| Kent State shootings | |
|---|---|
John Filo's Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller minutes after he was fatally shot by the Ohio National Guard
| |
| Location | Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States |
| Date | May 4, 1970 12:24 p.m. (Eastern: UTC−5) |
| Weapons | |
| Deaths | 4 |
Non-fatal injuries
| 9 |
| Victims | Kent State University students |
| Perpetrators | Ohio National Guard |
May 4, 1970, Kent State Shootings Site
| |
  | |
| Location | 0.5 mi. SE of the intersection of E. Main St. and S. Lincoln St., Kent, Ohio |
| Coordinates | 41.1501°N 81.3433°WCoordinates: 41.1501°N 81.3433°W |
| Area | 17.24 acres (6.98 ha) |
| NRHP reference # | 10000046 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | February 23, 2010 |
| Designated NHL | December 23, 2016 |
Memorial
to Jeffrey Miller, taken from approximately the same perspective as
John Filo's 1970 photograph, as it appeared in 2007.
The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre, were the shootings on May 4, 1970, of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, during a mass protest against the bombing of neutral
Cambodia by United States military forces.
Twenty-eight guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13
seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom
suffered permanent paralysis.
Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the Cambodian Campaign, which President Richard Nixon
announced during a television address on April 30 of that year. Other
students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest
from a distance.
There was a significant national response to the shootings:
hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout
the United States due to a student strike of 4 million students, and the event further affected public opinion, at an already socially contentious time, over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.
Background
Richard Nixon was elected president of the United States in 1968, promising to end the Vietnam War. In November 1969, the My Lai Massacre
by American troops of between 347 and 504 civilians in a Vietnamese
village was exposed, leading to increased public opposition in the
United States to the war. The nature of the draft also changed in
December 1969, with the first draft lottery
since World War II. This eliminated deferments allowed in the prior
draft process, affecting many college students and teachers.
The war had appeared to be winding down in 1969, so the new invasion of Cambodia angered those who believed it only exacerbated the conflict. Across the U.S., campuses erupted in protests in what Time called "a nation-wide student strike", setting the stage for the events of early May 1970.
Kent State protest activity, 1966–1970
During the 1966 Homecoming Parade, protesters walked dressed in military paraphernalia with gas masks.
In the fall of 1968, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and a campus Black Student Organization staged a sit-in to protest police recruiters on campus. 250 black students walked off campus in a successful amnesty bid for the protesters.
On April 1, 1969, SDS members attempted to enter the
administration building with a list of demands where they clashed with
police. In response, the university revoked the Kent State SDS chapter
charter. On April 16 a disciplinary hearing involving two of the
protesters resulted in a confrontation between supporters and opponents
of SDS. The Ohio State Highway Patrol was called and 58 were arrested. Four SDS leaders spent six months in prison as a result of the incident.
On April 10, 1970, Jerry Rubin, a leader of the Youth International Party
(also known as the YIPpies), spoke on campus. In remarks reported
locally, he said "The first part of the Yippie program is to kill your
parents. They are the first oppressors." Two weeks after that, Bill
Anthrell, an SDS member and former student, distributed flyers to an
event in which he said he was going to napalm a dog. The event turned out to be an anti-napalm teach-in.
Timeline
Thursday, April 30
President Nixon announced that the "Cambodian Incursion" had been launched by United States combat forces.
Friday, May 1
At Kent State University, a demonstration with about 500 students
was held on May 1 on the Commons (a grassy knoll in the center of
campus traditionally used as a gathering place for rallies or protests).
As the crowd dispersed to attend classes by 1 p.m., another rally was
planned for May 4 to continue the protest of the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia.
There was widespread anger, and many protesters issued a call to "bring
the war home". A group of history students buried a copy of the United States Constitution to symbolize that Nixon had killed it. A sign was put on a tree asking "Why is the ROTC building still standing?"
Trouble exploded in town around midnight, when people left a bar
and began throwing beer bottles at police cars and breaking windows in
downtown storefronts. In the process they broke a bank window, setting
off an alarm. The news spread quickly and it resulted in several bars
closing early to avoid trouble. Before long, more people had joined the
vandalism.
By the time police arrived, a crowd of 120 had already gathered.
Some people from the crowd lit a small bonfire in the street. The crowd
appeared to be a mix of bikers, students, and transient people. A few
members of the crowd began to throw beer bottles at the police, and then
started yelling obscenities at them. The entire Kent police force was
called to duty as well as officers from the county and surrounding
communities. Kent Mayor LeRoy Satrom declared a state of emergency, called the office of Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes
to seek assistance, and ordered all of the bars closed. The decision to
close the bars early increased the size of the angry crowd. Police
eventually succeeded in using tear gas to disperse the crowd from downtown, forcing them to move several blocks back to the campus.
Saturday, May 2
City
officials and downtown businesses received threats, and rumors
proliferated that radical revolutionaries were in Kent to destroy the
city and university. Several merchants reported that they were told that
if they did not display anti-war slogans, their business would be
burned down. Kent's police chief told the mayor that according to a
reliable informant, the ROTC building, the local army recruiting station and post office had been targeted for destruction that night. There were rumors of students with caches of arms, plots to poison the local water supply with LSD, of students building underground tunnels for the purpose of blowing up the town's main store. Mayor Satrom met with Kent city officials and a representative of the Ohio Army National Guard.
Following the meeting, Satrom made the decision to call Governor Rhodes
and request that the National Guard be sent to Kent, a request that was
granted. Because of the rumors and threats, Satrom believed that local
officials would not be able to handle future disturbances.
The decision to call in the National Guard was made at 5:00 p.m., but
the guard did not arrive in town that evening until around 10 p.m. By
this time, a large demonstration was under way on the campus, and the
campus Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) building was burning.
The arsonists were never apprehended, and no one was injured in the
fire. According to the report of the President's Commission on Campus
Unrest:
Information developed by an FBI investigation of the ROTC building fire indicates that, of those who participated actively, a significant portion weren't Kent State students. There is also evidence to suggest that the burning was planned beforehand: railroad flares, a machete, and ice picks are not customarily carried to peaceful rallies.
There were reports that some Kent firemen and police officers were
struck by rocks and other objects while attempting to extinguish the
blaze. Several fire engine companies had to be called because protesters
carried the fire hose into the Commons and slashed it.
The National Guard made numerous arrests, mostly for curfew violations,
and used tear gas; at least one student was slightly wounded with a bayonet.
Sunday, May 3
During a press conference at the Kent firehouse, an emotional Governor Rhodes pounded on the desk, pounding which can be heard in the recording of his speech. He called the student protesters un-American, referring to them as revolutionaries set on destroying higher education in Ohio.
We've seen here at the city of Kent especially, probably the most vicious form of campus-oriented violence yet perpetrated by dissident groups. They make definite plans of burning, destroying, and throwing rocks at police and at the National Guard and the Highway Patrol. This is when we're going to use every part of the law enforcement agency of Ohio to drive them out of Kent. We are going to eradicate the problem. We're not going to treat the symptoms. And these people just move from one campus to the other and terrorize the community. They're worse than the brown shirts and the communist element and also the night riders and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America. Now I want to say this. They are not going to take over [the] campus. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America.
Rhodes also claimed he would obtain a court order declaring a state
of emergency that would ban further demonstrations and gave the
impression that a situation akin to martial law had been declared; however, he never attempted to obtain such an order.
During the day, some students came to downtown Kent to help with
cleanup efforts after the rioting, actions which were met with mixed
reactions from local businessmen. Mayor Satrom, under pressure from
frightened citizens, ordered a curfew until further notice.
Around 8 p.m., another rally was held on the campus Commons. By
8:45 p.m., the Guardsmen used tear gas to disperse the crowd, and the
students reassembled at the intersection of Lincoln and Main, holding a
sit-in with the hopes of gaining a meeting with Mayor Satrom and
University President Robert White. At 11:00 p.m., the Guard announced
that a curfew had gone into effect and began forcing the students back
to their dorms. A few students were bayoneted by Guardsmen.
Monday, May 4
The Victory Bell
On Monday, May 4, a protest was scheduled to be held at noon, as had
been planned three days earlier. University officials attempted to ban
the gathering, handing out 12,000 leaflets stating that the event was
canceled. Despite these efforts, an estimated 2,000 people gathered
on the university's Commons, near Taylor Hall. The protest began with
the ringing of the campus's iron Victory Bell (which had historically
been used to signal victories in football games) to mark the beginning
of the rally, and the first protester began to speak.
Companies A and C, 1/145th Infantry and Troop G of the 2/107th Armored Cavalry,
Ohio National Guard (ARNG), the units on the campus grounds, attempted
to disperse the students. The legality of the dispersal was later
debated at a subsequent wrongful death and injury trial. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that authorities did indeed have the right to disperse the crowd.
The dispersal process began late in the morning with campus patrolman Harold Rice
riding in a National Guard Jeep, approaching the students to read an
order to disperse or face arrest. The protesters responded by throwing
rocks, striking one campus patrolman and forcing the Jeep to retreat.
Just before noon, the Guard returned and again ordered the crowd to disperse. When most of the crowd refused, the Guard used tear gas.
Because of wind, the tear gas had little effect in dispersing the
crowd, and some launched a second volley of rocks toward the Guard's
line and chanted "Pigs off campus!" The students lobbed the tear gas
canisters back at the National Guardsmen, who wore gas masks.
When it became clear that the crowd was not going to disperse, a
group of 77 National Guard troops from A Company and Troop G, with
bayonets fixed on their M1 Garand rifles,
began to advance upon the hundreds of protesters. As the guardsmen
advanced, the protesters retreated up and over Blanket Hill, heading out
of the Commons area. Once over the hill, the students, in a loose
group, moved northeast along the front of Taylor Hall, with some
continuing toward a parking lot in front of Prentice Hall (slightly
northeast of and perpendicular to Taylor Hall). The guardsmen pursued
the protesters over the hill, but rather than veering left as the
protesters had, they continued straight, heading toward an athletic
practice field enclosed by a chain link fence. Here they remained for
about 10 minutes, unsure of how to get out of the area short of
retracing their path. During this time, the bulk of the students
congregated to the left and front of the guardsmen, approximately 150 to
225 ft (46 to 69 m) away, on the veranda of Taylor Hall. Others were
scattered between Taylor Hall and the Prentice Hall parking lot, while
still others were standing in the parking lot, or dispersing through the
lot as they had been previously ordered.
While on the practice field, the guardsmen generally faced the
parking lot, which was about 100 yards (91 m) away. At one point, some
of them knelt and aimed their weapons toward the parking lot, then stood
up again. At one point the guardsmen formed a loose huddle and appeared
to be talking to one another. They had cleared the protesters from the
Commons area, and many students had left, but some stayed and were still
angrily confronting the soldiers, some throwing rocks and tear gas
canisters. About 10 minutes later, the guardsmen began to retrace their
steps back up the hill toward the Commons area. Some of the students on
the Taylor Hall veranda began to move slowly toward the soldiers as they
passed over the top of the hill and headed back into the Commons.
Map of the shootings
During their climb back to Blanket Hill, several guardsmen stopped
and half-turned to keep their eyes on the students in the Prentice Hall
parking lot. At 12:24 p.m., according to eyewitnesses, a sergeant named Myron Pryor turned and began firing at the crowd of students with his .45 pistol.
A number of guardsmen nearest the students also turned and fired their
rifles at the students. In all, at least 29 of the 77 guardsmen claimed
to have fired their weapons, using an estimate of 67 rounds of
ammunition. The shooting was determined to have lasted only 13 seconds,
although John Kifner reported in The New York Times that "it appeared to go on, as a solid volley, for perhaps a full minute or a little longer." The question of why the shots were fired remains widely debated.
Photo taken from the perspective of where the Ohio National Guard soldiers stood when they opened fire on the students
Dent from a bullet in Solar Totem #1 sculpture by Don Drumm caused by a .30 caliber round fired by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State on May 4, 1970
The adjutant general of the Ohio National Guard told reporters that a sniper
had fired on the guardsmen, which remains a debated allegation. Many
guardsmen later testified that they were in fear for their lives, which
was questioned partly because of the distance between them and the
students killed or wounded. Time magazine later concluded that "triggers were not pulled accidentally at Kent State." The President's Commission on Campus Unrest
avoided probing the question of why the shootings happened. Instead, it
harshly criticized both the protesters and the Guardsmen, but it
concluded that "the indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of
students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and
inexcusable."
The shootings killed four students and wounded nine. Two of the four students killed, Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller, had participated in the protest. The other two, Sandra Scheuer and William Knox Schroeder, had been walking from one class to the next at the time of their deaths. Schroeder was also a member of the campus ROTC
battalion. Of those wounded, none was closer than 71 feet (22 m) to the
guardsmen. Of those killed, the nearest (Miller) was 265 feet (81 m)
away, and their average distance from the guardsmen was 345 feet
(105 m).
Eyewitness accounts
Several present related what they saw.
Unidentified speaker 1:
Suddenly, they turned around, got on their knees, as if they were ordered to, they did it all together, aimed. And personally, I was standing there saying, they're not going to shoot, they can't do that. If they are going to shoot, it's going to be blank.
Unidentified speaker 2:
The shots were definitely coming my way, because when a bullet passes your head, it makes a crack. I hit the ground behind the curve, looking over. I saw a student hit. He stumbled and fell, to where he was running towards the car. Another student tried to pull him behind the car, bullets were coming through the windows of the car.
As this student fell behind the car, I saw another student go down, next to the curb, on the far side of the automobile, maybe 25 or 30 yards from where I was lying. It was maybe 25, 30, 35 seconds of sporadic firing.
The firing stopped. I lay there maybe 10 or 15 seconds. I got up, I saw four or five students lying around the lot. By this time, it was like mass hysteria. Students were crying, they were screaming for ambulances. I heard some girl screaming, "They didn't have blank, they didn't have blank," no, they didn't.
Another witness was Chrissie Hynde, the future lead singer of The Pretenders and a student at Kent State University at the time. In her 2015 autobiography she described what she saw:
Then I heard the tatatatatatatatatat sound. I thought it was fireworks. An eerie sound fell over the common. The quiet felt like gravity pulling us to the ground. Then a young man's voice: "They fucking killed somebody!" Everything slowed down and the silence got heavier.
The ROTC building, now nothing more than a few inches of charcoal, was surrounded by National Guardsmen. They were all on one knee and pointing their rifles at ... us! Then they fired.
By the time I made my way to where I could see them it was still unclear what was going on. The guardsmen themselves looked stunned. We looked at them and they looked at us. They were just kids, 19 years old, like us. But in uniform. Like our boys in Vietnam.
Gerald Casale, the future bassist/singer of Devo, also witnessed the shootings. While speaking to the Vermont Review in 2005, he recalled what he saw:
All I can tell you is that it completely and utterly changed my life. I was a white hippie boy and then I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of two people I knew.
Two of the four people who were killed, Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause, were my friends. We were all running our asses off from these motherfuckers. It was total, utter bullshit. Live ammunition and gasmasks—none of us knew, none of us could have imagined ... They shot into a crowd that was running away from them!
I stopped being a hippie and I started to develop the idea of devolution. I got real, real pissed off.
May 4, after the shootings
Immediately
after the shootings, many angry students were ready to launch an
all-out attack on the National Guard. Many faculty members, led by
geology professor and faculty marshal Glenn Frank, pleaded with the
students to leave the Commons and to not give in to violent escalation:
I don't care whether you've never listened to anyone before in your lives. I am begging you right now. If you don't disperse right now, they're going to move in, and it can only be a slaughter. Would you please listen to me? Jesus Christ, I don't want to be a part of this ... !
After 20 minutes of speaking, the students left the Commons, as
ambulance personnel tended to the wounded, and the Guard left the area.
Professor Frank's son, also present that day, said, "He absolutely saved
my life and hundreds of others".
Victims
Killed (and approximate distance from the National Guard):
- Jeffrey Glenn Miller; age 20; 265 ft (81 m) shot through the mouth; killed instantly
- Allison B. Krause; age 19; 343 ft (105 m) fatal left chest wound; died later that day
- William Knox Schroeder; age 19; 382 ft (116 m) fatal chest wound; died almost an hour later in a local hospital while undergoing surgery
- Sandra Lee Scheuer; age 20; 390 ft (120 m) fatal neck wound; died a few minutes later from loss of blood
Wounded (and approximate distance from the National Guard):
- Joseph Lewis, Jr.; 71 ft (22 m); hit twice in the right abdomen and left lower leg
- John R. Cleary; 110 ft (34 m); upper left chest wound
- Thomas Mark Grace; 225 ft (69 m); struck in left ankle
- Alan Michael Canfora; 225 ft (69 m); hit in his right wrist
- Dean R. Kahler; 300 ft (91 m); back wound fracturing the vertebrae, permanently paralyzed from the chest down
- Douglas Alan Wrentmore; 329 ft (100 m); hit in his right knee
- James Dennis Russell; 375 ft (114 m); hit in his right thigh from a bullet and in the right forehead by birdshot, both wounds minor
- Robert Follis Stamps; 495 ft (151 m); hit in his right buttock
- Donald Scott MacKenzie; 750 ft (230 m); neck wound
In the President's Commission on Campus Unrest (pp. 273–274) they mistakenly list Thomas V. Grace, who is Thomas Mark Grace's father, as the Thomas Grace injured.
All those shot were students in good standing at the university.
Although initial newspaper reports had inaccurately stated that a
number of National Guard members had been killed or seriously injured,
only one Guardsman, Sgt. Lawrence Shafer, was injured enough to require
medical treatment, approximately 10 to 15 minutes prior to the
shootings.
Shafer is also mentioned in an FBI memo from November 15, 1973, which
was prepared by the Cleveland Office and is referred to by Field Office
file # 44-703. It reads as follows:
Upon contacting appropriate officers of the Ohio National Guard at Ravenna and Akron, Ohio, regarding ONG radio logs and the availability of service record books, the respective ONG officer advised that any inquiries concerning the Kent State University incident should be directed to the Adjutant General, ONG, Columbus, Ohio. Three persons were interviewed regarding a reported conversation by Sgt Lawrence Shafer, ONG, that Shafer had bragged about "taking a bead" on Jeffrey Miller at the time of the ONG shooting and each interviewee was unable to substantiate such a conversation.
But in an interview broadcast in 1986 on the ABC News documentary series Our World, Shafer identified the person that he fired at as student Joseph Lewis, who was shot and wounded in the attack.
Aftermath and long-term effects
Photographs
of the dead and wounded at Kent State that were distributed in
newspapers and periodicals worldwide amplified sentiment against the
United States' invasion of Cambodia and the Vietnam War in general. In
particular, the camera of Kent State photojournalism student John Filo captured a 14-year-old runaway, Mary Ann Vecchio, screaming over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller, who had been shot in the mouth. The photograph, which won a Pulitzer Prize, became the most enduring image of the events, and one of the more enduring images of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
The shootings led to protests on college campuses throughout the United States, and a student strike, causing more than 450 campuses across the country to close with both violent and non-violent demonstrations. A common sentiment was expressed by students at New York University with a banner hung out of a window that read, "They Can't Kill Us All." On May 8, 11 people were bayonetted at the University of New Mexico by the New Mexico National Guard in a confrontation with student protesters. Also on May 8, an antiwar protest at New York's Federal Hall National Memorial
held at least partly in reaction to the Kent State killings was met
with a counter-rally of pro-Nixon construction workers (organized by Peter J. Brennan, later appointed U.S. Labor Secretary by President Nixon), resulting in the Hard Hat Riot. Shortly after the shootings took place, the Urban Institute
conducted a national study that concluded the Kent State shooting was
the first nationwide student strike in U.S. history; over 4 million
students protested and hundreds of American colleges and universities
closed during the student strikes. The Kent State campus remained closed
for six weeks.
Just five days after the shootings, 100,000 people demonstrated
in Washington, D.C., against the war and the killing of unarmed student
protesters. Ray Price, Nixon's chief speechwriter from 1969 to 1974,
recalled the Washington demonstrations saying, "The city was an armed
camp. The mobs were smashing windows, slashing tires, dragging parked
cars into intersections, even throwing bedsprings off overpasses into
the traffic down below. This was the quote, student protest. That's not
student protest, that's civil war." Not only was the President taken to Camp David for two days for his own protection, but Charles Colson
(Counsel to President Nixon from 1969 to 1973) stated that the military
was called up to protect the Nixon Administration from the angry
students; he recalled that "The 82nd Airborne
was in the basement of the executive office building, so I went down
just to talk to some of the guys and walk among them, and they're lying
on the floor leaning on their packs and their helmets and their
cartridge belts and their rifles cocked and you're thinking, 'This can't
be the United States of America. This is not the greatest free
democracy in the world. This is a nation at war with itself.'"
President Nixon and his administration's public reaction to the
shootings was perceived by many in the anti-war movement as callous.
Then National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger said the President was "pretending indifference". Stanley Karnow noted in his Vietnam: A History that "The [Nixon] administration initially reacted to this event with wanton insensitivity. Nixon's press secretary, Ron Ziegler,
whose statements were carefully programmed, referred to the deaths as a
reminder that 'when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy.'" Three days before the shootings, Nixon had talked of "bums" who were antiwar protestors on United States campuses, to which the father of Allison Krause stated on national TV "My child was not a bum."
Karnow further documented that at 4:15 a.m. on May 9, 1970, the
president met about 30 student dissidents conducting a vigil at the Lincoln Memorial,
whereupon Nixon "treated them to a clumsy and condescending monologue,
which he made public in an awkward attempt to display his benevolence."
Nixon had been trailed by White House Deputy for Domestic Affairs Egil Krogh, who saw it differently, saying, "I thought it was a very significant and major effort to reach out."
In any regard, neither side could convince the other and after meeting
with the students, Nixon expressed that those in the anti-war movement
were the pawns of foreign communists. After the student protests, Nixon asked H. R. Haldeman to consider the Huston Plan,
which would have used illegal procedures to gather information on the
leaders of the anti-war movement. Only the resistance of J. Edgar Hoover stopped the plan.
A Gallup Poll
taken immediately after the shootings reportedly showed that 58 percent
of respondents blamed the students, 11 percent blamed the National
Guard and 31 percent expressed no opinion.
However, there was wide discussion as to whether these were legally
justified shootings of American citizens, and whether the protests or
the decisions to ban them were constitutional. These debates served to
further galvanize uncommitted opinion by the terms of the discourse. The
term "massacre" was applied to the shootings by some individuals and media sources, as it had been used for the Boston Massacre of 1770, in which five were killed and several more wounded.
Students from Kent State and other universities often got a
hostile reaction upon returning home. Some were told that more students
should have been killed to teach student protesters a lesson; some
students were disowned by their families.
On May 14, ten days after the Kent State shootings, two students were killed (and 12 wounded) by police at Jackson State University, a historically black university ("HBCU"), in Jackson, Mississippi, under similar circumstances—the Jackson State killings—but that event did not arouse the same nationwide attention as the Kent State shootings.
On June 13, 1970, as a consequence of the killings of protesting
students at Kent State and Jackson State, President Nixon established
the President's Commission on Campus Unrest,
known as the Scranton Commission, which he charged to study the
dissent, disorder, and violence breaking out on college and university
campuses across the nation.
The Commission issued its findings in a September 1970 report
that concluded that the Ohio National Guard shootings on May 4, 1970,
were unjustified. The report said:
Even if the guardsmen faced danger, it was not a danger that called for lethal force. The 61 shots by 28 guardsmen certainly cannot be justified. Apparently, no order to fire was given, and there was inadequate fire control discipline on Blanket Hill. The Kent State tragedy must mark the last time that, as a matter of course, loaded rifles are issued to guardsmen confronting student demonstrators.
Legal action
In
September 1970, twenty-four students and one faculty member, identified
from photographs, were indicted on charges connected with the May 4
demonstration at the ROTC building fire three days before; they became
known as the "Kent 25". The Kent Legal Defense Fund was organized to
provide legal resources to oppose the indictments.Five
cases, all related to the burning of the ROTC building, went to trial:
one non-student defendant was convicted on one charge and two other
non-students pleaded guilty. One other defendant was acquitted, and
charges were dismissed against the last. In December 1971, all charges
against the remaining twenty were dismissed for lack of evidence.
Eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury. The
guardsmen claimed to have fired in self-defense, a claim that was
generally accepted by the criminal justice system. In 1974 U.S. District
Judge Frank J. Battisti dismissed civil rights charges against all eight on the basis that the prosecution's case was too weak to warrant a trial.
Civil actions were also attempted against the guardsmen, the
state of Ohio, and the president of Kent State. The federal court civil
action for wrongful death and injury, brought by the victims and their
families against Governor Rhodes,
the President of Kent State, and the National Guardsmen, resulted in
unanimous verdicts for all defendants on all claims after an eleven-week
trial.
The judgment on those verdicts was reversed by the Court of Appeals for
the Sixth Circuit on the ground that the federal trial judge had
mishandled an out-of-court threat against a juror. On remand, the civil
case was settled in return for payment of a total of $675,000 to all
plaintiffs by the state of Ohio
(explained by the State as the estimated cost of defense) and the
defendants' agreement to state publicly that they regretted what had
happened:
In retrospect, the tragedy of May 4, 1970, should not have occurred. The students may have believed that they were right in continuing their mass protest in response to the Cambodian invasion, even though this protest followed the posting and reading by the university of an order to ban rallies and an order to disperse. These orders have since been determined by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to have been lawful.
Some of the Guardsmen on Blanket Hill, fearful and anxious from prior events, may have believed in their own minds that their lives were in danger. Hindsight suggests that another method would have resolved the confrontation. Better ways must be found to deal with such a confrontation.
We devoutly wish that a means had been found to avoid the May 4th events culminating in the Guard shootings and the irreversible deaths and injuries. We deeply regret those events and are profoundly saddened by the deaths of four students and the wounding of nine others which resulted. We hope that the agreement to end the litigation will help to assuage the tragic memories regarding that sad day.
In the succeeding years, many in the anti-war movement have referred
to the shootings as "murders," although no criminal convictions were
obtained against any National Guardsman. In December 1970, journalist I. F. Stone wrote the following:
To those who think murder is too strong a word, one may recall that even Agnew three days after the Kent State shootings used the word in an interview on the David Frost show in Los Angeles. Agnew admitted in response to a question that what happened at Kent State was murder, "but not first degree" since there was – as Agnew explained from his own training as a lawyer – "no premeditation but simply an over-response in the heat of anger that results in a killing; it's a murder. It's not premeditated and it certainly can't be condoned."
The Kent State incident forced the National Guard to re-examine its
methods of crowd control. The only equipment the guardsmen had to
disperse demonstrators that day were M1 Garand rifles loaded with .30-06 FMJ ammunition, 12 Ga. pump shotguns, bayonets, and CS gas grenades. In the years that followed, the U.S. Army began developing less lethal means of dispersing demonstrators (such as rubber bullets),
and changed its crowd control and riot tactics to attempt to avoid
casualties amongst the demonstrators. Many of the crowd-control changes
brought on by the Kent State events are used today by police and
military forces in the United States when facing similar situations,
such as the 1992 Los Angeles riots and civil disorder during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
One outgrowth of the events was the Center for Peaceful Change
established at Kent State University in 1971 "as a living memorial to
the events of May 4, 1970". Now known as The Center for Applied Conflict Management (CACM), it developed one of the earliest conflict resolution
undergraduate degree programs in the United States. The Institute for
the Study and Prevention of Violence, an interdisciplinary program
dedicated to violence prevention, was established in 1998.
According to FBI reports, one part-time student, Terry Norman, was already noted by student protesters as an informant for both campus police and the Akron FBI branch. Norman was present during the May 4 protests, taking photographs to identify student leaders, while carrying a sidearm and wearing a gas mask.
In 1970, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover responded to questions from then-Congressman John M. Ashbrook by denying that Norman had ever worked for the FBI, a statement Norman disputed. On August 13, 1973, Indiana Senator Birch Bayh sent a memo to then-governor of Ohio John J. Gilligan
suggesting that Norman may have fired the first shot, based on
testimony he [Bayh] received from guardsmen who claimed that a gunshot
fired from the vicinity of the protesters instigated the Guard to open
fire on the students.
Throughout the years since the shootings, debate has continued on about the events of May 4, 1970.
Two of the survivors have since died—James Russell on June 23, 2007, and Robert Stamps in June 2008.
Strubbe Tape and further government reviews
In 2007 Alan Canfora,
one of the wounded students, located a static-filled copy of an audio
tape of the shootings in a Yale library archive. The original 30-minute reel-to-reel audio tape recording
was made by Terry Strubbe, a Kent State communications student who
turned on his recorder and put its microphone in his dormitory window
overlooking the campus.
At that time, Canfora asserted that an amplified version of the tape
reveals the order to shoot, "Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!".
Lawrence Shafer, a guardsman who admitted he fired during the shootings
and was one of those indicted in the 1974 federal criminal action with
charges subsequently dismissed, told the Kent-Ravenna Record-Courier
newspaper in May 2007: "I never heard any command to fire. That's all I
can say on that." Referring to the assertion that the tape reveals the
order, Shafer went on to say, "That's not to say there may not have
been, but with all the racket and noise, I don't know how anyone could
have heard anything that day." Shafer also said that "point" would not
have been part of a proper command to open fire.
A 2010 audio analysis of the Strubbe tape by Stuart Allen and Tom Owen, who were described by the Cleveland Plain Dealer
as "nationally respected forensic audio experts," concluded that the
guardsmen were given an order to fire. It is the only known recording to
capture the events leading up to the shootings. According to the Plain Dealer
description of the enhanced recording, a male voice yells "Guard!"
Several seconds pass. Then, "All right, prepare to fire!" "Get down!,"
someone shouts urgently, presumably in the crowd. Finally, "Guard! ..."
followed two seconds later by a long, booming volley of gunshots. The
entire spoken sequence lasts 17 seconds. Further analysis of the
audiotape revealed that what sounded like four pistol shots and a
confrontation occurred approximately 70 seconds before the National
Guard opened fire. According to The Plain Dealer, this new analysis raised questions about the role of Terry Norman,
a Kent State student who was an FBI informant and known to be carrying a
pistol during the disturbance. Alan Canfora said it was premature to
reach any conclusions.
In April 2012, the United States Department of Justice
determined that there were "insurmountable legal and evidentiary
barriers" to reopening the case. Also in 2012, the FBI concluded the
Strubbe tape was inconclusive because what has been described as pistol
shots may have been slamming doors and that voices heard were
unintelligible. Despite this, organizations of survivors and current
Kent State students continue to believe the Strubbe tape proves the
Guardsmen were given a military order to fire and are petitioning State
of Ohio and United States government officials to reopen the case using
independent analysis. The organizations do not desire to prosecute or
sue individual guardsmen, believing they are also victims.
One of these groups, the Kent State Truth Tribunal, was founded in 2010 by the family of Allison Krause, along with Emily Kunstler,
to demand accountability by the United States government for the
massacre. In 2014 KSTT announced their request for an independent review
by the United Nations Human Rights Committee under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the human rights treaty ratified by the United States.
Memorials and remembrances
In January 1970, only months before the shootings, a work of land art, Partially Buried Woodshed, was produced on the Kent State campus by Robert Smithson.
Shortly after the events, an inscription was added that
recontextualized the work in such a way that some people associate it
with the event.
Each May 4 from 1971 to 1975, the Kent State University
administration sponsored an official commemoration of the shootings.
Upon the university's announcement in 1976 that it would no longer
sponsor such commemorations, the May 4 Task Force, a group made up of
students and community members, was formed for this purpose. The group
has organized a commemoration on the university's campus each year since
1976; events generally include a silent march around the campus, a
candlelight vigil, a ringing of the Victory Bell in memory of those
killed and injured, speakers (always including eyewitnesses and family
members), and music.
On May 12, 1977, a tent city
was erected and maintained for a period of more than 60 days by a group
of several dozen protesters on the Kent State campus. The protesters,
led by the May 4 Task Force but also including community members and
local clergy, were attempting to prevent the university from erecting a
gymnasium annex on part of the site where the shootings had occurred
seven years earlier, which they believed would obscure the historical
event. Law enforcement finally brought the tent city to an end on July
12, 1977, after the forced removal and arrest of 193 people. The event
gained national press coverage and the issue was taken to the U.S.
Supreme Court.
In 1978, American artist George Segal
was commissioned by the Mildred Andrews Fund of Cleveland, in agreement
with the University, to create a bronze sculpture in commemoration of
the shootings, but before its completion, the sculpture was refused by
the university administration, who deemed its subject matter (the biblical Abraham poised to sacrifice his son Isaac) too controversial. Segal's completed cast-from-life bronze sculpture, Abraham and Isaac: In Memory of May 4, 1970, Kent State, was instead accepted in 1979 by Princeton University and currently resides there between the university chapel and library.
In 1990, twenty years after the shootings, a memorial
commemorating the events of May 4 was dedicated on the campus on a
2.5-acre (1.0 ha) site overlooking the University's Commons where the
student protest took place.
Even the construction of the monument became controversial and, in the
end, only 7% of the design was constructed. The memorial does not
contain the names of those killed or wounded in the shooting; under
pressure, the university agreed to install a plaque near it with the
names.
In 1999, at the urging of relatives of the four students killed in
1970, the university constructed an individual memorial for each of the
students in the parking lot between Taylor and Prentice halls. Each of
the four memorials is located on the exact spot where the student fell,
mortally wounded. They are surrounded by a raised rectangle of granite
featuring six lightposts approximately four feet high, with each
student's name engraved on a triangular marble plaque in one corner.
In 2004, a simple stone memorial was erected at Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School in Plainview, New York, which Jeffrey Miller had attended.
On May 3, 2007, just prior to the yearly commemoration, an Ohio Historical Society marker was dedicated by KSU president Lester Lefton. It is located between Taylor Hall and Prentice Hall between the parking lot and the 1990 memorial.
Also in 2007, a memorial service was held at Kent State in honor of
James Russell, one of the wounded, who died in 2007 of a heart attack.
Front side of Ohio Historical Marker #67-8:
Kent State University: May 4, 1970
In 1968, Richard Nixon won the presidency partly based on a campaign promise to end the Vietnam War. Though the war seemed to be winding down, on April 30, 1970, Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia, triggering protests across college campuses. On Friday, May 1, an anti-war rally was held on the Commons at Kent State University. Protestors called for another rally to be held on Monday, May 4. Disturbances in downtown Kent that night caused city officials to ask Governor James Rhodes to send the Ohio National Guard to maintain order. Troops put on alert Saturday afternoon were called to campus Saturday evening after an ROTC building was set on fire. Sunday morning in a press conference that was also broadcast to the troops on campus, Rhodes vowed to "eradicate the problem" of protests at Kent State.
Back side of Ohio Historical Marker #67-8:
Kent State University: May 4, 1970
On May 4, 1970, Kent State students protested on the Commons against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and the presence of the Ohio National Guard called to campus to quell demonstrations. Guardsman advanced, driving students past Taylor Hall. A small group of protesters taunted the Guard from the Prentice Hall parking lot. The Guard marched back to the Pagoda, where members of Company A, 145th Infantry, and Troop G, 107th Armored Cavalry, turned and fired 61–67 shots during thirteen seconds. Four students were killed: Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder. Nine students were wounded: Alan Canfora, John Cleary, Thomas Grace, Dean Kahler, Joseph Lewis, D. Scott MacKenzie, James Russell, Robert Stamps, and Douglas Wrentmore. Those shot were 20 to 245 yards away from the Guard. The Report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest concluded that the shootings were "unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable."
In 2008, Kent State University announced plans to construct a May 4 Visitors' Center in a room in Taylor Hall. The center was officially opened in May 2013, on the anniversary of the shootings.
A 17.24-acre (6.98 ha) area was listed as "Kent State Shootings Site" on the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 2010.
Places normally cannot be added to the Register until they have been
significant for at least fifty years, and only cases of "exceptional
importance" can be added sooner. The entry was announced as the featured listing in the National Park Service's weekly list of March 5, 2010.
Contributing resources in the site are: Taylor Hall, the Victory Bell,
Lilac Lane and Boulder Marker, The Pagoda, Solar Totem, and the Prentice
Hall Parking Lot. The National Park Service
stated the site "is considered nationally significant given its broad
effects in causing the largest student strike in United States history,
affecting public opinion about the Vietnam War, creating a legal
precedent established by the trials subsequent to the shootings, and for
the symbolic status the event has attained as a result of a government
confronting protesting citizens with unreasonable deadly force."
Every year on the anniversary of the shootings, notably on the
40th anniversary in 2010, students and others who were present share
remembrances of the day and the impact it has had on their lives. Among
them are Nick Saban, head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide football team who was a freshman in 1970; surviving student Tom Grace, who was shot in the foot; Kent State faculty member Jerry Lewis; photographer John Filo; and others.
In 2016, the site of the shootings was named as a National Historic Landmark.
In September 2016, Kent State University Libraries' department of
Special Collections and Archives began a project, sponsored by a grant
from the National Archives'
National Historical Publications and Records Commission, to digitize
materials related to the actions and reactions surrounding the
shootings.
Cultural references
Documentary
- 1970: Confrontation at Kent State (director Richard Myers)—documentary filmed by a Kent State University filmmaker in Kent, Ohio, directly following the shootings.
- 2000: Kent State: The Day the War Came Home (director Chris Triffo, executive producer Mark Mori), the Emmy-Award-winning documentary featuring interviews with injured students, eyewitnesses, guardsmen, and relatives of students killed at Kent State.
- 2007: 4 Tote in Ohio: Ein Amerikanisches Trauma ("4 dead in Ohio: an American trauma") (directors Klaus Bredenbrock and Pagonis Pagonakis)—documentary featuring interviews with injured students, eyewitnesses and a German journalist who was a U.S. correspondent.
- 2008: How It Was: Kent State Shootings—National Geographic Channel documentary series episode.
- 2010: Fire In the Heartland: Kent State, May 4, and Student Protest in America—documentary featuring the build-up to, the events of, and the aftermath of the shootings, told by many of those who were present and in some cases wounded.
- 2015: The Day the '60s Died (Director Jonathan Halperin)—PBS documentary featuring build-up of events at KSU, archival photos and film as well as eyewitness reminisce of the event.
- 2017: The Vietnam War: The History of the World (April 1969 – May 1970) Episode 8 (Director Ken Burns and Lynn Novick)—PBS documentary series featuring build-up of events at KSU, archival photos and film as well as eyewitness reminisce of the event.
Film and television
- 1974: The Trial of Billy Jack—The climactic scene of this film depicts National Guardsmen lethally firing on unarmed students, and the credits specifically mention Kent State and other student shootings.
- 1981: Kent State (director James Goldstone)—television docudrama.
- 1995: Nixon—Directed by Oliver Stone, the film features actual footage of the shootings; the event also plays an important role in the course of the film's narrative.
- 2000: The '70s, starring Vinessa Shaw and Amy Smart, a mini-series depicting four Kent State students affected by the shootings, as they move through the decade.
- 2002: The Year That Trembled (written and directed by Jay Craven; based on a novel by Scott Lax), a coming-of-age movie set in 1970 Ohio, in the aftermath of the Kent State killings.
- 2009: Watchmen briefly features the Kent State shooting during its opening montage.
- 2017: The Vietnam War (TV series), episode 8/10, "The History of the World" (April 1969 – May 1970), directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Includes a short segment on the background, events and effect of the Kent State shootings, using film footage and photographs taken at the time.
Literature
Plays
- 1976: Kent State: A Requiem by J. Gregory Payne. First performed in 1976. Told from the perspective of Bill Schroeder's mother, Florence, this play has been performed at over 150 college campuses in the U.S. and Europe in tours in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s; it was last performed at Emerson College in 2007. It is also the basis of NBC's award-winning 1981 docudrama Kent State.
- 2010: David Hassler, director of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State and theatre professor Katherine Burke teamed up to write the play May 4 Voices, in honor of the incident's 40th anniversary.
- 2012: 4 Dead in Ohio: Antigone at Kent State (created by students of Connecticut College's theatre department and David Jaffe '77, associate professor of theater and the director of the play)—An adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone using the play Burial at Thebes by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney. It was performed November 15–18, 2012 in Tansill Theater.
- 2019:Les Terroristes by Alton L. Kolpien Jr.
Prose
- Harlan Ellison's story collection, Alone Against Tomorrow (1971), is dedicated to the four students who were killed.
- Gael Baudino's Dragonsword trilogy (1988–1992) follows the story of a teaching assistant who narrowly missed being shot in the massacre. Frequent references are made to how the experience and its aftermath still traumatize the protagonist decades later, when she is a soldier.
- Jerry Fishman's How Nixon Taught America to do The Kent State Mambo (2010) is a fantasy novella about the tragedy.
- Stephen King's post-apocalyptic novel The Stand includes a scene in Book I in which Kent State campus police officers witness U.S. soldiers shooting students protesting the government cover-up of the military origins of the Superflu that is devastating the country.
Music
The best-known popular culture response to the deaths at Kent State was the protest song "Ohio", written by Neil Young for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. They promptly recorded the song, and preview discs (acetates) were rushed to major radio stations, although the group already had a hit song, "Teach Your Children", on the charts at the time. Within two and a half weeks of the Kent State shootings, "Ohio" was receiving national airplay. Crosby, Stills, and Nash
visited the Kent State campus for the first time on May 4, 1997, where
they performed the song for the May 4 Task Force's 27th annual
commemoration.
There are a number of lesser-known musical tributes, including the following:
- Harvey Andrews' 1970 song "Hey Sandy" was addressed to Sandra Scheuer.
- Steve Miller's "Jackson-Kent Blues," from the Steve Miller Band album Number 5 (released in November 1970), is another direct response.
- The Beach Boys released "Student Demonstration Time" in 1971 on Surf's Up. Mike Love wrote new lyrics for Leiber & Stoller's "Riot in Cell Block Number Nine", referencing the Kent State shootings along with other incidents such as Bloody Thursday and the Jackson State killings.
- Bruce Springsteen wrote a song called "Where Was Jesus in Ohio" in May or June 1970 in response to the Kent State shootings.
- In 1970–1971 Halim El-Dabh, a Kent State University music professor who was on campus when the shootings occurred, composed Opera Flies, a full-length opera, in response to his experience. The work was first performed on the Kent State campus on May 8, 1971, and was revived for the 25th commemoration of the events in 1995.
- Actress and singer Ruth Warrick released in 1971 a single with the song "41,000 Plus 4—The Ballad of the Kent State", an homage to the four students killed at Kent State.
- In 1971, the composer and pianist Bill Dobbins (who was a Kent State University graduate student at the time of the shootings), composed "The Balcony", an avant-garde work for jazz band inspired by the same event, according to the album's liner notes.
- Dave Brubeck's 1971 cantata Truth Is Fallen was written in response to the slain students at Kent State University and Jackson State University; the work was premiered in Midland, Michigan, on May 1, 1971, and released on LP in 1972.
- The Isley Brothers' 1971 "Ohio/ Machine Gun" is a 9'12" cover including Jimmy Hendrix' "Machine Gun", rendering the effect of gun shootings.
- Holly Near's "It Could Have Been Me" was released on A Live Album (1974). The song is Near's personal response to the incident.
- A commemorative 2-CD compilation featuring music and interviews was released by the May 4 Task Force in May 2005, in commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the shootings.
- One of the students who participated in the protest was Chrissie Hynde, future leader of The Pretenders, who was a sophomore at the time. Her former bandmate, Mark Mothersbaugh, and Gerald Casale, founding members of Devo, also attended Kent State at the time of the shootings. Casale was reportedly "standing about 15 feet (4.6 m) away" from Allison Krause when she was shot, and was friends with her and another one of the students who were killed. The shootings were the transformative moment for him and for the band, which became less of a pure joke and more a vehicle for social critique, albeit with a blackly humorous bent.
- Magpie cover the topic in their 1995 album, Give Light. The song 'Kent' was written by band member, Terry Leonino, a survivor of the Kent State shootings.
- Genesis recreates the events from the perspective of the Guards in the song "The Knife", on Trespass (October 1970).
- Barbara Dane sings "The Kent State Massacre" written by Jack Warshaw on her 1973 album I Hate the Capitalist System.
- Musician, spoken word artist and political activist Jello Biafra, who was influenced by the Vietnam War protests and Kent State, mentions the shootings in his satirical song "Wish I Was in El Salvador", included in the collaboration album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors he made with Canadian hardcore punk band D.O.A. in 1990. The verse recites "Commander says I gotta hold the line/'Til the TV cameras leave/Then we'll fire away, make my day/Just like good ol' Kent State".
- The Swedish rock band Gläns över Sjö & Strand made a song about the shootings, in the album Är du lönsam lilla vän?, called "Ohio 4 maj 1970".
