1970, 4 killed by National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio. Neil Young wrote a song about it, maybe you’ve heard it. Kent State was a formative experience for me as a high school student in Canada, and I reflect on it every year. Coincidentally, 4 May 1886 was the day of the Haymarket Affair in Chicago. Just saying.
Yeah, last night the song was going through my head. A good song. A bad thing.
I was only 9 at the time, but I’ll never forget it.
I was in college in 1970 (not at Kent State.) That song got played a lot on campus. And I remember having an argument with my father about the incident.
I live in Ohio. I remember my dad saying all hippies should be shot.
A friend of mine went to Kent State four years after the killings. She said every year on May 4 it was so eerie on campus: no one out and about but that song playing out of every window. A good song and a bad thing as someone said above but keeping the memory alive is a very good thing.
Most of the Guardsmen who fired on the crowd said they felt their lives were in danger from stones being thrown by the students. Of the four students who were killed, the nearest was 265 feet away from the Guardsmen; the other three were more than 340 feet away. Damn shame those kids didn’t live to become baseball players.
This was me. I didn’t understand it and my parents were pretty conflicted about it. We didn’t have much of a conversation about it. It was more like: “Mom, why?” “Carnut, do you have homework tonight?” I learned much more about it in high school as when we studied the bigger picture.
I was in college at the time, and there were protests on campus on the 5th. It was very surreal. UCLA is a mostly commuter school and had the reputation of not being very activist – particularly in comparison to our “sister” campus Berkeley – so it was weird to see actual demonstrations. I saw Bill Walton helping to turn over a vehicle near the Administration Building. But it was mostly just kids running around and laughing at the Unicops trying to chase them down. Then, someone called the LAPD who didn’t know a thing about the campus and just came in like a conquering army.
I ran into a guy from my Russian class, and he helped me get off campus down to Westwood Village where I could catch a bus. I didn’t want to be collateral damage – three of the four kids killed at Kent State weren’t participating in the demonstrations at all.
“Four Dead In O-hi-O” should be the state motto. It’d look good on license plates.
Ditto to both of these. Are we actually siblings?
I graduated from college in 1970.
I think a whole lot of us had arguments with our parents about politics.
Unfortunately not. A lot of older folks felt that way. My mom was more liberal.
No college or siblings here.
I’m an only child, too.
Has anyone else read the book that James Micherner wrote? It was Kent State:What Happened and Why. One of the best books I’ve seen about the story, extremely detailed.
You can be my, slightly older sis.
I’ve read it. Very good journalism there. I don’t remember if he wrote about the rifles the Guardsmen were carrying, because it’s not difficult for an M-1 Garand to go off accidentally.
O-KAY! 
This event was horrible, but it was pretty much the event that started Devo.
I read most of it. But I found it really dry and almost overly detailed. Someday I might finish it.
But, yes, it was excellent. I learned a lot of things I hadn’t known before.