On May 4, 1970, four Kent State University students were shot and killed by members of the Ohio National Guard during an anti-war protest. Enraged by U.S. involvement in Vietnam, thousands of students in Kent, Ohio, took to the grassy spaces of their university to voice their discontent. Today, similar protests are occurring the country over. Students at 35+ universities have been arrested for their involvement in pro-Palestinian rallies. Some politicians are calling for National Guard deployment to quell these protests. The events at Kent State 54 years ago are an example of why such a move might end in tragedy.
In the spring of 1970, Nixon sat in the Oval Office. He had run his campaign promising to withdraw U.S. troops from the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War. Instead, on April 30, 1970, he took to the airwaves to announce that the U.S. would be invading Cambodia in an attempt to undermine the Viet Kong. The next day, May 1, protests and anti-war rallies cropped up at universities all over the country. At Kent State University, about 500 students gathered. That night, as students gathered at the downtown bars, the anti-war sentiment turned into rioting, with students lighting trashcans on fire and breaking store windows. At this, the mayor, Leroy Satrom, became nervous about further violence and contacted Ohio Governor James Rhodes looking for help.
The next day, May 2, protestors on Kent State campus set fire to the ROTC building, which burned to the ground. At this, Rhodes, who was, at the time, seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, deployed the Ohio National Guard. He said, in a press conference on the subject: “We’ve seen here at the city of Kent, especially, probably the most vicious form of campus-oriented violence yet perpetrated by dissident groups and their allies in the state of Ohio . . . we’re going to use every part of the law enforcement of Ohio to drive them out of Kent.” Nixon referred to the protestors as, “these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses.” The National Guard arrived in Kent on May 3 where protestors blocking roads were met with tear gas.
On May 4, around 3,000 students gathered on Kent State campus to protest. The National Guard members there launched tear gas and then advanced on the group with bayoneted rifles. As they pushed the students away, some students began throwing rocks at the guardsmen. It was said then that a small group of guardsmen appeared to huddle and discuss something. This was later referred to by those who believed the guardsmen had conspired to fire on the protestors. The guardsmen began to retreat back the way they came, when at 12:24 p.m., 28 of them turned and fired toward the protestors. Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause, both protestors, were shot and killed. William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer, who were walking by on their way to class, were also shot and killed. Nine other students were shot and injured, including Dean Kahler, who was paralyzed by his injuries. The aftermath of the shooting was memorialized in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo taken by John Filo, a student photographer. Faculty marshals were able to diffuse the situation and prevent further bloodshed after the initial shooting.
In the years that followed, the details of the shooting were litigated at length. Three students were convicted for their parts in the burning of the ROTC building. A federal court found that the guardsmen were not at fault for the shooting, though that decision was overturned in an appeals court, and a settlement awarded about 650,000 to the victims and their families. Nixon created a Commission on Campus Unrest to investigate the situation. Their report recognized that some student protestors committed criminal acts, however; “The indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable . . . The Kent State tragedy must mark the last time, that, as a matter of course, loaded rifles are issued to guardsmen confronting student demonstrators.”
In an editorial in the Washington Post, Brian VanDeMark, author of Kent State: An American Tragedy, writes of today’s university protests: “University officials, not state authorities and armed troops, possess the knowledge and insight best suited to dealing with these constitutionally protected expressions of dissent. The goal of university and college administrators should be to guarantee the safety of all students while fostering civil engagement over passionately held views. This is the lesson of Kent State University.”
Learn more here:
- https://www.kent.edu/may-4-historical-accuracy
- https://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/6410#:~:text=We’ve%20seen%20here%20at,have%20operated%20within%20the%20campus.
- https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1970/05/02/107200740.html?pageNumber=1
- https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED083899.pdf
- https://www.britannica.com/event/Kent-State-shootings/How-can-you-run-when-you-know-the-national-response
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/26/kent-state-killings-lesson-protests/
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/04/19/girl-kent-state-photo-lifelong-burden-being-national-symbol/
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/04/25/protests-texas-abbott-gaza/
- https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/nyregion/college-protests-columbia-campus.html
