Remembering Kent State

Remembering That Day in May, 1970 
In Volatile Times Words Can be Lethal

 

On the morning of Monday, May 4, 1970 I had decided not to drive down to the Kent State campus to follow up on the continuing student unrest that had flared in recent days. It turned out to be a huge mistake.

I had been down over the weekend. Viewed the disruptions in downtown Kent Saturday night, saw the remains of the ROTC building that had allegedly been torched by students. On Sunday our flamboyant Governor Jim Rhodes, running for the Republican nomination for the Senate, was on campus demanding peace on all campuses in Ohio, and an end to student protests. He called the troublemakers, “worse than Brown shirts, communists and vigilantes.” In a sense lighting the fuse in already emotionally charged environment.

He had refused requests from some university officials to close the campus Monday.  In addition, he ordered the weary National Guard to the Kent campus from strike duty in Akron. The early word from my contacts Monday was that things had quieted down and the Guard was in control.  Classes were going on as scheduled. Unfortunately Kent’s quiet, likeable President Robert White was out of town at a meeting. No one but the angry governor was really in charge.

I had been tipped off that there would be serious trouble in University Circle on this particular day, part of a national protest against President Nixon’s “incursion into Cambodia” that many believed was extending the war. Given the unpredictable nature of the anti-war political radicals at CWRU, I could not ignore it.  So I headed for the Case/Reserve campus with a photographer to cover the story.  The city desk had wisely sent reporter Al Thompson down to Kent “just in case”.

The feisty protesters at CWRU had decided to sit down in the streets block traffic in all directions through the Circle including Euclid Ave. As planned, they created considerable traffic chaos on the east side. Mayor Stokes, when he got the news from his Safety director, who was on the scene, promptly sent in his mounted police cavalry, and soon there was head bashing, bloodshed and a good deal of hysteria.

In the middle of it all word got to us that there had been shooting at Kent. Perhaps some dead.

That changed everything.

We called the Desk, turned in the CWRU story for the final edition and headed to Kent. When we arrived the place looked like a war zone. Something much worse than Mayor Stokes’ mounted police head bashing.  This was soldiers, shooting with live ammunition, killing and wounding students, including some totally innocent bystanders.

One of the first persons I saw on campus near Blanket Hill, where it all happened, was John Kifner, veteran reporter from the New York Times who had flown down on Saturday. “Looks like the war has come to the Bible belt,” he said, looking very shaken.  (It turned out that Kifner was standing on the perimeter of the crowd only ten feet from Allison Kraus when she was shot dead by National Guard bullets.

Kifner was right.
What I saw reminded me of the immediate aftermath of a war scene.  Having been in the Infantry in WWII, it seemed eerily familiar. Soldiers with the look of horror on their young faces. Still sweating, some crying. Very young, very frightened. And angry. They had killed and they knew it, and no one really likes to kill another human being. Certainly not students, many their own age.

I had covered the student revolt in Paris in 1968.  This seemed, from street level, much worse. In Paris there was plenty of rock throwing, auto burning, attacks between police and students, Lots of tear gas and rubber bullets.   As far as I recall, No one was shot.  This was different.

And this was America…we don’t shoot students. Do we? This was a game changer of huge national proportion.

In its May 18 edition Time magazine reported: “It took half a century to transform Kent State University from an obscure teachers college into the second largest university in Ohio with 21,000 students and an impressive array of modern buildings on its main campus.  But it took less than ten seconds to convert the traditionally conformist campus into the bloodstained symbol of the rising student rebellion against the Nixon administration and the war in Southeast Asia.”

Investigations that followed including a week-long series written by myself and Dick Feagler, concluded that extreme volatility between the very conservative residents in the Kent areas toward the anti war students, had been seething for months. The incendiary speech by Gov. Rhodes made the students appear to be enemies of the people. They seemed, in some very hostile minds like fair game.  Several locals were quoted later to have said “they should have shot more.”

Although there were radical types around who wanted to stir up trouble and gain attention for their anti war cause, there was no evidence of a well thought out conspiracy that would lead to this level of chaos. Kent state had not been made the target of some kind of national uprising. This was not Columbia or Berkeley. There was no evidence of the involvement of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) or the infamous Weathermen; no buildings were taken over; no threats of bombing.

Bringing in a very tired National Guard unit from Akron and ordering them to prevent all student gatherings on campus on a very hot humid morning set the stage for violence

The anti-war leaders called for a rally at noon by the victory bell. The guard reacted and a battle ensued. When the guard ran out of tear gas, they were leaderless and panicked.  There was no evidence of any officer ordering them to fire .It appeared to be spontaneous, as they felt they were being surrounded by the reckless, rock throwing gang of students (perhaps several hundred). The Guard’s rifles were loaded with live ammunition and a deadly disaster ensued. The rest is history.

The lesson here in my view is that words and tempers matter. That inflammatory statements of leaders and politicians can be incendiary. In an atmosphere of fear and hate, reason and common sense disappear. Once again we find ourselves a nation divided by extreme views and volatile voices, somewhat like the late 1960’s.

Can we learn from history? Or, as the saying goes, are we doomed to repeat it?