“They were mostly small town college kids who allowed themselves to get riled up by some antiwar professionals.... Protesting was a fun way to let off steam in the Spring time when know one was getting hurt, it was viewed very differently after May 4.”
Thank you for your inside view - and it looks like you know your history as well. I think the National Guard building was torched by the “professional” antiwar folks along with some of the buildings downtown as I recall from my reading of events years ago.
There was some rioting and burning in town the night before, similar to what you see after a national championship win, that is the reason the NG was called in. Antiwar pros + college kids at the end of a school year + too much adult beverages made for a rough night.
As for living the history, like I said I was a college freshman on a campus a few hundred miles away and very similar in demographics to KSU. The same people had been on our campus a couple of days earlier. If thing had been a little different we could all be talking about the shootings at Ball State rather than Kent State, and the dead students could have been me, my late wife or one of our friends. I had to hold my tongue many times that summer when insensitive idiots talked about how the NG should have just killed all the protester to teach those snooty college kids a lesson.