and so they deserve to be remembered. I apologize if the diary brings additional pain to anyone.
update: kestrel9000's diary has an important historical and musical perspective on the events.
May 4 is an anniversary I observe every year.
I was eleven years old in May 1970. The previous October I’d snuck a black armband (cut from the sleeve of my leotard) out of the house against the wishes of my mother. As soon as I was out of her sight, I put it on to observe the moratorium against the Vietnam War at my suburban Los Angeles elementary school, since I was far too young to head to Washington, D.C., to join with the hundreds of thousands there demonstrating. I thought it was a good way to show my opposition to the war, and my fear that my two hippie brothers were about to be drafted.
We'd recently suffered through the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Reagan was Governor of California in 1970, and, in LA, we had just lived through a prolonged and disruptive teacher's strike, where the kids marched on the picket lines alongside the teachers. Every night on the news, we were treated to real views of the war: blood and mayhem, rising casualty and body counts. We saw the now-iconic pictures when they were new, like the almost casual executionof a Vietcong officer on the street. We saw the protests growing in number and attendance and urgency as public opinion was changing. We saw Nixon's face, and even as kids knew we couldn't trust him.
You know, you see these bums, you know, blowin' up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are, burnin' up the books, I mean, stormin' around about this issue, I mean, you name it - get rid of the war, there'll be another one.
-- Richard Nixon, New York Times, May 2, 1970
May 4, 1970
Alan Canfora, wounded
John Cleary, wounded
I remember coming home from school and finding my mother in front of the television looking stunned. Four students had been shot dead at Kent State University in Ohio. We talked about what had happened, and even at eleven, I knew that something had changed. They were killing us now -- each of the students could have been my brother.
All over the country, the weekend before that May 4 had been a busy one for protest. The war was escalating, and Nixon had announced on April 30 that we would be moving into Cambodia. College campuses all over the country were convulsing. In Kent, there were demonstrations May 1,2 and 3, and the ROTC building on campus was burned. Ohio’s Governor James Rhodes had been authorized by President Nixon to call in the National Guard if he felt things were getting out of control at the universities in that state.
A thousand or so students gathered on the commons on May 4 to protest the escalation of the war, and the National Guard had been invited by the Governor to keep the peace. kainah's diary from last year has an excellent chronology of the events that led up to the shootings, as does Kent May 4 Center:
A total of 67 shots were fired in 13 seconds. Four students: Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder were killed. Nine students were wounded: Joseph Lewis, John Cleary, Thomas Grace, Robbie Stamps, Donald Scott MacKenzie, Alan Canfora, Douglas Wrentmore, James Russell and Dean Kahler. Of the wounded, one was permanently paralyzed, and several were seriously maimed. All were full-time students.
Alan Canfora (seen above waving the flag), one of the wounded students and director of Kent May 4 Center:
A total of 67 gunshots were fired by the guardsmen from the hilltop. Most of the bullets were fired over 300 feet into the distant Prentice Hall parking lot. Two of the students killed, Allison Krause and Jeff Miller, were protesters. Two others, Sandy Scheuer and Bill Schroeder were bystanders. Jeff was killed 275 feet away from his killer. Allison was 350 feet away. Sandy and Bill were approximately 390 feet away.
Bill Arthrell, a Kent State student:
Kent State gained infamy as the place where it happened: The place where America turned its guns on its own children, the place where the war came home.
Ten days later, protests at Jackson Statein Mississippi resulted in the deaths of two more students. Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, was 21, a junior pre-law major and the father of an 18-month-old son. Earl Green, 17, was a senior at Jim Hill High School in Jackson, and was walking home from work at a local grocery store when he stopped to watch the action.
May 4, 1978:
Having graduated from high school in 1976, I was attending university in the Midwest and had begun to do some environmental and anti-nuclear work on campus. Some friends and I heard about a rally at Kent State on May 4, a twelve-hour drive. We decided to go; it was the first legal commemoration of the event to be held at Kent State University itself.
There was a peaceful gathering of about 1,000 people, with chanting and speeches. One that still echoes in my head nearly forty years later: "Four students dead! Rhodes goes free! That’s what the rich call democracy!"
After an hour or so, we marched over to the site on campus where the shootings had taken place. Amazingly, a gym was being built there. At the time, I had no idea of the struggle that had been taking place over the building of a gym on hallowed ground, a place where students had been shot and killed.
From Bill Arthrell's compelling article about the fight over the gym:
I had heard the other analogies: It would be like putting a bowling alley at Gettysburg, a Pizza Hut at Bunker Hill, or a K-Mart at Valley Forge. But this one fit the best: "the white man's Wounded Knee."
Ground had been broken in September 1977, after months of protest, legal action and even a a 62-day long Tent City at the site of the shootings. The area was being protected by cops in full riot gear. They were there that May 4 to make sure nothing untoward happened, just as they had every day since the previous September.
Behind the fence guarding the partially-built gym were a hundred of them, standing and watching, their visors down so we couldn't see their faces. Along with many others, I chanted and sang for a while. Then, when some of the demonstrators foolishly decided it would be a good idea to try to push the fence down, I moved away as quickly as I could, particularly given the local history. I didn't trust anyone in riot gear, especially considering the reason we were there. I knew it had been a good idea to turn back when I heard the pop of the tear gas canisters and saw people running. We got out of there before any of us got hurt, but our eyes stung for hours. We drove all night to get home, exhilarated and exhausted.
This demonstration was a pivotal event in my life. I was the age of the students who had been shot, and I felt like I was part of something bigger than myself. I felt like I could make a difference. The KSU rally in 1978 turned me into an activist.
May 4, 1980:
I was living in New York City, and attending college. It was right at the time when eighteen year olds were newly required to register with the Selective Service. A group of us had organized a successful student strike and teach-in at our college so that we could educate our fellow students about draft registration, as we called it, and to demand that our college not give our social security numbers to the Selective Service System as was newly required. On May 4, four of us decided to head over to Richard Nixon’s townhouse on East 66th Street in order to remind him that people hadn’t forgotten – it had only been ten years since the shootings. We stood outside his house for hours with a sign:
We remember Kent State and Jackson State.
Someone peered at us every now and then from behind a curtain, but no one came out, and no one called the police to have us removed or arrested. As I think about that now, how long might we be allowed on that sidewalk today before we're hustled off to the nearest police precinct or wrestled to the ground? Five minutes? Three? One?
May 4, 2007:
I feel the outrage and sadness every May 4. As this war and this administration drag on and on, though, each May 4 feels closer to, rather than further from, 1970. My Lai or the Battle of Fallujah? How many more will die for a mistake? War without end -- and for what?
How many now?
May 4 is the day I realized that social action is an integral part of my makeup, that I have to do something to end injustice, to make the world a better place, to make a real impact. May 4 is the day I realized I had work to do. May 4 is my anniversary too.
Today I will wear black. I will update the sign in my window indicating the number of dead Americans in Iraq, and I will put up a new sign observing the anniversary of the deaths of Allison Krause, Jeff Miller, Sandy Scheuer and Bill Schroeder. I will remind my Senators and Congressmember that this war must end and that veterans must be supported once they are home. I will continue to work so this kind of atrocity can never happen again; the possibility already exists. I will play Neil Young, loud, and teach my sons the lyrics to his song about this day.
We're finally on our own.
Allison Bill
Jeff Sandy
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Links for more information:
Kent State University Department of Special Collections and Archives
Kent May 4 Center
May 4 Archive.org
Mike and Kendra's May 4, 1970 Website
http://kent.state.tripod.com/
http://alancanfora.com/