Kent State remembers students killed protesting Vietnam War

[struggle4progress]

BY MARILYN MILLER

Knight Ridder Newspapers


KENT, Ohio - (KRT) - Most Americans old enough to remember President John F. Kennedy's assassination can recall what they were doing or where they were when it happened.

But the sister of one of the four students slain at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, told about 500 onlookers Wednesday that probably only a handful of people remember what they were doing when those shootings occurred during a Vietnam War protest. Nancy Tuttle remembers. She was in Lawrence, Kan., with a month-old boy. Her brother, William Schroeder, was one of the four killed.

Barry Levine, who was the boyfriend of Allison Krause, also remembers. She died in his arms after being shot while running through a campus parking lot.

The Victory Bell at the Commons at Kent State University rang 15 times at 12:24 p.m. Wednesday in honor of the students killed and wounded at Kent State and 10 days later at Jackson State University in Mississippi. <snip>

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/11564893.htm


May 4, 2005
Four dead in Ohio: More than a memory
By Mark Baker
The Register-Guard

<snip> "One of the points of my story is that few people know that between 1960 and 1965, there were major protests here at Kent," Miller said via cell phone on the Kent State campus Tuesday. "Another reason that I think my film is gaining attention is that no one looked at what happened at Kent after," said Miller, referring to the subsequent findings that the National Guard was at fault in the shootings and the yearlong grand jury process that dropped all charges against student protesters. <snip>

Now a social worker at Looking Glass in Eugene, Marks-Fife was driving back to Kent from nearby Akron on May 4, 1970, when she heard an erroneous radio report that a student had shot a policeman. That was just the beginning of a chaotic day she'll never forget.

Kent was under martial law after the shootings. Residents couldn't leave town. They couldn't get into town. Marks-Fife managed to sneak past police and get back to her house, a couple of blocks from campus, which had become a kind of headquarters for students, faculty and demonstrators reeling from the unthinkable. Upon entering, she found 15-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio asleep on her couch. Vecchio would be pictured the next day in newspapers around the world, with her arms open, her hands upturned and gesturing "Why?" as she knelt over Jeffrey Miller.

"It was like being in a war zone," said Marks-Fife, who was unable to attend this week's commemoration in Kent. "There were tanks on the street and I had to crawl on my stomach through campus to avoid the (police) spotlights" to get back home. <snip>

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/05/04/1a.kentstate.0504.html


9 People Suing Over 2003 Kent State Protest
Protestors Marched On Anniversary Of 1970 Shootings
POSTED: 12:36 pm EDT May 4, 2005

KENT, Ohio -- Nine people are suing officials at Kent State University and the city alleging their rights were violated during a protest of the 1970 shootings there.

The plaintiffs seek at least $50,000 each for alleged violations at a protest May 4, 2003, of the killing of four students at the school on the same date in 1970.

They say authorities violated their constitutional rights when police arrested the protesters after they marched from Kent State's campus to city streets nearby.

Plaintiffs say police arrested protesters who appeared to be leading the group after they had started to move back to campus, as ordered. An appeals court previously reviewed the case of one plaintiff and found no constitutional rights violations.

http://www.newsnet5.com/news/4448793/detail.html

[Joyce78]

1. 4 Dead in Ohio

I always remember this date. Don't know any other tribute or anthem other than Young's song. I've actually played it many more times before today ... trying to just educate my kids beyond stupid American Idol scandals and wake them up to real scandals.

[Desertrose]

2. I can't believe its been 35 years.....

in a way it sems like only yesterday. I was a junior in art college in Philly...so many in our school took it really hard that such a thing could actually happen here in the US.
Shooting college students?!!

I think that is when we lost another large chunk of innocence......

Shot...murdered....all for protesting a wrongly conceived war...and here we are all these years later and what have we learned?? It seems apparently NOTHING.

How very very sad.

[frogbison]

3. Yes.

Very sad. I was a young college student myself at the time. I hated the war and the cost to my generation. And here we are wasting more lives and hurting more families. For a war started by a man who used his privilege to avoid the conflct in Viet Nam.

When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?

[Daphne08]

7. I was also a college student at the time

and I understand your feelings very well.

Maybe during the intervening years you even felt as I did--

I remember when my sons were small, I felt so fortunate because I KNEW that they would never have to go to war. I truly believed that, too, because our country was strong. Moreover, I also believed the lessons learned during Vietnam would be remembered for several generations.

God, how mistaken I was in my naiveté.

[MaineDem]

15. I, also, echo your sentiments

I was a college freshman back in 1970. Life on campus that spring was full of protests, peace marches, and the great "moratorium". We had blood drives. We had candleight vigils. And then we had Kent State.

I had a friend who was a student there at the time. I wish I had kept his letters in which he described the event and the aftermath.

I know that year shaped my thinking and shaped my politics. We'll never forget!

[saigon68]

8. Nothing has been learned

And many of the leaders of the US military today would love to "control dissent" in the same way. Just look at the right wing hate radio and their Internet ilk.

If they could get away with it they would shoot all the people here who hate War.

[leftchick]

14. I agree only this time it is much worse

I think the US military could round up quite a few college repuke brownshirts to help in their efforts to control the anti-war protesters.

on edit: whoa! just saw this thread. New Army Field manual for civil disobedience!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3596829

[Piperay]

9. Hard to believe it has been so long ago

I still remember watching it on the news and it's still so clear. :-(

[TahitiNut]

4. Back from 'nam for less than 6 months, this was just another nightmare.

I recall thinking that these Guardsmen were likely the draft-avoiders who were so dead set against serving in the "illegal war" in Vietnam and yet had fired on American students exercising their rights. It just added to the crazy-making of the times. I would've loved to had the neck of the dumbfuck CO in my hands.

[saigon68]

10. It was crap like that that turned many of us into members of the VVAW

Miami Republican Convention (1972)

[IndianaGreen]

5. US troops have murdered US citizens on US soil throughout history

Troops have been used to violently put down strikes by workers, and even war veterans. Kent State was not the first time and it won't be the last time.

"Support the troops" is a bullshit slogan!

[ngGale]

6. Kent State is burned into my memory....

like it was yesterday. That was the day, I had to sit down because I totally lost it. Husband just returned from Vietnam, then this. Total living nightmare!

[Hekate]

11. "Wasn't that a terrible time .. to try the souls of men..?"

Old song about another war.

The man who was Ohio's governor during the Kent State Massacre died peacefully (one presumes) in a nursing home a couple of years ago. I confess I'd never given him any thought at all, though the memories of that day are seared in, wherever we were...

I happened to be having coffee with a friend shortly after the old man died and his obit was splashed all over the news, and my friend began to unpack his personal memories of that time. He was there, a graduate student living on campus, and it was clear he never, ever forgave the governor for calling out the National Guard. He held him personally responsible for the deaths... I got chills listening to his account.

There's someone else I have a feeling was there, a cartoonist. I don't know how many of you get the strip "Crankshaft" by Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers in your daily paper, but around the 30th anniversary of KS the mother of the strip's family takes her teenaged son and his kid sister to her alma mater for a campus tour before he graduates from high school. Grandad Crankshaft goes along. Turns out to be Kent State, and over the next few weeks we get three generations of memories and impressions. At first there are sweet memories of cutting class to make out with her boyfriend (obviously a young version of her husband).The kids know little of the dark history of Kent, and Mom tries to tell them what she thinks they can absorb even as her memories of being a photographer for the campus paper overtake her. Over the strong objections of her boyfriend, she chases out to the scene with her camera, witnesses the horror, gets cut with a bayonet and knocked to the ground. A hand reaches out to help her up -- a young Guard in a gasmask, who gives her a shove to safety. (Later, we see him remove his mask to wipe his frightened face: he's her childhood friend and only child of neighbors. In a coda to the series, we learn he went to Vietnam and never returned.) The grandad's memories and comments are what we have come to expect of him: irascible, conservative, a WW II vet who lived through that hell and has a hard time understanding how his country is not the good guy this time around. He thinks his daughter was well-behaved and cautious, that his son-in-law the CPA was a long-haired hot-head, and he's so unutterably relieved that she's safe he fails to take in the bandage on her arm. In one of the last panels we see a scar there, as Crankshaft says, "Eh, your Mom had the good sense to stay far away from all that."

What this series said to me is that no one got away from this experience unscathed. Batiuk and Ayers did a superb job of trying to encompass it.

This country has a habit of trying to bury unpleasant truths about its past, and the Vietnam war was so divisive that to this day we can't decide how its history should be taught in our schools -- so for the most part it remains unaddressed. Those who remember, have an obligation to remember -- and speak.

Hekate

[stlsaxman]

12. I was in 8th grade when it happened and the next day my history teacher,

who was working at my Catholic school on a deferment (catholics USED to stand up against war), had a newspaper on each of our desks waiting as we filed in...

"Open your history books to page 13- "The Boston Massacre"...

"a crowd of protesters face a brigade of Redcoats... some throw snowballs... troops fire into crowd leaving four dead"....

"now read the front page... "Kent State Massacre" ....

"a crowd of protesters face a brigade of National Guard... some throw rocks... troops fire into crowd leaving four dead"....

"There is an an old quote from a man named Santana- 'Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it'"

... now THAT was a Teacher!

[struggle4progress]

19. Santayana, I think ... eom

[nguoihue]

13. Kent State shootings

Remember so well. I had just returned from 'Nam and released from active duty in the Marine Corps less than a month before this took place.

At that time I still believed the lies and bullshit about the noble cause of defending "freedom and democracy in South Viet Nam". It took years of reading and travels back to VN before I could finally accept the fact that all of the death and destruction had been unnecessary and that the death and crippling of friends and of millions of southeast Asians had been for nothing - a waste of lives and money, destruction of property and the environment ... that I and many others had been duped.

It's good to see that many still remember and that others have learned the lessons of history. Sadly there are those who will never learn.

[peacebuzzard]

16. Yes. Many here remember. You'll find solidarity and energy to

help w/ so much injustice. Welcome and a big hello from someone who remembers too well what was never comprehended about Vietnam and its stateside repercussions. :hi:

[NNN0LHI]

17. Bet you won't find a word about this in any US textbooks n/t

[lebkuchen]

18. How close is our country to repeating Kent State?

Syria or Iran would be the catalyst.