Kent State Shootings May of 1970?

Question

My Dad was at Kent State When the Shootings Happend. He has Many things to Tell about that day. They are interesting things to hear. Was anyone else there when it happend? If so do you have any interesting stories to share?

Answer 1

Sad day, caused so much turmoil, no I was not there when the National guard went "ballistic" on kids.

Within hours many hundreds of colleges went "on strike".

After all the inquires no clear "why".

just amateur soldiers and they had no business having live ammo.

My story: I was a Staff Sgt in the Army and the next morning another NCo at breakfast made a 'joke' "Army 4 Kent state 0", well I tossed my plate on him then knocked him on his tail.

I did not get "in trouble" as the CO wanted to punch him as well.

I was just back from vietnam and heading back to the 101st Airborne there again for another tour. So I am no liberal jerk.
It was a stain on the Army as most assumed that the "national guard" was Army. Not then.

Trust me the Army deployed in Civil rights actions at colleges, and after MLK was shot at "race riots" and faced all sorts of abuse but they shot no people. But we are Airborne soldiers, not "kids".

I do feel sadness for those poor National guard soldiers, not their officers or NCO's, what a waste. My issue is simple I was a professional soldier, doing my duty for all Americans, I was and still am mad that some dumb officer dropped the ball and made my Army look bad.

Suspect the usual smart, jerks will post garbage on this.

But tell your Father; one professional and his CO did not think well of what happened. My little sisters were in college the, so trust me "big brother" was very concerned.

It was a "historical" day, a turning point. "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, four dead in Ohio" Crosby, Still, Nash & Young. AFVN radio actually slipped it on the radio play list in Vietnam in '71-72.

Answer 2

~Allison Krause, Sandra Scheuer, Jeffrey Glenn Miller and William Schroeder were there, but they can't talk about it. They're dead. We remember them because Neil Young made a few bucks with "Ohio"

What we tend to forger is that 10 days later, on May 14, James Earl Green and Phillip Layfayette Gibbs were gunned down at Jackson State in Mississippi. They were involved in - or watching (as Kent proved, innocent bystanders and passersby are fair game) - a demonstration about the war, racism and the Kent State murders. They were killed (and 12 others wounded) by Jackson police. The National Guard was there and maintained a cordon around the campus. They had been issued weapons but, largely due to Kent State, had not been issued ammo. Had they been, the body count likely would have been much higher. The head bashing in Chicago in '68 didn't result in any deaths. I suppose Kent and Jackson were intended to deliver stronger messages.

You can't understand the events without knowing about and understanding the times. It was an exciting time to be alive, and one got to see democracy at it's finest - and it's worst. People actually gave a damn, and weren't huddled over a computer or a video game. We thought we could make a difference, and, in a lot of was, we did. Civil rights, women's rights, the 18 year old vote, income tax revisions and small scale redistribution of wealth, Earth Day, civil awareness and participation. Too bad the seeds didn't take.

Obviously, history doesn't repeat. The social awareness and conscience is far less today. Otherwise, we would be seeing similar events on campuses and on the streets over Afghanistan and Iraq.

The folks protesting the war and the other injustices that the '60's represent were not doing so out of fear of the draft. They, or most of them, believed in the cause. Unfortunately, the troops were all painted with the same brush, and a uniform represented the wrong decisions being made in Washington and all soldiers were equated with William Calley and Ernest Medina. That was a predictable consequence of the "America, Love it or Leave" mentality of the Establishment which branded all protestors as communists or subversives, unable to understand the "America, change it or lose it" message of the protests. The battle lines were drawn by both sides and there was no safe middle ground.

A similar event happened in Boston on March 5, 1770. Samuel Gray, James Caldwell, Crispus Attucks, Samuel Maverick and Patrick Carr. The Boston Massacre was one of the sparks that lit off the Revolution. Kent and Jackson probably so polarized the nation, and galvanized Nixon's paranoid delusions to such an extent that the war lasted an extra couple of years.

The actual facts of the events are nowhere nearly as interesting as the consequences. They are all pretty much the same. A few people protest, trigger happy authority gets scared or tries to exert itself and innocent people who have the misfortune to be in the neighborhood die. The legacy of their senseless slaughter is what matters.

Answer 3

no but i have visited teh site and i have also listened to all of the oral histories that are on archive at the university, a very distrubing time, and most unfortunate that teh event occurred

Answer 4

a collection of poorly knowledgeable national safeguard placed able they never could have been in... and a collection of anti conflict traitors who could have been tried for treason... regrettably some inocent people who have been the place thy wouldn't have been have been given in the middle...