It Was 35 Years Ago Today

From AxisofLogic.com:

May 4, 1970 - Burned into World Memory

"...it's very hard to ignore that Kent State thing. They were down there, man, ready to do it. You can see them, they're all kneeling there, they're all in the kneeling position and they got their slings tight and they're ready to shoot. And there's this kid, this long-haired kid standin' there with a flag wavin' it ... I mean, I cannot be a man, and be a human, and ignore that." 

-- David Crosby, July, 1970, Rolling Stone interview
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"It was like -- oh my God, I can't believe it. So everybody came out and there were kids lying on the ground, running all over the place,...There isn't a day in my life that goes by that I don't wake up without some conscious thought of this. I was in Vietnam twice before. I didn't have the fear that I had on this campus -- helicopters swooping down, tear gas, bullets. It was a scary thing. I get goosebumps talking about it right at this moment,"

-- Kent State Student, Bob Carpenter
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"When I saw the students in their pools of blood, I said this is it, it's got to stop -- the protests, the war. It's gone too far,"

-- Kent State Student, Paul Tople
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"I like to call it murder. I see no justification and no justice,"

-- Kent State Student, John Darnell
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"I don't care if you've never listened to anybody before in your life. I am begging you right now, if you don't disperse right now, they're going to move in. It will only be a slaughter. Please, listen to me. Jesus Christ, I don't want to be part of this. Listen to me,"

-- Kent State Professor Glenn Frank
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By noon May 4, two thousand people had gathered in the vicinity of the commons. Many knew that the rally had been banned. Others, especially commuters, did not know of this prohibition. Chants, curses and rocks answered an order to disperse. Shortly after noon, tear gas canisters were fired...The guard moved forward with fixed bayonets, forcing demonstrators to retreat...The guardsmen then retraced their line of march. Some demonstrators followed as close as 20 yards, but most were between 60 and 75 yards behind the guard.

Near the crest of Blanket Hill, the guard turned and 28 guardsmen fired between 61 and 67 shots in 13 seconds toward the parking lot. Four persons lay dying and nine wounded. The closest casualty was 20 yards and the farthest was almost 250 yards away. All 13 were students at Kent State University.
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The four students who were killed were Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer. The nine wounded students were Joseph Lewis, John Cleary, Thomas Grace, Alan Canfora, Dean Kahler, Douglas Wrentmore, James Russell, Robert Stamps, and Donald MacKenzie. Dean Kahler was permanently paralyzed from his injury.
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"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, May 2, 1970, New York Times
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(Click photos for larger images.)

An account with links of what happened and what came afterwards can be found at Wikipedia.

Editor's Note: The Cambodian invasion and Kent State killings resulted in a student strike that closed down the University of Illinois, where I was at college, as well as hundreds of other campuses around the nation. The rest of the semester's classes were cancelled and we all got the grades we had earned until that point.

National Guard troops killed several "hippie dogs" on the main quad on campus. I saw a professor trying to calm a situation get his face beaten in with a cop's nightstick. A friend had an arm broken by campus police. Students were lying down in front of trucks trying to deliver goods to campus warehouses. Glass got broken out in some of the less-liked stores on the main drag. I threw a rock at cops for the first and only time in my life when I saw a bunch of them pummeling a student I knew on the ground. Most National Guard troops looked very scared and had their weapons drawn almost all the time. But we were lucky. No-one was killed.

I had to add 'Ohio," written by Neil Young, performed by CSNY and released as a 45 rpm within a week of the shootings at Kent State. This was arguably the quickest music release in the history of the recording industry, before the Internet came into play:

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
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?

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?

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