I saw the films of the Guardsmen and also did a walkthrough from the quad where the ROTC building was burned, up the hill and to the scene of the shooting. I don’t believe anyone was shooting at the Guardsmen but that doesn’t mean some of the Guardsmen didn’t believe they were being fired upon. They were volunteers, under a lot of stress and in a chaotic situation. It didn’t take much to spark a tragedy. Even if there were agitators there the people who died were all students and one of them had absolutely nothing to do with it, she was just minding her own business on the other side of campus. The Officer in Charge was also brave to the point of lunacy, stepping in front of a bunch of soldiers discharging their weapons and stopping them or else it could have been far worse.
IMHO there were no conspiracies on either side. Sometimes in voliatile situations like this bad things happen, this was just one of those times.
I also had a conversation with Jane Fonda at Kent State while she was sitting on the open toilet of a coed restroom but that’s a story for another day.
Richard Nixon won re-election in 1972 by a landslide.
I lived here in Ohio then, my first 16 years in Ohio. I have been back here for 10 years. Then a co-worker friend who was in the Ohio National Guard told me about things that were not made public at the time - for instance, Guardsmen ‘kneecapped’ with bats or pipe wrenches and other things not published.
I heard it all that day, everything that was on the news. We knew the whole thing was orchestrated by other than ‘students’. And btw, to this day Kent has remained a leftist stronghold.
my alma mater
Interesting. Those anarchists always seem to coordinate with other groups. Talk about fake anarchy!
Interesting thread and interesting comments.
When this Kent State thing happened, I had been back from a 13 month tour in Vietnam for almost a year. I was going to college on the GI Bill at ODU in Virginia. Back then ODU was a lazy little southern campus where the most exciting things going on involved the girls dorm streaking across campus now and then and Friday afternoon fraternity keg parties. There was a little group of hippie types that tried to start a protest of some sort or another every once in a while. They were kinda wierd but they never caused any real trouble and they were pretty much ignored.
...you’re going to have a very hard time rewriting a seminal moment in liberal history from their birth in the 60’s/70’s.
I was there.
Kent State is one of the foundational events of the whole 60’s movement that they’ve used as a rally cry ever since.
To think now that not only was more coordinated than previously state but essentially hushed up, really really bugs me on many levels.
well, I guess now we should go ahead and ask, how about the forensics on the bullets? 100% Guard-fired or???
I am not one bit surprised, and can easily believe this.
It has been heard from a variety of sources, but a good firsthand one is David Horowitz in his book “Radical Son” where he has various acrimonious discussions (I believe one with Abbie Hoffman) on the tactic some on the radical left planned to use of getting crowds of protesters whipped up, then igniting a fuse by some method to really get some bloodshed going.
Horowitz thought this was criminal and was derided for it. He understood that wasn’t what the vast majority of those protestors were out there for, and he was aghast they would be used as pawns by the radical left.
Not nearly enough were killed at Kent State
Last year, Allison Krause’s younger sister, Laurel, was relaxing on the front deck of her home in California when she saw the County Sheriff’s Deputy coming toward her, followed by nearly two dozen men. “Then, before my eyes,” she recalls, “the officers morphed into a platoon of Ohio National Guardsmen marching onto my land. They were here because I was cultivating medical marijuana. I realized the persecution I was living through was similar to what many Americans and global citizens experience daily. This harassment even had parallels to Allison’s experience before she was murdered.”
Laurel was only 15 when the Kent State shootings took place. “Like any 15-year-old, my coping mechanisms were undeveloped at best. Every evening, I remember spending hours in my bedroom practicing calligraphy to Neil Young’s ‘After the Goldrush,’ artistically copying phrases of his music, smoking marijuana to calm and numb my pain.” When she was arrested for legally growing marijuana, “They cuffed me and read my rights as I sobbed hysterically. This was the first time I flashed back and revisited the utter shock, raw devastation and feeling of total loss since Allison died. I believed they were going to shoot and kill me, just like Allison. How ironic, I thought. The medicine that kept me safe from experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder now led me to relive that horrible experience as the cops marched onto my property.”
two felonies were reduced to misdemeanors, and she was sentenced to 25 hours of community service.
published in High Times magazine
The 68th Ord Det (EOD) did help search the campus after it was all over and a few weapons were found. At least that is what I was told by some of the individuals that conducted the search.
Wow!
/
Don’t know how my spider-web mentality got me to researching Kent State today, but after just reading this thread, and posting the other day in regards to universities being given military equipment I think I may have been right or some conservative is being pro-active but let’s not tell the administration.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3203986/posts
oh, gathering marxist crowd control info and how to start a marxist riot. Do you think the kids on campus, like the people of Ferguson, would realize that they are being used by outsiders who ship in agitators?