35 years ago today. Kent State. Ohio National Guard against unarmed protesters.
The victims lest they be forgotten.
ALISON KRAUSE
JEFFREY MILLER
SANDRA SCHEUER
WILLIAM SCHROEDER
Alas they already have been.
30 years- and I’m not trying to be argumentative, but who exactly has forgotten them?
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/05/04/kent.state.02/
35 years.
You had to go to archives?
Sorry- I misread the date on that article and blame my lack of math skills on giving blood today. At any rate, I certainly did not forget and had just posted in my blog about it around a minute before reading your post. Perhaps some people have forgotten, but not all. Sorry for incorrectly correcting your data.
Neil Young Ohio can still be heard.
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
Shoulda been done long ago.
My high school history teacher was at Kent State during the shootings. Every year, when he taught about the Boston Massacre, he always compared it to Kent State. So myself, and the thousands of other kids he taught, know all about it.
Well I’d say the students shot at Kent state did a lot less to provoke their killings than the Americans at Boston.
I mean, I’m no Loyalist or anything but the redcoats weren’t just being pelted with harmless snowballs, there were rocks and plenty of threats coming from the crowd.
Yes, but his point was that the Boston Massacre was a trigger for the first American revolution. Get the picture?
I was in college at the time and that famous photo is still burned into my mind:
I remember that some of the students were just on their way to class. God, that was a black day.
That your teacher is insane and thinks that the 70s was a revolution?
I guess this means we have all forgotten about Jackson State? 
I was there.
The father of a friend of mine was in the Ohio National Guard at the time. He lived in Youngstown. His unit was supposed to be the one that the governor called out that day, but for some reason the scheduling was switched and he was somewhere else. There but for the grace of God…
My dad worked with the father of one of the girls who was killed. I don’t remember which one.
I don’t remember the incident, myself; I was just over seven months old at the time. Kent University still has a memorial erected in the parking lot where one of the students was killed.
Why’d the governor insist on live ammo that day, anyway?
Because he was a bad person.
We shall not forget.
Is there a cite for this? My research had me to believe that at the time, Ohio was one of a few states that already allowed guardsmen to carry live ammo during civil disturbances.
Live ammo was issued because the soldiers were being sent into a riot. The demonstrators on campus and in town had damaged stores, blocked streets, lit bonfires, and burned down the ROTC building.
Now, I do believe the National Guard overreacted to the situaton, and tragically so. But let’s not forget that they were called to Kent State for a reason.
The people who incited the riot, many of whom were not Kent State students, have blood on their hands as well.
Are you saying it wasn’t?
Interesting how that works - soldiers aim and fire at unarmed civilians killing some with no fear of retaliation whatsoever and then some activists end up with blood on their hands? Well why of course, that makes all the sense in the world.