[Peace-discuss] May 4, 1970: The Kent State Massacre

[C. G. Estabrook]

[I remember this well.  As it happened, I was with the same
people I was with when we heard of the FBI/Chicago police
murder of Fred Hampton, exactly 17 months earlier.  Lethal
examples of how "American values" respond under criticism.  --CGE]

May 4, 1970: The Kent State Massacre
_______________________________

A total of 67 shots were fired in 13 seconds.

The events leading up to the bloodshed seem eerily
contemporary: an isolated and unpopular President, an
administration engaged in illegal surveillance and revelations
of government lying to justify a doomed foreign military
occupation.

It could have been yesterday - but it was May 4, 1970,
thirty-six years ago - at my campus: Kent State University in
Ohio.

On April 30th of that year, President Richard Nixon announced
the invasion of Cambodia - a major escalation of the war in
Southeast Asia.  His action sparked widespread outrage.  At
Kent State, a series of protests and rallies took place,
including the torching of the ROTC building. A dilapidated
wooden structure scheduled for demolition, the burning had all
the classic earmarks of the work of government agent provocateurs.

With that event as a convenient pretext, the campus was
occupied by the Ohio National Guard. Over the next two days,
students were bayoneted and clubbed by Guardsmen, tear gas
inundated the campus and helicopters with searchlights hovered
overhead at night.

Nixon branded the student protesters as "bums."  Ohio Governor
Rhodes called them "worse than the brown shirts ... we will
use whatever force necessary to drive them out of Kent!"  The
authorities' inflammatory remarks were a prescription for
repression.

On May 4, students gathered to protest the war and the
military occupation of the university. Guardsmen, armed with
live ammunition and firing teargas canisters, advanced on the
peaceful group.  The students ran away, but the Guard
continued the barrage.

Our gathering was completely dispersed and the soldiers began
to march away.  Suddenly, without provocation, a dozen
Guardsmen spun around, aimed and fired their weapons.

We looked about in disbelief. The victims were not even near
the troops. Allison Krause was 330 feet away from the nearest
Guardsman when she was fatally gunned down. My friend Sandy
Scheuer was 390 feet away, walking to class.  She was shot
through the neck and killed. Another friend, Robbie Stamps,
was almost 500 feet away when wounded.

Four young people lay dead: Allison Krause, Bill Schoeder,
Sandy Scheuer and Jeff Miller. Nine more were wounded - Dean
Kahlor would be paralyzed for life.

The massacre at Kent was followed two days later with a police
barrage of bullets into a dormitory at Jackson State in
Mississippi.  James Earl Green and Phillip Lafayette Gibbs
were murdered and an unknown number of others wounded.

Nixon hoped these cold-blooded killings would quell the
protests.  But instead, the shootings sparked a national
student strike. Hundreds of thousands of students stopped
business as usual. They began meeting, discussing, debating,
creating and using their campuses as a base for organizing -
reaching deep into the heart of the country with their
anti-war message.  We provided support to the thousands of
active-duty anti-war GIs who became a key factor in ultimately
compelling the US to withdraw from Southeast Asia.

The decade-long struggle over Vietnam proved that only a
massive movement can end war.  Peace will not come from a
government that is without compassion or vision, or from
compliant courts, or from a gutless legislature.

Today, new social struggles are erupting in the streets of
cities throughout the world. Millions of immigrants in the US
have shed their invisibility to demand civil and human rights.
 Protests against the war in Iraq continue unabated throughout
the country. These movements share a hope for the future -
that we can reject relentless violence and build a world that
values human solidarity.

Now, as in 1970, our hope for a better future lies with our
own empowerment.  We must never forget what happened at Kent
and Jackson.  The sacrifice of those who died, and the
historic events they inspired, prove that we can end the war
in Iraq and halt the other frightful military adventures being
contemplated by the war makers in Washington.

 *  *  *

Mike Alewitz
May 4, 2006

Mike Alewitz was the founder and Chairman of the Kent Student
Mobilization Committee Against the War in Vietnam. He was an
eyewitness to the murders and a leader of the national student
strike which followed the massacre.