Forty years ago this past Tuesday, four students at Kent State University were murdered by elements of the Ohio National Guard.
Jeffrey Glenn Miller was 20 years old.
Allison B. Krause was 19 years old.
William Knox Schroeder was 19 years old.
Sandra Lee Scheuer was 20 years old.
Forty years later, I still grieve.
It was forty years ago that this country was being torn apart by the tragedy that had been unfolding in Vietnam. Richard Nixon had been elected President in 1968 with a "secret plan" to end the war that had killed close to 50,000 young Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese by 1970. In May of 1970, his plan to end the war had given way to a plan to expand the war with the invasion of Cambodia.
The majority of American people had long since tired of this war and the lies the government had perpetrated to keep it alive. Protests against the war had been growing larger and larger and encompassed the entire country. The invasion of Cambodia in late April, 1970, proved to the American people that the government was not listening to their demands to stop the war and incited the anti-war movement to take to the streets and campuses with even more resolve.
Kent State was not unlike hundreds of other campuses across the country. Hundreds...thousands of students took to the streets all over the country following Nixon's announcement concerning the invasion of Cambodia. However, at Kent State, things took a tragic turn.
The mayor of Kent declared a state of emergency after the burning of the ROTC building and the Ohio National Guard had been sent in. On the afternoon of May 4, while dispersing a protest on campus, 29 members of the Guard, without warning, fired 67 rounds into the crowd...killing 4 students (two of whom were not involved in the protest but simply going to class)and wounding 9 more. The Guard claimed they were fearful of the crowd (although they had begun to disperse as they had been advanced upon) and later claimed they had opened fire in response to a sniper, a claim that has never been substantiated by the evidence.
On that day, I was an 18 year old freshman on another Midwestern University campus, engaged in the same type protest that was occurring at Kent State. When the news of what had happened at Kent State began to circulate, we were consumed with anger and our protest took on a new vigor...a new determination. They were killing us. However, with that increased anger also came a feeling of sadness and grief that was and remains today, indescribable.
Our campus was closed within a matter of days and we were ordered to leave...to return home. While most of us left with the same resolve to oppose the war, we also left with a feeling of sadness that has never gone away.
As this 40th anniversary of the tragedy at Kent State passed, I was disappointed that so little was written or reported concerning the events of that day - a day when four young lives were needlessly taken. Time seems to have reduced that terrible tragedy to a footnote in history, but time has not eased my grief.
Now, in keeping with the general theme of this site, I could offer parallels to our military fiasco in Vietnam and the current morass we find ourselves in today. I could comment on the divisions in our country in 1970 that allowed Americans to open fire on other Americans and compare those divisions to today's militias and teabaggers who menace our society with their not-so veiled threats. But I prefer not to. Rather, I prefer to grieve for Jeffrey, Allison, William, and Sandra and beg that we never forget them.
In a postscript to this entry, this news was released by AP this morning:
(May 8) -- A new analysis of a 40-year-old audio recording reveals that someone ordered National Guard troops to prepare to fire on students during a deadly Vietnam War protest at Kent State University in 1970, two forensics experts said.
The recording was enhanced and evaluated by New Jersey-based audio experts Stuart Allen and Tom Owen at the request of The Plain Dealer newspaper. Both concluded that they hear someone shout, "Guard!" Seconds later, a voice yells, "All right, prepare to fire!"
"Get down!" someone shouts, presumably in the crowd. A voice then says, "Guard!..." followed two seconds later by a booming volley of gunshots.