Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
The line, "We're finally on our own" describes the feeling of freedom and independence in college, and the line "Four dead in Ohio" refers to the four slain students at Kent State. The "Tin soldiers" are the National Guard, and many people, including Young, felt that it was President Richard Nixon's fault.
Interestingly, I heard a caller on a radio show a week or two ago that stated as fact that Nixon sent troops to Kent State to shoot people during a peaceful demonstration. I really felt like calling in to set a few things straight. The radio show was in Columbia, SC, so I don’t suspect that people had a lot of knowledge about the subject at hand.
I grew up in the Cleveland area. I know one person that was on the Kent Fire Department during the incident. I knew another that was an Ohio National Guardsman and was there. Details from the guardsman were sketchy, but the fireman lent some interesting details.
I also got some details years later from a history professor at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. He was an instructor at BW during that time frame. During a class on the US involvement in the Vietnam war, he talked about the war protests. He mentioned that there was a group that would travel from school to school, trying to arouse trouble. The group visited BW, trying to start trouble, but (according to him) the football team beat the snot out of them and ran them off.
Anyway, as for the Kent incident, it wasn’t a peaceful demonstration. These punks had burned down the ROTC building and when the fire department showed up to extinguish the fire, they cut the fire hoses. They were wielding rocks and sticks, threatening the guardsmen.
Second, Nixon gave no order to shoot. Ohio Governor Rhodes gave no such order for that matter. Clearly, someone spooked at least one guard and he shot. Once a shot was fired, the rest was automatic.
The unfortunate outcome was that the guards apparently didn’t shoot directly at the trouble makers, but shot over their heads instead, killing people farther back rather than the ones causing the problems in the first place. I mean, if you’re going to go through the trouble of discharging a firearm, aim at the bad guys, not over their heads.
I was in 5th grade when this happened. My older brother was in his first year of college. You can imagine the dinner-table conversations between he and my dad over this incident. Needless to say, Dad (a WW-II vet) and my brother were on opposite sides of the issue.