When pro-Palestinian student protests about the war in Israel erupted on college campuses across the United States this past spring, news reports were often accentuated with archival footage of anti-Vietnam war gatherings from their grandparents’ generation.
Fortunately, none of those recent uprisings and resultant clashes between students and law enforcement ended like the one on May 4, 1970.
A day which left four students dead and nine injured on the campus of Ohio’s Kent State University from bullets fired by soldiers in the state’s National Guard.
Neil Young’s rushed-to-pressing CSNY song “Ohio” notwithstanding, history and the decades since has shown that there’s no One Boogeyman Theory to blame for the deaths. As that day on campus and the two prior which also saw activity involved a seething cauldron of factors and actors which—like the Guard’s advance—slowly led to tears and tragedy.
Author and historian Brian VanDeMark takes a God’s Eye view of the day—as well as what preceded and followed it—in his masterful and compelling work of narrative non-fiction Kent State: An American Tragedy (416 pp., $35, W.W. Norton & Co.). He uses previous sources, untapped archival troves and a series of original interviews.
And, with all due respect to Howard Means’ 2016 book 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence, VanDeMark’s take could be the definitive look at the incident.
When members of the Guard—many of them the same age as the students—arrived on campus, they had come off four straight days of policing a trucker’s strike and were running on fumes. They had originally arrived on campus after some of the more aggressive students torched a ROTC building and ran amok on nearby streets.
And unlike other situations that might have seen them carrying nightsticks, batons, or shields, they were sent to quell the student occupations with only tear gas and rifles loaded with live ammunition. To which they also affixed bayonets on the end.
Bad actors on both sides escalated things. And the conflicting goals, intentions, approaches, and orders of college leadership, local law enforcement, and Guard officers muddied the mix early on with lethal consequences.
Still, few on either side thought things would blow up as they did. VanDeMark notes that the two days prior to May 4 included some skirmishes, but were largely peaceful. Peaceful enough that some groups of guards and students spent more time talking and playing cards or touch football then staring their “enemy” down.
And for some, the lines were even more blurred. VanDeMark recalls one student who had joined the National Guard only to earn money to pay for his Kent State tuition, and was literally on his way to class when he got the order to report for duty.
As VanDeMark writes, the two sides even shared some sympathies, with some Guardsmen joining their unit as a way to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam. While others from the largely white, working-class Guard (and their superiors) resented the middle-class students for pissing away an educational opportunity they wish they could have. And what limited training they had were geared toward urban riots, not student protests.
As for the students, the group that gathered on the grounds during the demonstrations ran a wide gamut from passionate zealots antagonizing or spitting on Guardsmen, to those who were against the idea of war on different levels, to the merely curious casual onlookers. One interesting fact: Somewhere between 80-90 percent of Kent State’s entire student body did not even attend the May 4 protest rally at all.
VanDeMark quotes one student “I had an uneasy feeling. As I slowly passed by the patrols of National Guard, my uneasiness increased. Both [students and Guardsmen] felt that had a legitimate right to be there and act as they did, and people who had no desire for a direct and fatal confrontation moved inexorably toward one.”
Then it happened. Chaos. Confusion. Screaming. Limited vision. Little communication and no leadership. VanDeMark doesn’t point out one “villain,” but Ohio National Guard general Robert Canterbury is first among equals.
The Guard (about 100 strong) would launch tear gas cannisters at the protestors (anywhere between 2-3,000 strong), only to have them thrown back, along with a hail of rocks and bricks. One side would advance, then pull back, then the process would be reversed.
Students surrounded the guards, who despite having weapons, became nervous and panicked at being overwhelmed, and with gas masks on, had severely limited vision.
Then the first shot was fired. And then 66 more to screaming, running, and more chaos. The entire incident took only 12.53 seconds according to audio reports.
And by the end, students Bill Schroeder, Allison Krause, Jeff Miller, and Sandy Scheuer were no longer breathing. A picture taken by student John Filo of a Mary Ann Vecchio—a 14-year-old runaway who was not a student—wailing over the prone body of Miller became the lasting image of the event.
Four dead in O-HI-O.
Wounded survivors would still face years or a lifetime of physical challenges and results.
And how did it all actually start? Who fired first? Was a command given, or was it a guardsman shooting intentionally or not?
VanDeMark believes he’s solved the mystery once and for all with a secret held tightly by one man for 54 years and finally revealed to him, but which I won’t spoil here.
There are two areas that are sometimes overlooked in discussions and analysis about Kent State that VanDeMark thankfully explores. The first is the culture and history of greater student demonstration during the era—and both the similarities and differences for those at Kent State.
And the second is the dual pain and suffering of the parents of the four dead students. Not simply for having their children taken from them so suddenly and violently but the vitriol heaped upon them by some pretty shitty people.
VanDeMark reproduces some truly heinous letters sent to grieving parents gloating in the deaths of their pinko commie America-hating spoiled kids, while others bemoan the fact that “only four” of the demonstrators were killed. It makes for some tough reading.
In the months, years, and decades following, there would be plenty of studies, reports, and finger-pointing. Along with civil and criminal trials and reckonings both large and small. Kent State: An American Tragedy does a superior job retelling and really digging into an incident that still has reverberations today.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
