Out in the world, when people talk about the shootings at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, they call it “Kent State.” But in the small town of Kent, 35 miles south of Cleveland, and on the university campus, they call it “May 4th.”
It was 40 years ago Tuesday that the shootings ”” which killed four people and wounded nine others ”” stunned the nation. Even at the height of the Vietnam War protests, no one imagined that government soldiers would fire real bullets at unarmed college students.
“I saw the smoke come out of the weapons, and light is faster than sound, and so I knew immediately [they] were not firing blanks. So it was almost instinctive to dive for cover,” remembers Jerry Lewis, who was 33 and teaching sociology at Kent State in 1970.
Trust and respect for institutions of any kind was shattered for many of us because of the 1970 Kent State and Jackson State killings of unarmed young people. The USA felt nothing like a “Christian nation” when I went off to college in the fall of that year. On the contrary, I wondered, along with many classmates, whether we would be allowed to survive. In my experience of Americans born either before 1945 or after 1960, they have not been able to empathize with the profound anxiety and cynicism – one might say a mild form of post-traumatic stress disorder – that blossomed widely among young Americans setting out from their family homes on their own adult life journeys during the police brutality-era of the years of the Civil Rights Movement and anti-Vietnam War dissent of the late 1960’s – anxiety and cynicism most indelibly ingrained during the deadly spring of 1970.
Henry–I wrote a much longer reply but deleted it; suffice it to say, using post-traumatic stress disorder to describe college students in 1970 is a very poor choice of words.
The 60’s were politically traumatic for a lot of us. I remember sitting in a drive-in restaurant on East Parkway in Memphis watching a convoy of truck loads of National Guard soldiers and jeeps with machine guns mounted on the back as they headed down to Ole Miss to make sure one young man was allowed to enroll there. While I don’t argue with his right to go to school there, it certainly gave me cold chills to know those machine guns were going to be pointed at American citizens in Mississippi. I’ve never trusted the government since then as much as I had before. A few years earlier I had heard stories from a person from Central America about having been threatened by gun-toting government soldiers because she happened to be wearing blue and white, the colors of the opposition, during the pre-election campaign period and thinking “that could never happen here.”
And as I sat there watching the convoy, I realized that yes, it could happen here.
I remember the event well. The college I left as an Army draftee in 1967 (Oakland University) was much different that the one I returned to in 1969. I watched the students tear the flag down and burn it shortly after my return. As a veteran, I was the enemy. The words mentally ill and Vietnam Veteran were paired continually in the press. We were now the enemy. The war protesters had burned and bombed buildings and innocent people were killed by them also. After the killings at Kent State the protests essentially stopped. I feel bad about it now but not then. The 60’s were the worst decade of my life. There is no way those who did not live through that era will ever understand how close this country came to civil war. As I write this I am still angry about this.
I wonder when we enshrined a right to riot in our law? When did it become a form of “protected speech” to assault people, commit arson or otherwise destroy both public and private property? When did we reach the point where rocks and gasoline bombs or other forms of dangerous weapons could be hurled at citizens or even police with an expectation that nothing would happen in response?
The oft used expression “read them/him/her the riot act” has an interesting history behind it. The Riot Act was originally passed by Parliament in Great Britain and similar laws were later passed in the United States and by most of the states. The upshot was that after provisions of said “Riot Act” were read aloud to a violent mob they had a certain amount of time from that point to disburse peaceably. Anyone failing to do so was liable to be fired on by police or troops called out to suppress the riot without further warning.
Am I alone in seeing that as a fairly reasonable response to mob violence?
#2: I don’t know anything about you, but, with respect, I can only think you never had bullets fired at you by English-speakers in uniform, or were tear-gassed as you watched friends being clubbed by baton-wielding police for taking photographs at a demonstration.
What’s wrong with calling it post-traumatic stress disorder? It’s after a traumatic event, and it causes stress. Seems like a no-brainer (unless you want to reserve the term for survivors of combat, which seems spurious).
#5: “Am I alone in seeing that as a fairly reasonable response to mob violence?” No, you are not.
How about the Texas/Feds massacre of women and children. Big Government at work?
#4, Fr Dale, as someone who grew up after the war and who has seen his family members still suffer from it, thank you and God bless you for your service and sacrifice. You are no less a hero than those who fought in WWII, and probably moreso, considering that you had no “United” States backing you up.
#1 Henry Greville – thank you for remembering the students at Jackson State – that is often overlooked.
This was a great tragedy – it should be noted that two of those killed, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder, were just changing classes.
Here’s a link to some new evidence in today’s Washington Times:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/04/new-light-shed-on-kent-state-killings/
#4, Fr. Dale, thank you for your testimony – you are correct – it was a horrible time. I was a young boy living in California and then in the DC area, my father a Marine. I remember being fearful for my father when he drove to work during some of the protests. It was a time of assassinations – MLK and RFK, of riots – Watts, Detroit, Newark, Chicago, DC; of prison uprisings – Attica, Soledad; and terrible violence and enmity toward anyone in the military or veterans. It was a horrible time.
As I left my mother and father in Jan 1970 to go on active duty in the USAF, and fly to my first base in CA from Savannah, I had great trepidation, because I had to wear my uniform to travel on the military ticket I had. My fear was justified. When I arrived in San Francisco, anti-war protesters threw tomatoes at me, as I went to another gate to change planes. The South seemed to still support us military persons (we often took young soldiers home for dinner after church) but most places did not. It made our tours in Vietnam much harder, knowing we would not go home to a warm welcome, but would actually receive derision until we arrived at our actual home. I don’t ever want to experience anything like that time again … but I have to say that it seems to me, from my observations over the years since then, that our society’s morality and courage to uphold our time-honored traditions and faith began to wane from that time, and have continued to slide into the rather squalid state in which we now find ourselves as a country.
Re #5:
“. . . an over-response in the heat of anger that results in a killing; it’s a murder. It’s not premeditated and it certainly can’t be condoned.” — Spiro Agnew, May 7, 1970
“the indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.” — President’s Commission on Campus Unrest (Scranton Commission), June 1970
“Even if the guardsmen faced danger, it was not a danger that called for lethal force. The 61 shots by 28 guardsmen certainly cannot be justified.” — President’s Commission
Following up on #13 above, what all of us who came of age in the “the ’60s” (and early ’70s) seem to have lingering in common is sadness for the patriotic and moral idealism that we were raised with that was then shattered by the many historically ugly events of our youth, from the assassination of a President to the shameful resignation of another. I suggest that the reason so many of this same age group, especially clergy now the 50-70 age bracket, have wreaked havoc in congregations and dioceses throughout the nation, is that they believe that “the Church” should be principally an agent for radical change of secular society, rather than the more historic concept of “the Church” as principally custodian and pastoral expression of and missionary agency for unchanging salvific truth. The Baby Boomers have seen few institutions they don’t mind allowing to crumble.
#15, I agree with what you have said. But I would point out, also, that baby boomers did not come of age until the Clinton Admin in 1992. Prior to that the “Greatest Generation” was running things, and though they are praised for their sacrifice and devotion to duty as young people during WWII, they are the ones who raised their children according to Dr. Spock, and who went on the quest and raised their children on the quest of materialism, in response to their being raised during the Great Depression. Yes, in many ways, we Boomers made changes that still reverberate today in the late 60s and early 70s (some good – race relations and openness to new things – some not so good – total disrespect for authority and traditions), but in many ways we were only continuing the march begun for us by our parents.
Re #14,
TGD,
I think I unintentionally created through poor wording the impression that I condoned the use of lethal force at Kent State. I do not. My point was that we have become far too tolerant of mob violence to the point where persons engaged in it are often given a slap on the wrist, if that. The use of force under the Riot Act also required that fair and clear warning be given unless there was an immediate threat to the safety of innocent persons (including of course police or government authorities). This did not happen.
#17 reads in part, “I think I unintentionally created through poor wording the impression that I condoned the use of lethal force at Kent State.”
I did indeed read it that way, and I am happy to have been mistaken. It was, as others have noted here, a grim time, and I recall concluding at the time that those in power had decided to simply kill anyone in “opposition.” Kent State and Jackson State seem, in retrospect now, to have led the entire generation in power to a horrified realization that a change of course was needed — that the government cannot have its armed forces shooting unarmed civilians, shooting the young, shooting the political opposition. As Fr. Dale (#4) observes, the country seemed at the brink of civil war.
Shifting topics, Henry Greville in #15 has made me think about whether opposition to the Vietnam war plays a role in the present situation where the church seems at the brink of fracturing. Thanks. I believe, however, that “agent for radical change” per se is not the point. The NT, especially the gospels, is full of social justice teachings, just as the NT is full of “salvific truth” teachings. One or the other of those two will be more prominent in different people’s minds. People adopt a reappraiser viewpoint from religious motives, with radical change per se not being the goal. More accurate is to call it a willingness to admit radical change if necessary for the sake of the truth.
#19, I would say you have it backward in your last two sentences. Admission of radical change by reappraisers is to accomodate the secular culture of the age, and radical change being exactly the goal and motive. To use your phrasing, “More accurate is to call it a willingness to admit radical change if necessary (and it is necessary) for the sake of denying the truth.”
Interesting article here, New Light Shed on Kent State Killings (read it all):
Re: #19 (which I assume to be commenting on #18)
I disagree about, “Admission of radical change by reappraisers is to accomodate the secular culture of the age, and radical change being exactly the goal and motive.” Anyone who felt that way is long gone from Christianity, lock stock and barrel. The reappraisers are people who care, whether you think them correct or mistaken (of course, the reasserters are also people who care, I mean no criticism of either group).