| "Four Dead in O-hio-O": The Kent State Massacre |
| David C. Hanson, Virginia Western Community College |
The tragedy at Kent State University in May 1970 was a watershed event in United States history. The nation had grown deeply divided over the Vietnam War, but American casualties were soldiers in a far away land. The home front was embittered but safe. Then an unexpected tragedy occurred. Suddenly the war came home.
In 1970 Kent State, located near Akron, Ohio, was a quiet college with an enrollment of 21,000 students. According to a survey at the time, a majority of KSU students (54%) supported the Nixon Administration policy of Vietnamization and gradual withdrawal. Since his election in 1968, President Richard M. Nixon had been promising to end the war in Vietnam. Then on April 30, 1970, Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia. In a televised address to the nation, he justified the "incursion" as a necessary response to North Vietnamese aggression. Anticipating the public outcry at this apparent expansion of the increasingly unpopular war, Nixon invoked a variation of Eisenhower's domino theory. "If when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation acts like a pitiful helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations... throughout the world." From a military standpoint, the Cambodian operation accomplished little. Demonstrations broke out on college campuses across the nation.
On May 2, students from Kent State University burned down the campus Army ROTC building (a dilapidated little building scheduled to be torn down). Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes, who was running for the Senate, immediately sent in the National Guard and personally visited the campus the next day, May 3, promising to use "every force possible" to restore order. He condemned the Kent students as "the worst type of people we harbor in America...worse than the Communists." He added, "We're going to eradicate the problem!" Approximately 800 Ohio Guardsmen were on the campus and another 400 were nearby in the city. On May 4, while classes were being held as usual, around 1,000 students joined protesters, some shouting and taunting the Guardsmen but most just watching the excitement. At noon the order was given to break up the demonstration. The Guard fired teargas canisters and advanced on the students. Below is the account of Alan Canfora, one of the students who participated in the demonstration.
Immediately as our peaceful anti-war rally began, approximately 75 members of the Ohio National Guard attacked.... As these guardsmen wearing helmets and gas masks marched and fired tear gas [above], we ran away from the KSU Commons up over "Blanket Hill" and down into the Prentice Hall dormitory's parking lot. The armed guardsmen followed us over the hill and then settled on a practice football field for perhaps ten minutes. During this time, a stand-off occurred as a few rocks were thrown back and forth by both students and guardsmen. Because we stood hundreds of feet apart the rocks were ineffective and both sides ceased that activity.
As some of us walked closer to shout our anti-war and anti-National Guard anger, perhaps 250-feet away, about a dozen guardsmen kneeled and aimed toward us. I stood my ground and shouted towards the armed troops who had their fingers on their rifle triggers. Since there was no logical reason to aim or shoot, I assumed they would not fire and I was correct -- at that moment. Soon, however, the troops regrouped and began to march away back up the hill. We assumed they were marching in a retreat back over the hill to the KSU Commons.
We were quite shocked when, at the hilltop, perhaps a dozen members of Troop G simultaneously stopped, turned and aimed their rifles [below]. What followed was a 13 second barrage of gunfire, mostly from M-1 rifles, into our crowd of unarmed students. Some other guardsmen from Company A also fired non-lethal shots. A total of 67 bullets were fired by the guardsmen from the hilltop. Most of the bullets were fired over 300 feet into the distant Prentice Hall parking lot. Two of the students killed, Allison Krause and Jeff Miller, were protesters. Two others, Sandy Scheuer and Bill Schroeder were bystanders. Jeff was killed 275 feet away from his killer. Allison was 350 feet away. Sandy and Bill were approximately 390 feet away. Nine others, including myself, were wounded. Dean Kahler remains in a wheelchair after he was shot in the back.
In reaction to the Kent State Massacre, approximately 4 million students on college campuses across the country participated in strikes and demonstrations, causing over 900 campuses to close. Just five days after the shootings, 100,000 people demonstrated in Washington against the war. In response to the incident, President Nixon gave a speech, saying "This should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy." Questions arose almost immediately about why shots were fired and who was responsible. The President's Commission on Campus Unrest directed the blame at the students for provoking the tragedy. A special state grand jury exonerated the Guardsmen and then indicted about two dozen students for the disturbance preceding the shooting. (One of the Governor's special prosecutors even told a reporter that he felt the Guardsmen should have shot more students!)
The Guardsmen successfully thwarted investigators by removing their name tags and switching assigned weapons. They denied having been ordered to fire. (Two eyewitnesses, both ex-Marines who had served in Vietnam, said they saw a sergeant--later identified as Myron Pryor--give a signal to fire.) The Guardsmen claimed that their lives were endangered by encroaching students, even though a Justice Department investigation concluded that the students never came close enough to pose even a remote threat. Pressured by the victims' families, the Justice Department asked a federal grand jury to indict eight Guardsmen, but (according to Nixon's chief domestic advisor John Ehrlichman) the President personally ordered Attorney General John Mitchell to block the prosecution at the request of Governor Rhodes.
Families of the victims spent the next several years trying to pin the responsibility for the Kent State tragedy on Governor Rhodes and the Ohio Guard. Criminal trials in both federal and state court were either dismissed or ended in acquittals. (Civil lawsuits filed by survivors and families of the four dead students were eventually consolidated into one: Scheuer vs. Rhodes.) A civil trial for wrongful death and injury failed when the judge excluded key evidence and the jury decided against awarding damages to the parents; but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati overturned the verdict because of jury tampering and a second civil trial began in 1978. On January 4, 1979, an out of court settlement was reached. The State of Ohio awarded the plaintiffs $675,000 in damages along with a statement of "regret" (not an apology or admission of wrongdoing).*
Finally on May 4, 1990, the 20th anniversary of the shooting, the university dedicated a memorial to "the events of May 4, 1970." At the dedication ceremony, Ohio Governor Richard Celeste apologized to the families of the victims. Former Governor Rhodes, who died in March 2001 at the age of 91, remained steadfast in his insistence that the demonstrators were responsible for the tragedy.
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Allison Krause |
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Jeff Miller |
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Sandy Scheuer |
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Bill Schroeder |
*Settlement of the award was as follows: Dean Kahler $350,000; Joseph Lewis
$42,500; Thomas Grace $37,500; Donald MacKenzie $27,000; John Cleary $22,500;
Alan Canfora, Douglas Wrentmore, Robert Stamps and James Russell $15,000 each;
families of the four slain students also received $15,000 each; attorney fees
and expenses were $75,000.
© 2000 by David C. Hanson, Virginia Western Community College