Troops fired on Kent State students in 1970. Survivors see echoes in today's campus protests
By: Story by PATRICK ORSAGOS and MICHAEL RUBINKAM
this is one of the reasons why we shouldn't listen to republican ideas about addressing campus unrest...
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
K ENT, Ohio (AP) — Dean Kahler flung himself to the ground and covered his head when the bullets started flying. The Ohio National Guard had opened fire on unarmed war protesters at Kent State University, and Kahler, a freshman, was among them.
M1 rifle rounds hit the ground all around him. “And then I got hit,” Kahler recalled, more than 50 years later. “It felt like a bee sting.” But it was far worse than that — a bullet had gone through his lung, shattered three vertebrae and damaged his spinal cord. He was paralyzed.
Four Kent State students were killed and Kahler and eight others were injured when National Guard members fired into a crowd on May 4, 1970, following a tense exchange in which troops used tear gas to break up an anti-war demonstration and protesters hurled rocks at the guardsmen. It was a watershed moment in U.S. history — a violent bookend to the turbulent 1960s — that galvanized campus protests nationwide and forced the temporary shutdown of hundreds of colleges and universities.
Now the shootings at Kent State and their aftermath have taken on fresh relevance, with students demonstrating against another far-off war, college administrators seeking to balance free-speech rights against their imperative to maintain order, and a divided public seeing disturbing images of chaotic confrontations.
Kent State is planning a solemn commemoration Saturday, as it does every May 4, with a gathering at noon on the commons, near where troops killed students Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder in a 13-second volley of rifle and pistol fire.
Kahler, meanwhile, is keenly watching this new generation of college students demand an end to military action, and wondering if colleges are making some of the same mistakes.
“I question whether college administrators and trustees of colleges have learned any lessons from the ’70s,” Kahler said in an interview at his home outside Canton, Ohio. “I think they’re being a little heavy handed, a little over the top."
More than 2,400 people at dozens of U.S. colleges and universities have been arrested in recent weeks as police break up demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war, according to an Associated Press tally. Police in riot gear have dismantled tent encampments, cleared protesters from occupied buildings and made arrests, mostly for refusing orders to disperse, although some have been charged with vandalism, resisting arrest or other offenses.
Things have been much quieter at Kent State, a large public school in northeastern Ohio where officials say they have long strived to promote civil dialogue.
“Largely driven by our history, we’re always and consistently about a couple of things. One is, we embrace freedom of speech," said Todd Diacon, the university's president. “And another thing is, we understand what happens when conversations, attitudes become so polarized that someone that doesn’t agree with you becomes demonized — that that can lead to violence.”
Kent State has leaned into debates about the war in Gaza, inviting students from opposing sides to share perspectives, said Neil Cooper, who directs Kent State’s School of Peace and Conflict Studies.
“There can be a temptation to try and not to talk about these issues because they’re too difficult, too challenging, and, you know, there’s a concern that talking about them will make them worse,” Cooper said. “Our approach has been very different.”
The demonstrations at Kent State have been peaceful, but there's still an undercurrent of tension, and there are both Jewish and Palestinian students who don't feel safe, said Adriana Gasiewski, a junior who has covered them for the school newspaper.
Gasiewski worries about the powder-keg atmosphere at schools like Columbia University, where the current wave of protests originated last month and New York City police have repeatedly clashed with demonstrators. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, has called on the National Guard to be deployed to Columbia, although New York officials have said police can handle the protests. President Joe Biden said Thursday he does not want troops to be deployed to campuses.
“My biggest fear is ... they bring the National Guard to Columbia and that it’s like history repeating itself with May 4," Gasiewski said.
Temple University historian Ralph Young is seeing clear echoes of the Vietnam war protest movement.
“I think they do compare in scale and impact,” said Young, whose books include “American Patriots: A Short History of Dissent.” Just as in the 1960s and '70s, he said, the current crackdowns “only get more and more people angry and I think it’ll just magnify the protests, and spread them further into other campuses.”
The parallels don't end there.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said “outside agitators” are fomenting antisemitic protests. In 1970, Ohio Gov. James Rhodes, who made the decision to send National Guard troops to Kent State, accused external groups of spreading terror, calling them “the worst type of people that we harbor in America.”
Students then were furious that President Richard Nixon was bombing Cambodia instead of winding down the war as he had promised. Days before the shootings, demonstrators had clashed violently with police in downtown Kent, and the university's ROTC building was set ablaze.
Then, on May 4, Chic Canfora joined several hundred fellow students on the commons, protesting not only the war but the presence of troops on campus.
Canfora escaped injury. Her brother, Alan Canfora, was shot and wounded. Now a journalism teacher at Kent State, she worries that campus administrators elsewhere are using the “militant actions of a few” to paint all protesters “as violent and worthy of the kind of heat that they want to send in to these situations.”
“I think that all university campuses should get together and figure out how to allow students to be what students have historically been, the conscience of America," Canfora said.
Gregory Payne, an Emerson College scholar and expert on the Kent State shootings, said Vietnam-era protesters certainly worried about getting drafted, but they also took a moral stand, as are today's protesters who see the U.S. as complicit in the disproportionate death toll of Palestinians resulting from Israel's response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
“They’re protesting, you know, a war that is atrocious for all sides involved. And I think that they’re attempting to bring attention to it. People can question some of the strategies and tactics. But I think there will be a legacy and there will be a defining characteristic about this era, too,” Payne said. "My hope is that there is not death and bloodshed like we saw in Kent State."
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this is the event in my life that forever forged my attitude towards republicans. unhappy 54th anniversary trumpsters...
Pure unadulterated evil.
what do you think the human interest rate would be on 4 dead and 8 wounded after 54 years? /s
Kent Mayor Leroy Satrom, Dem, requested the National Guard assistance.
the rwnj governor called the NG in ...
LeRoy Satrom , (<= it's a link, click it) the Democrat mayor of Kent, OH, requested the National Guard. Even though Satrom was a Democrat, he didn't seem to be very liberal. The liberals take pride in having forced conservatives out of the Democrat Party and making the party what is is today.
The protests were about Nixon's incursion into Cambodia. The protesters ignored that Nixon had been withdrawing troops from Vietnam, had ended the draft, and didn't care that the Khmer Rouge was killing Cambodians in a political genocide. The protests were never about the Vietnamese, Laotians, or Cambodians.
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I remember that day clearly and the first thought that I had was ''JHC we are killing our people''...I thought that I had left all the killing behind in the jungles of SE Asia. I hadn't and never ever what to see another Kent State. EVER.
And Kent state wasn't the only act of violence-- and murder!-- during that period. I wonder how many people remember the Birmingham Church bombing?
It was a quiet Sunday morning in Birmingham, Alabama—around 10:24 on September 15, 1963—when a dynamite bomb exploded in the back stairwell of the downtown Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
It was a clear act of racial hatred: the church was a key civil rights meeting place and had been a frequent target of bomb threats.
. Parents rushed to the Sunday school classroom to check on their children and soon discovered that four young girls had been killed in the blast: Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14). More than 20 others were injured.
Unfortunately that was not the case.I wonder how many people remember this?
Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner - Slain Civil Rights Worker in Mississippi
Sadly, I remember all of them and more,
Siege at Wounded Knee 1973, Alcatraz, BIA etc etc and etc.
And Little Rock. Arkansas
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The unyielding defense of the indefensible
“My biggest fear is ... they bring the National Guard to Columbia and that it’s like history repeating itself with May 4
Didn't the mayor of NYC say that he would not bring the National Guard in-- that there will be action taken only by local (city) police departments?
The right is shamelessly using these college protests to promote, not Israel or Jews, but their own political ideology.
Of course-- that's typical of The Right.
(But one thing we can be grateful for-- those of us on the Left would never do anything like that-- we would never use protests to promote our views!)
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“My biggest fear is ... they bring the National Guard to Columbia and that it’s like history repeating itself with May 4
Didn't the mayor of NYC say that he would not bring the National Guard in-- that there will be action taken only by local (city) police departments?
Was he lying? Can we expect the National Guard enter Columbia University today or tomorrow and attack the protestors camped out there?
And if so-- It would be horrible if they are really going to shoot innocent kids protesting at Columbia!
There must be something we can do to prevent that!!!!
It’s premature and sensationalist to equate the current protests with Kent State. So many things have changed with respect to student demonstrations since 1970. Let’s not get freaked out over something that isn’t happening and is unlikely to happen. Protestors have been given a very long leash, and when the schools want them moved, it has been handled very gently.
Are you sure?
I read on Instagram that there a few protestors murdered by the National Guard at a protest at some school in California (I don't remember which school-- I think it might have been USC or UCLA???).
Also there was a post on NT recently that someone went to one of these protests and actually mocked one of the protestors by making "Monkey Noises"!!!
The National Guard has never killed any students at USC, UCLA or any other college campus in California to the best of my knowledge. The CHP reportedly did fire "less lethal" weapons at UCLA Thursday. No one was killed. If you have evidence to the contrary I would be interested to see it.
John F. Kennedy was not a Republican. Lyndon Johnson was not a Republican. Hubert Humphrey was not nominated by primary voters. And the protesters at Kent State wasn't protesting the mistreatment of the North Vietnamese.
The hippies were protesting to save their own asses from the draft. And Democrats were sending 19 year old kids to Vietnam to save Democrat political asses. Richard Nixon began withdrawing troops from Vietnam early in 1969, shortly after his inauguration, and Democrats were pissed. Richard Nixon ended the Democrats' draft in Jan., 1973, and Democrats were pissed. Richard Nixon ended the Vietnam War and Democrats were pissed.
And Democrats have been lying about the whole Vietnam War ever since.
Well, I suppose that depends upon how you define "mistreatment".
During the War against Viet-Nam, entire villages of innocent people were Napalmed-- just one type of ongoing atrocities that was commomplace during the war we were protesting!
Doesn't matter because that's NOT what the protests were about.
Indeed-- Nixon was a man of high principles. Wonderful person-- a truly great American!
Thank you for your brilliant contributions to this discussion!
Richard Nixon was a California politician. Whaddya expect? Ronald Reagan? Oh, wait ....
Well, hate to break it to you but the hippies and counterculture movement was anti-government. That's why the Confederate flag was popular with the counterculture movement.
Donald Trump is more counterculture than mainstream establishment. And Democrats are still pissed about Nixon. Go figure ...
Same old same old excuse, used by draft dodgers for years!
One word:
Bone Spurs!!!
Bone Spurs!!!
Daughters of foot doctor say he diagnosed Trump with bone spurs as ‘favor’ to Fred Trump
The daughters of a Queens foot doctor say their late father diagnosed President Donald Trump with bone spurs to help him avoid the Vietnam War draft as a “favor” to his father Fred Trump, according to a new report Wednesday.
The White House did not return the Times’ request for an interview with the President nor respond to questions about his service record.
In a 2016 interview with The Times, Trump claimed that a doctor “gave me a letter – a very strong letter – on the heels” to provide to draft officials.
So, they should have done the honorable thing and illegally immigrated to Canada? Seem to remember Carter getting a lot of heat from his own party for pardoning draft dodgers.
But, hey, those ROTC wonders could still play weekend warrior with the National Guard. Oh, wait ....
Your geography is confused-- some people are illegally entering our Southern border (the border with Mexico)-- not our Northern border (with Canada!).
I personally knew a guy who crossed our Northern border to Canada--- but you are wrong about the legality.
It was perfectly legal-- in fact he (legally) became a Canadian citizen.
BTW Nerm_L, I forgot to mention: Thank you for your service!
Civil service. And Democrats fucked that up, too.
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oh, is that the republican version of US history? the bottom line is if tricky dick had gone to federal prison for life, we wouldn't be experiencing some of the legal issues and social division we're contending with now.
Such as?
the concept of an imperial president that's above the law...
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I was only 8 years old when Kent State happened but I remember seeing it on the news
I was 15 and left home 2 weeks later for a summer job at a dude ranch in the mountains. my parents let me blow off the last 3 weeks of school since the testing was done and school was basically a daycare center until june. most of the seasonal help was college kids and they were all twisted up over the shooting.