On May 4, 1970, in Kent, Ohio, 28 National Guardsmen fire their weapons at a group of anti-war demonstrators on the Kent State University campus, killing four students, wounding eight, and permanently paralyzing another. The tragedy was a watershed moment for a nation divided by the conflict in Vietnam, and further galvanized the anti-war movement.
Two days earlier, on May 2, National Guard troops were called to Kent to suppress students rioting in protest of the Vietnam War and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. The next day, scattered protests were dispersed by tear gas, and on May 4 class resumed at Kent State University. By noon that day, despite a ban on rallies, some 2,000 people had assembled on the campus. National Guard troops arrived and ordered the crowd to disperse, fired tear gas, and advanced against the students with bayonets fixed on their rifles. Some of the protesters, refusing to yield, responded by throwing rocks and verbally taunting the troops.
Minutes later, without firing a warning shot, the Guardsmen discharged more than 60 rounds toward a group of demonstrators in a nearby parking lot, killing four and wounding nine. The closest casualty was 20 yards away, and the farthest was almost 250 yards away. After a period of disbelief, shock, and attempts at first aid, angry students gathered on a nearby slope and were again ordered to move by the Guardsmen. Faculty members were able to convince the group to disperse, and further bloodshed was prevented.
The shootings led to protests on college campuses across the country. Photographs of the massacre became enduring images of the anti-war movement. In 1974, at the end of a criminal investigation, a federal court dropped all charges levied against eight Ohio National Guardsmen for their role in the Kent State students’ deaths.
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Fucking hippies!! Freaks! They deserved to be shot! Chicken shit cowards who got their college exemption while others died for their right to protest. Anti-American bastards who won’t support our fight against Communism. Fuck ’em all.
I was a senior in high school. I remember it like it was yesterday. And that’s exactly how I felt back then. Sorry.
Except four of the people shot, two of whom died were simply walking to class when they were shot.
Fuck You! You have no right to even call yourself an American. Vietnam was mass genocide based on lies and the ignorance of the American people. Anyone who supported that war is a war criminal, and the piece of shit National Guard who shot down kids for exercising their Constitutional rights to protest are murderers and should be executed by firing squad for treason. There was no fight against Communism and never was, there was only mass murder for profit sponsored by the Military Industrial Complex and fuckheads like you.
— You do realize that the views I expressed were those of a SEVENTEEN year old kid?? How smart were you when you were 17?
— My views were from FIFTY TWO years ago! My views have changed since then. Do you still hold the same views today as you did 52 years ago?
Do not answer any of those questions. They are rhetorical. (Look up the word.)
Since like, forever, you have taken every possible opportunity to spew your “fuck you asshole!” type venomous bile at me. Hahaha. That I am able to get under your skin like that brings me quite a bit of joy. You are truly a loser, a village idiot of epic proportions. Sometimes I even feel sorry for you.
However, do not mistake my gentle compassion for weakness. If I see you at HF’s get-together this year, I am going to grab your head and shove it up one of HF’s cows. Count on it.
The article fails to tell ‘the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’ about this incident from 52 years ago …
For context: The same Ohio National Guard units that arrived at KSU on May 2d had just come off about 7 or 8 days of duty during a trucker strike in Ohio … where the striking truckers had burned trucks and trucking terminals … where the striking truckers had shot at non-union drivers or union drivers not going along with the strike … and where the Governor had ordered the National Guard troops to NOT load their weapons … even when confronted by heavily armed union truckers.
THEN … after the strike was somehow ended … those same National Guard troops were sent by Governor Rhodes to the Kent State University campus … where they were told to ‘lock and load’ in confrontations with the students.
I cannot even recall the last time we heard from Mary Vecchio — the young woman kneeling over the fallen body of a fellow student — but I remember her photograph so vividly from those days.
Our local newscaster in Cleveland — Dorothy Fuldheim — actually wept on camera as she read the news … the only other time she did so was when John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 …
This was an enormous tragedy …
I had already been out of the Marine Corps for nearly 2 years when this happened … and I recall how even very late in my enlistment I had become totally against the war in Vietnam due to its true origins and due to the propaganda we were fed about it …
That war was never about stopping communism … nor was it ever about the freedom of the Vietnamese people … and now our ‘leaders’ are attempting to take US into yet another bullshit war in a land that has no nexus with US other than its being a place whose government we overthrew because the people there dared to try to conduct themselves as a Sovereign Nation …
If only our ‘leaders’ would have The United States conduct itself as a Sovereign Nation … and preserve and protect our people from invaders crossing our borders every moment off the date — to preserve and protect our Language and Culture and Heritage and History and National Identity …
Sorry for the long rant, folks …
Semper Fi — 1966-68
Apologize? You deserve a standing ovation!
Another FBI f-up. Terry Norman.