Six on Kent State/Jackson State: 50 Years After Kent State: Four Deaths Shocked a Nation and Thrust Me into Student Activism; Jackson State: A Tragedy Widely Forgotten; Kent State and the War That Never Ended; A Lot of People Were Crying, and the Gu
panaritisp
"On May 4, 1970, the nation was plunged into mourning after four students were gunned down by National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio. The images of the fallen students dominated TV news programs and the tragedy spurred massive protests at hundreds of campuses around the nation.
Fifty years later, with virtually all our college campuses closed and a virus death count of some 50,000, it is hard to imagine that four deaths would trigger such a huge reaction.
There had been many campus protests against the Vietnam War before, of course, but never had soldiers fired without warning into a crowd of students, killing four instantly. This outrage motivated tens of thousands of students, including me, to engage in a new round of protests and defy the orders of governors and university officials to stay home and stay quiet.
Four factors led up to the tragedy and the overwhelming public response.
1. Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. The Kent State students were protesting Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia, announced on April 30. He had ordered the sudden (and ultimately futile) assault without Congressional approval. Nixon had campaigned for president on the promise of ending the Vietnam War and of restoring national unity (e.g. “he will bring us together”). In one awful blow, he had widened the war and further divided the nation.
"On May 4, 1970, the nation was plunged into mourning after four students were gunned down by National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio. The images of the fallen students dominated TV news programs and the tragedy spurred massive protests at hundreds of campuses around the nation.
Fifty years later, with virtually all our college campuses closed and a virus death count of some 50,000, it is hard to imagine that four deaths would trigger such a huge reaction.
There had been many campus protests against the Vietnam War before, of course, but never had soldiers fired without warning into a crowd of students, killing four instantly. This outrage motivated tens of thousands of students, including me, to engage in a new round of protests and defy the orders of governors and university officials to stay home and stay quiet.
Four factors led up to the tragedy and the overwhelming public response.
1. Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. The Kent State students were protesting Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia, announced on April 30. He had ordered the sudden (and ultimately futile) assault without Congressional approval. Nixon had campaigned for president on the promise of ending the Vietnam War and of restoring national unity (e.g. “he will bring us together”). In one awful blow, he had widened the war and further divided the nation.
Cambodian campaign
2. The demonization of student protestors by many Republican politicians. In his presidential campaign, Nixon had repeatedly denounced student protestors as “bums.” One of Ronald Reagan’s key promises in his 1966 gubernatorial campaign was to “clean up the mess at Berkeley.” In February 1970, Reagan mobilized the California National Guard to crack down on a week-long protest at U.C. Santa Barbara and warned at a news conference that “if it takes a bloodbath, so be it.”
In a May 3 news conference, Ohio Governor James Rhodes announced he was sending his state’s National Guard to stop the demonstrations at Kent State and called student protestors “worse than the brownshirts.”
In one awful volley of rifle file on May 4, it was shown that words do have consequences and that too often it was the innocent who paid the price.
3. The event was fully captured on TV. In era before cable news, the three broadcast networks dominated the public’s news diet. Their evening news programs highlighted the deadly sequence of the soldiers lowering their rifles and firing directly at the students. A moment later, the crumpled bodies of the students were seen.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, a supergroup at the height of their success, quickly recorded a hard-rock elegy to the students, “Ohio.” Its refrain was “four dead in O-hi-o.” Released in June, the record hit the top 10, thus lodging the event deep in the nation’s psyche.
4. The victims came from white, middle-class families. The nation had seen National Guard troops deployed in the urban riots of the 1960s, but they had sent to contain black and brown residents of the inner city. This time, troops had opened fire on white students in an Ohio suburb. When two of the students’ parents appeared on TV, they sobbed and wondered aloud why it happened. They represented, in effect, middle-America, the great bellwether of American opinion. No politician could afford to ignore their outrage."
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"A group of angry students. A burst of gunfire from authorities. Young lives cut short.
It sounds a lot like the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970, but it happened 10 days later at a predominantly black college in the South.
Police fired for about 30 seconds on a group of students at Jackson State in Mississippi, killing two and wounding 12 others.
The tragedy was the culmination of increasing friction among students, local youths and law enforcement. On the evening of May 14, African-American youths were reportedly pelting rocks at white motorists driving down the main road through campus -- frequently the site of confrontations between white and black Jackson residents.
According to a 1970 report from the President's Commission on Campus Unrest, police fired more than 150 rounds. And an FBI investigation revealed that about 400 bullets or pieces of buckshot had been fired into Alexander Hall. The shooters claimed that there was a sniper in the dorm, but investigators found "insufficient evidence" of that claim.
The two young men who were gunned down in the melee were Phillip L. Gibbs, a junior at Jackson State and the father of an 18-month-old; and James Earl Green, a high school senior.
Jackson State Today
The event continues to leave a mark on the university. Even today, passers-by can see the bullet holes in the women's dorm. A plaza on campus commemorates the victims of the shooting.
All Jackson State students learn about the shooting in a mandatory orientation class, and professors evoke the event as a teaching tool.
C. Liegh McInnis, who teaches creative writing and world literature at Jackson State, says the story of the shooting is integrated into the curriculum of several liberal arts departments.
In McInnis' own freshman composition class, students are required to see the bullet holes in the women's dorm themselves while researching a critical analysis paper about the shooting."
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Thanks John and Gary
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"The interviews can be emotionally and physically taxing. Medicus’ shortest interview in the past few weeks was 25 minutes long. But she says an interview with someone who lived in Kent for several years, or was involved in the aftermath of May 4, will most likely be 90 minutes long. Oral historians also walk a fine line between being completely unbiased and being active, empathetic listeners. Because of this, it’s hard to know how vocal to be during the interview, Medicus says.
“I’m trying to be empathetic because this person is sharing, especially people who were young when it happened,” Medicus says. “I’m trying to convey that empathy without stepping over that line. I’m just an unbiased recorder of them telling me what they saw, heard and remembered. It’s exhausting. The thing I discovered recently is just to get outside and walk somewhere for 10 minutes. That’s a whole part of the story is what it’s like for the interviewer.”
There are many stories to be told from different people and perspectives about May 4.
“There were thousands of people trying to get around the Commons, trying to get to class, trying to eat lunch, whatever,” Medicus says. “And each one of them comes from a whole different place, a whole different outlook, it’s amazing. It was a 180 moment, a pivotal moment, for undergraduates especially.”
Despite how taxing these interviews can be for everyone involved, they hold significant value. The people telling their stories are motivated by having a way to get this off of their chest, but they’re getting it off their chest in a way that’s meaningful, Medicus says. These interviews become part of the historical record, permanently preserved in the May 4 archives."
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