Just watched a documentary about Kent State University (When the 60’s ended or something like that) about the Kent State shootings.
I was born in 72. Anyone here at Kent State when this happened? Have you seen the documentary? What do you think? Were you there?
Crosby Stills and Nash wrote Ohio It pretty much sums up many people’s feelings at the time. Young’s pain is obvious in these lyrics.
I just ran across this new book written by a survivor of the shootings. Heres a short article about his experience that day.
his book is still taking preorders before its released.
I was still in elementary school and don’t recall much of the news coverage. It was much later in high school that I learned details and the scope of the tragedy.
Among the Kent State students were Chrissy Hynde, along with Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale of Devo.
Jesus, I never thought of Neil Young as having “capitalized” on the deaths. I am so grateful CSNY recorded that song. It keeps Kent State in people’s memories.
I was nine years old and living with my parents outside of Cleveland on May 4, 1970. My best friend, whose father was the Methodist pastor at my parents’ church, had recently moved to Kent. His Dad showed up on the teevee news reports from Kent, and I remember my parents being more outraged that he had grown a beard since moving away than they were over the shootings.
Considering I had an older sister who was a COLLEGE STUDENT at the time, I found their reactions sickening.
My folks’ 1960s-70s hatred of longhairs, war protestors, leftists, and effete intellectuals turned me into a lifelong bearded anarchist pacifist and IWW man, with a Yale degree in literary criticism.
Kent State brought the anti-war protest movement to full fruition. Schools all over the country shut down. I was at Berkeley at the time, and my semester virtually ended. One class continued, but moved off campus to the professor’s house. One class terminated and we all got Pass grades. One class terminated and we took the final exam then and there. There were protest demonstrations and a classroom was fire bombed.
I had just left Ohio State and relocated to NYC a month prior to Kent State. I had to explain to everyone I knew in NYC that Kent State isn’t the same as Ohio State.
It had only been a few months since I’d participated in anti-war protests at Ohio State.
I did have a cousin, though, who went to Kent State at the time, and was there during the shootings.
The best accounting of the Kent State killings I’m familiar with is James Michener’s “Kent State: What Happened And Why”.
If Charlie Manson and Altamont didn’t put an end to the Flower Power/Summer of Love/Woodstock Nation spirit of the 60s, Kent State did. And the Vietnam Vets Against The War were more prominent in the protests after Kent State.
Can someone share the name of the documentary?
I searched in Netflix for ‘Kent State’, ‘4 Dead in Ohio’, ‘Four Dead in Ohio’, and ‘Ohio’ with no luck.
mmm
The name is “The Day the 60’s Died” (PBS). It is in the just added queue. It focuses mostly on the Kent State killings.
In other words, your parents fears were proven correct. 
(kidding!)
So why was the National Guard deployed to a college campus in the first place?
The governor, Jim Rhodes, overreacted and sent a bunch of green National Guardsmen who were completely ill-trained to deal with the situation.
I came in here to mention that book. I still have a copy of it.
Cartoonist and veteran Bill Mauldin, in his memoir, claimed he’d never heard of National Guardsmen carrying real, loaded rifles prior to Kent State.
FBI released some additional information a couple years back about the severity of the rioting before the National Guard was deployed. Looting, arson, and hurling objects including bricks at police were among the reasons to deploy Guardsmen. This was not a peaceful demonstration on a college campus prior to the arrival of the Guard. It wasn’t even confined to campus with rioting spilling out to town.
Oh, boy, a Washington Times column by a Fox News correspondent with no internal cites to his claims. I cannot begin to express my skepticism.
Got some non-agenda-driven evidence?
Yeah, this.
Overreacted to what?
Try Nixonland:The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, by Rick Perlstein.
Fascinating book on many levels, and includes a full report on Kent State.
Did I know you there? I was in a big lecture class at Berkeley (it was an intro psychology class in a big lecture hall) when some students burst in at the back door shouting about the killings. IIRC the reaction among the lecture hall full of students seemed mostly apathetic.
But yes, the entire remainder of that quarter (Berkeley was on the quarter system then, remember) was totally disrupted.
ETA: Oh, and there was tear gas that quarter. Can’t forget about the tear gas.