Kent State, May 4, 1970: When America Killed It's Children

Allison Krause, William Schroeder, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer

The bombing of Cambodia was a squalid secret. It's architect was a Jewish emigre, Nixons's National Security advisor, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Henry Kissinger who, Christopher Hitchens, in his The Trial of Henry Kissinger, says is a war criminal... and not just for carpet bombing the Cambodians.

When knowledge of the bombing of Cambodia which had been secretly going on for months, if not years, became public it resulted in student protests in many places in the US. AS a result of riots which involved an attempt to burn down the Kent University State (Ohio) ROTC Building Governor James Rhodes sent in the National Guard.

On the 4th of May the Guard marched down a hill, they had removed identity tags and were unidentifiable wearing gas masks, to a field of angry, shouting, casually dressed young protestors and then back up again. As the group of guradsmen reached the buildings of the University the Guardsmen wheeled and fired into the students killing four and injuring another nine.13 seconds of indiscriminate gunfire (One Mississippi ... two Mississippi...) 67 shots in total 5 per second.

Not known for many years there was there was also an undercover FBI informant, Terry Norman, carrying a gun on the field that day.

The Guardsmen were told the same night that they would never be prosecuted by the state of Ohio. They never were.

The Nixon administration stalled for years, "investigations" were announced and dried up, Nixons notorious White House tapes subsequently released show that Nixon thought demonstrators were bums, and asked the Secret Service to go beat them up, and apparently felt that the Kent State victims had it coming.

As did most of the country; William Gordon graduate of Kent in 1973 and of author of Four Dead in Ohio, called the killings "the most popular murders ever committed in the United States."

President Nixon created a public atmosphere in which students who opposed the war were fair game for those who supported the government. Construction workers rioted on Wall Street a week later attacking antiwar demonstrators and sending many to the hospital.

President Nixon called the parents of one student who was killed and was a bystander--he was a member of ROTC-- and he expressed his condolences.

Ignoring pleas from the families of the victims and current KSU students who set up a makeshift Tent City on the practice football field, Kent State proceeded to build gymnasium annex over a large part of the site of the May 4 confrontation. 192 protesters were removed from the site and arrested. Subsequent protests are similarly unsuccessful.

in May 1990 KSU dedicated, eventually a memorial of granite slabs in a woodland setting, to "the events of May 4" (not the victims). At the dedication ceremonies, Ohio Governor Richard Celeste apologized to the families of the four slain students and the nine surviving victims.

http://www.learningfromlyrics.org/may4memorial.html

Pic Mary Ann Vecchio over the body of Jeffrey Miller - a picture that went round the world - she is speaking later today Annual Speakers Program Featuring Mary Ann Vecchio: Noon - 2 pm on The Commons. Mary Ann Vecchio was a 14-year-old runaway on May 4, 1970.

Classes at Kent State are cancelled from noon - 2 pm to allow more students to attend these events.