Four Dead in Ohio

Today is the anniversary of the massacre at Kent State in 1970. I remember my parents saying the kids wouldn't have been shot if they hadn't been "doing something wrong". I'm still shocked.

NPR has a retrospective, interviews and a slide show. USA Today has an article observing the anniversary:

That was Kent State University, May 4, 1970, a few days after Richard Nixon, who'd campaigned for president on an implicit promise to end the war, widened it by invading Cambodia. Across the nation, students protested. At Kent State, where two days earlier the ROTC building was burned down, National Guardsmen fired into a crowd and killed four unarmed students, the closest of whom was nearly a football field away.

The New York Times interviews some students:

Torey Wootton, now a freshman, wants to lie in one of those sites, to understand what her uncle Paul Ciminero felt on that warm and sunny day 40 years ago as he stood watching Jeffrey Miller, a fellow student, die in that spot. Mr. Miller was shot in the mouth by a National Guardsman.
...
And until she graduates, Ms. Wootton will follow the advice her parents, both Kent State alumni, gave her when she left for college. “We don’t want to see you in the news,” they said, “and we don’t want to see you get shot.”

Here are the lyrics to the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young anthem:

Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are cutting us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?
...

Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.

There are web sites devoted to this subject, among which are this one and this one. Here is the story of one of the survivors, left paralyzed after the attack. There is a repository of information here. There is an educational site here.

The Huffington Post has a video taken at the time and says,

In 2010, at the request of two Ohio newspapers, forensic experts used technology not available in the 1970s to evaluate a digital CD of the tape. They heard someone shout "prepare to fire" and then give an order. Two seconds later, the gunshots begin

and closes with this:

Thanks to technology, we no longer need to wait 40 years to find out how confrontations with the forces of law and order start. When demonstrators turn violent, we'll know it right away. And it's almost possible to hope that "self-defense" -- the default explanation for official misconduct -- may become as extinct as bell bottoms.

History.com says,

Following the killings, the unrest across the country escalated even further. Almost five hundred colleges were shut down or disrupted by protests.Despite the public outcry, the Justice Department initially declined to conduct a grand jury investigation. A report by the President's Commission on Campus Unrest did acknowledge, however, that the action of the guardsmen had been "unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable." Eventually, a grand jury indicted eight of the guardsmen, but the charges were dismissed for lack of evidence.

The wikipedia article says,

The Kent State shootings —also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre— occurred at Kent State University in the U.S. city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.

Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the Cambodian Campaign, which President Richard Nixon announced in a television address on April 30. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.