Kent State, page 28
For Allison, Jeff, Sandy, and Bill,
for the shepherds of their stories,
and for those who come next:
the innocents and the activists,
the questioners and the debaters,
the voters and the proclaimers,
the realists and the idealists,
the truth-seekers, the young
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prelude
Lament
Friday May 1, 1970
Saturday May 2, 1970
Sunday May 3, 1970
Monday May 4, 1970
Elegy
Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright
“War. What is it good for?”
—Edwin Starr
America’s troop involvement in the Vietnam War began in 1964 and ended in 1973. In those nine years, over 58,000 Americans died, most of them under the age of twenty-five. Nineteen- and twenty-year-olds serving in Vietnam were not yet old enough to vote at the start of the war but were old enough to die for their country more than 8,000 miles away from home.
By 1968, the number of American troops in Vietnam reached a peak of 543,482. Over 40,000 American service members had already died, and the war, which had been justified as a means to stop the worldwide spread of Communism by supporting South Vietnam in its stand against the Communist Viet Cong soldiers of the North (who were backed by Russia and China), now seemed unwinnable to a majority of the American people.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson put a troop drawdown into effect and chose not to run for reelection in 1968, instead spending the remainder of his time in office overseeing the effort to end the war through a negotiated peace with the Communist North Vietnamese.
Troop levels dropped to 475,200 in 1969 as Americans trained the South Vietnamese to fight their war against the Viet Cong, who refused to come to the negotiating table. President Richard Nixon asked Congress to institute a draft lottery system whereby young men who had previously had deferments that kept them from going to Vietnam if they were in college would be entered into the draft pool each year, determined by the number assigned to their birthdays.
Local draft boards across the country retained the right to decide exemption or deferment status based on a questionnaire all eighteen-year-old males had to fill out when they registered for the draft. All registrants were listed as 1-A—draft-ready—until or unless they received a deferment or an exemption. As the war waged on, and as draft boards had to meet their quotas for inductees, these deferments became more arbitrary, depending on how each draft board ruled on each registrant’s application for deferment or exemption, and the rulings could change as well, which left all young men over eighteen, including those in college, uncertain about their future.
Nixon widened the war with carpet-bombing campaigns even as he continued troop withdrawal. On March 18, 1970, the U.S. began bombing neutral Cambodia, a country next door to Vietnam and a safe harbor for North Vietnamese troops.
This news became public on April 30, when Nixon appeared before the American people on television to announce the beginning of an “incursion” (not an “invasion”) for the purposes of rooting out Communist North Vietnamese strongholds in Cambodia and protecting the remaining U.S. troops in Vietnam.
This strategy was met with strong and visceral disapproval by the American people, particularly by the young. Across the country, students on college campuses protested, loudly and boldly and angrily, exercising their constitutional, First Amendment rights of freedom of speech, assembly, press, and petition.
At Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, student protests were met with the Ohio National Guard’s occupation of the campus and, on May 4, 1970, the murder of four Kent State students and the wounding of nine others when National Guard troops opened fire on demonstrating students as well as on some who were observing or walking to class.
This book chronicles those four days in May 1970 when America turned on its unarmed children, in their schoolyard, and killed them.
“I ain’t marching anymore.”
—Phil Ochs
You are new here,
and we don’t want to scare you away,
but we want you to know the truth,
so we will start by telling you what is most important:
They did not have to die.
But they did die.
They were sacrificial lambs,
coldly, deliberately slaughtered.
No, they weren’t—it was a mistake.
A tragic mistake.
It was calculated!
Planned!
They were lambs!
It was a tragic mistake.
You don’t have the whole story.
And you always think you do.
I know what I saw. I know what they did. I know that those kids will never wear tat sleeves or gauges or listen to Mötley Crüe or watch Star Wars or read Harry Potter or talk on a cell phone or use a computer or play video games or realize the Vietnam War is over and their unwilling, unknowing, unplanned-for sacrifice helped it come to an end.
Yes. It’s a tragedy.
And now there are other wars! More wars.
War after war after war.
War is never over.
It’s over if we want it to be.
War is never over.
John Lennon said it was. “War is over if you want it.”
It’s in a song he and Yoko wrote in 1971.
Too late for Allison, Bill, Sandy, and Jeff to hear it.
Are we going to argue again?
Yes. We always argue when we speak of the killings.
Let’s try not to argue.
Let’s tell it the way we remember it, all of us.
Because, look, we have someone new here,
someone new to listen to us.
I see that.
Hail, young friend … you are a feast for heartsick eyes.
I can tell, you are about the same age that Allison was.
Allison and her “flowers are better than bullets.”
That’s what she said to the National Guard soldiers,
the day before they killed her.
I think our new friend looks like Bill. Bill was an Eagle Scout.
Or Sandy—I loved Sandy.
She was wearing a red sweater that day.
Or maybe Jeffrey. Jeffrey went to Woodstock!
And then, on May 4, 1970,
less than a year later,
he was shot through the mouth and killed
instantly.
I loved Jeffrey so much. I loved them all.
I did, too, of course.
Nine were wounded. Don’t forget them.
I can’t forget them.
Or us.
We were all wounded that day.
Yes. We all bear the scars of that day.
Our country bears the scars of that day.
We are forever heartsick.
Yes. So let’s tell the story
one more time,
for our new friend.
Let’s try not to argue.
I can try not to argue, so long as you don’t invite the others.
The others will come.
They always come when we remember.
I tell them they are part of the story,
even when they disagree with me.
*I* disagree with you.
We won’t be able to stop them from coming.
The ones who think those four deaths were justified.
The ones who think more kids should have been shot.
Killed.
I hate them.
There is no place for hate here.
Not anymore.
I hate them.
The ones who want us to forget—
they will come, too.
The ones who tried to erase the fact that
grown-up America
killed its children in 1970
and never apologized for it.
I hate them.
Tell the story, then.
This is a place for remembrance.
And for sharing what we remember
so it won’t happen again.
But it WILL happen again. It always happens again.
It doesn’t have to.
You start.
I promise not to argue until you’ve finished.
You start.
I’ll try.
But don’t expect me to agree with you.
I don’t even like you.
You don’t have to like me.
Just tell our new friend what you remember.
I like it better when you tell it and I disagree.
Then I will start.
Let me make room for our new friend.
We don’t want to scare you away, friend.
Take the most comfortable chair.
Sit. Listen.
Make up your own mind.
Open your heart.
Here is what is most important:
They did not have to die.
“What are we fightin’ for?”
—Country Joe McDonald
It was a beautiful day; that needs to be said—
the first beautiful spring day in Kent,
after a long, dark, cold Ohio winter—
And Nixon!
Yes, that speech.
Now we knew the war was going to go on.
And on.
We knew more would die.
More would be us!
More would be the innocent—
Us!
Yes, us, too. If our grades dropped,
we’d be drafted—
You’d be drafted if your draft board
decided they needed to meet a quota!
It was totally arbitrary—no one was safe!
Well, dropping out was a sure way
to get drafted!
So in addition to a degree in
English, or business, or physics,
we went to college and
majored in Avoiding the Draft.
Did you get the flyer that morning?
About burying the Constitution?
I got it.
Steve and Chris were handing them out
even before breakfast.
President Nixon has flagrantly violated our constitutional rights by invading a sovereign nation without a declaration of war by Congress. Nixon has garnered all governmental power to the executive and committed us to a course of national barbarity; a crime that we will never be able to shed. He has been motivated only by his own personal whims. He has neither consulted Congress or the citizens of the United States. In essence he has usurped power in a fashion not dissimilar to a coup d’etat. President Nixon has murdered the Constitution and made a mockery of his claim to represent law and order. In recognition of the deceased we will commit the Constitution to the earth at 12:00 noon today, on the Commons in front of the Victory Bell.
Did you memorize that?
You bet I did.
And you went to the burial.
You know I did. I’ll never understand
why you didn’t.
There was even an Army ROTC kid there
who tried to stop us
from burying a copy of the Constitution,
but we booed him outta there.
Then some kids tacked up a sign:
WHY IS THE ROTC BUILDING STILL STANDING?
Some of us were in class on Friday—
you know, keeping our grades up,
Avoiding the Draft—
That ROTC kid was going to
end up in Vietnam for sure;
he didn’t need to worry about
getting drafted—
he’d signed up! Crazy!
We heard a kid
burned his draft card
at the burial ceremony.
Yep.
You could get arrested for that—
Our “esteemed” U.S. Congress
passed a law in 1965 against
destroying or mutilating your draft card.
That only made more kids do it.
And every guy over eighteen
had a draft card,
because we had to register for the draft
at eighteen.
Jim Geary burned
his discharge papers!
He was awarded the Silver Star
in Vietnam, and now here he was,
a graduate student at Kent,
protesting
against the war that Friday,
at the burial of the Constitution
and the rally.
That was something.
That would have been worth
missing class to see.
YOU ALL SHOULD HAVE BEEN
IN CLASS!
YOUR PARENTS SACRIFICED
TO GIVE YOU AN EDUCATION!
FIRST GENERATION
IN YOUR FAMILY TO
GO TO COLLEGE
AND THIS
IS HOW YOU
SHOW YOUR
THANKS?
Here we go.
it wasn’t them, dear, it was the outside agitators.
the fbi called them radicals, remember?
said they were infiltrating college campuses,
those students for a democratic society, too.
You mean SDS.
we stand corrected. those sds’ers.
It was us! Go away!
You’re the outside agitators,
you townies!
WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW!
SDS’ERS! AND WEATHER FORECASTERS!
hahahaha!
Weathermen.
The Weather Underground!
Get it right.
They were really radicals.
THEY CAME TO YOUR CAMPUS!
THEY RECRUITED YOU TO THEIR CAUSE!
BERNADINE DOHRN!
SHE MET WITH THE VIET CONG!
MARK RUDD!
HE SHUT DOWN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY!
YOU THINK WE DON’T KNOW THOSE NAMES
OR WHAT THEY DID?
WE SAW IT ON THE NEWS!
WE KNEW ALL ABOUT IT!
we were scared.
Lots of people came to speak at Kent State—
that’s what a college campus is for!
We were learning from (and becoming)
radicals, revolutionaries, thinkers—
Not so different from our Ohio parents, really.
Union workers, labor organizers,
policy makers—
Strikers—
Yes, agitators who knew
how to strike and
bargain and
vote for change.
We grew up at their kitchen tables,
listening to them talk
about defending labor,
freedom, country,
dignity, and choice.
YOU ALL ARE NOTHING
BUT
COMMIE HIPPIE PINKOS!
YOUR PARENTS WERE
ASHAMED OF YOU!
They were not!
We were patriots!
We had the right to assemble.
The right to protest.
Our parents taught us this.
They were auto workers,
meat cutters, pipe fitters,
truck drivers, teachers, nurses,
stay-at-home moms.
They taught us to love our country, too.
YOU NEVER SHOWED ANYTHING
BUT CONTEMPT
FOR OUR COUNTRY!
YOU HATE OUR COUNTRY!
OUR country hated US.
Everyone calm down.
We each hold some of the truth.
We were not communists.
We were not outside agitators.
We were students. We belonged.
It was our college. Our future.
BUT IT WAS OUR TOWN!
YOU RUINED IT!
COMING INTO KENT WITH YOUR
FAKE IDs,
GETTING DRUNK IN OUR BARS,
BREAKING WINDOWS,
TRESPASSING,
SETTING FIRES IN THE STREET
BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T WANT TO
SUPPORT OUR PRESIDENT
AND HIS GOOD-FAITH ATTEMPTS
TO END THE WAR.
Let me at them!
Calm down. Stop.
it was so scary
when they started rocking our car
while we were stopped at the light downtown.
remember that?
it was may 1,
the night before the kentucky derby,
and we were on our way
to a party at the dixes’—
remember them?
they owned the newspaper, and
we had to get special permission
from the police
to stay out after eight because of
the curfew.
Ha! The curfew was retroactive
on Friday night!
Get your facts straight!
You can’t make a curfew retroactive.
That’s what they did, though.
Suddenly there was a curfew
nobody knew about.
THE CURFEW WAS
YOUR FAULT,
YOU STUDENTS,
YOU RIOTERS,
YOU COMMUNISTS!
Listen, all of you!
It was just a sweet day
of sun and warmth and spring and
it was the beginning of the weekend and
we all wanted to go downtown to celebrate.
Some of us went home for the weekend.
Some of us were downtown looking for girls.
Or guys.
Some of us were looking for a television
so we could watch the NBA finals, because
a television on campus was rare.
Some were headed for a slice at
Big Daddy’s Pizza.
Maybe 500 students came to
the noon rally,
but we were a school of over
20,000 students in 1970.
Lots of us had nothing to do with the rally.
Or the violence downtown that night.
Kids always got a little crazy
downtown at the end of the school year
when the weather finally got
warm and bright.
They always swarmed the bars for
that 3.2 beer.
Remember?
this is true.
but they were also well-behaved,
before.
They didn’t throw beer bottles
at police cars.
