How can you run when you know?
Fifty years ago today, a group of poorly
trained, abysmally led Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on an unruly crowd
of unarmed Kent State University students protesting the military occupation of
their campus.
Four students were killed and nine others
wounded, shocking the nation and offering a sobering reminder of the limits to
– and inherent dangers of – political protest in America.
The 1970 shootings capped several days of
protest on and around the Kent State campus, which were sparked by Richard
Nixon’s decision on May 1 to invade Cambodia, thereby expanding the war he had promised
during the 1968 presidential election to end.
Campus protests had exploded across the
nation following the Cambodian incursion, but in Kent, Ohio, they turned ugly.
In the three days before the shooting, some Kent businesses had been damaged
and Kent State’s ROTC building had been burned to the ground.
State of emergency
Alarmed, Kent’s mayor declared a state of
emergency and asked for assistance from Ohio’s fire-breathing Republican
governor, James Rhodes, who described the protesters as “brownshirts and
communists” – then as now, Republicans had no sense of irony – and some of the
worst people in America.
He ordered in the Ohio National Guard, setting
the stage for tragedy. In his seminal work about the Kent State shootings,
James Michener placed much of the blame for the tragedy on Rhodes, both for his
decision to escalate the confrontation by sending in Guardsmen armed with M-1
rifles and live ammunition and for his fire-and-brimstone rhetoric.
On May 4, a Monday, 100 Guardsmen
stationed near the charred ruins of the ROTC building were ordered to disperse
a largely peaceful demonstration. Things deteriorated rapidly, and after an
exchange of rocks from one side and tear gas from the other, the Guardsmen, who
had retreated to the top of a hill, turned and without provocation fired, some
in the air and many directly into the crowd.
Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder and Sandra
Scheuer fell dead. Schroeder and two of the injured were shot in the back. So
much for the Guardsmen’s defense that they felt threatened by the crowd.
Famous photo
Most of you have seen the famous photograph from that day,
the one taken by Pulitzer Prize-winner John Filo of 14-year-old runaway Mary
Vecchio crying hysterically over Miller’s lifeless body.
I was just ending my
freshman year at Howard College in the spring of 1970, counting the days until
I could get out of Big Spring and put West Texas in my rear-view mirror
forever.
Kent State had a profound impact on me – just as it did on
almost every American college student. “It could have been me,” I remember
thinking.
Opposition to Vietnam – always a difficult and unpopular
political stance in the uncompromisingly conservative environs of “love it or
leave it” West Texas – had been one of the compass points in my personal
political journey. That and the civil rights movement had nudged me to the left
of the political spectrum.
I didn’t have much
company there in Big Spring in 1970. But after Kent State, there would be no
going back. I knew which side I was on. Which side I would always be on.
Before my ultimate escape, I was looking forward to a
temporary reprieve from the tedium of a West Texas summer. I was spending the
next three months in southern Utah, working for the Union Pacific Railroad as a
desk clerk in the lodge at Bryce Canyon National Park, where UP had
concessionary rights.
It was an idyllic summer. The lodge was at 9,000 feet, cool during
the days and frosty at night. Most of the park employees were college kids. I
made friends, had adventures, wrote a poem about a girl named Mary Ann with red
curls and freckles. Surrounded by the beauty of Bryce Canyon, I felt the pain
and bitterness of Kent State fade.
Draft lottery
Harsh reality reared its head only once. The Selective
Service lottery occurred that summer. And because we were so isolated, we had
no radio or TV reception. I had to call home to find out what my draft number
was. No. 165. But it didn’t really make any difference, at least not yet. My
II-S student deferment would keep me safe for a while.
Then, at summer’s end, it was time to return to Texas. I
loaded up the Dodge and headed south and east.
I listened to the radio on the way back, Top 40 tunes
carrying me across the top of Arizona and down into New Mexico. On the top of a
hill overlooking Albuquerque, the KQUO deejay came on and said:
“You’re going to want to hear this. It’s the latest from Crosby,
Stills, Nash and Young.”
Only a sojourn
After the first line, I had to pull the car over. Suddenly,
tears were in my eyes. I sobbed and couldn’t stop. Even after the song ended, I
sat in my car for a long time, realizing that my time in Utah had been only a
sojourn, not an escape. Eventually, I eased the car into gear and continued my
journey home, the words to Neil Young’s Ohio,
echoing in my head.
Tin solders and Nixon’s
comin’
We’re finally on our own
This summer I hear the
drummin’
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?
Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio
