May 4, 1970 - four dead in ohio

*bump* 41 years ago today.

Lunarverse, I don't believe an order was given to fire. I've heard the recording that supposedly has the "evidence" of that order, and you can't tell it was an order or what was said. It's just an indistinguishable voice among a racket.

It is much more likely that a bunch of the guardsmen decided they were fed up with the "damned hippies" and they were going to get some. The guardsmen who fired have never claimed they were following orders. They said they thought they were in danger. That is the only legally acceptable excuse when a soldier knows he was not ordered to fire.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI7-m919ynU"]YouTube - OHIO CSNY ( got audio back) - Kent State Massacre Montage

 

I have a History channel documentary about the Kent State tragedy. I've loaned it out quite a bit. You have no idea how many people have never heard about this. Hard to believe something so shocking and tragic has been buried.
Kent State is the most well known but I read somewhere the same thing happened afterward at a university in Jacksonville Mississippi.
I must say ddoright, your grief brings me to tears.

 

oops...sorry, I didn't realize you had to be a member of "old hippies" to post.

 

this summer i hear the drumming

 

I remember it well. I also remember the native americans taking alcatraz over, claiming it as their own. The rumors of internment camps for long hairs that Nixon was supposedly setting up. The men with crew cuts and black shoes taking pictures as fast as they could of everyone they could at the 1st crater festival in Diamond Head. For??The death and destruction of Viet Nam with enemy body counts shown on TV every night to show that we were "winning" that noble endeaver. The domino theory in action.I remember the hate directed at me and my hippie friends wherever we went. Some getting stomped almost to death because of appearances. The killing and burning of a whole block in Chicago by the police because there were some black panthers there. Some of which were shot to death in their beds. I remember a guy getting a life sentence in Texas over a joint. I remember the Los Angeles Free Press and the Berkely Barb--so-called under ground papers--the only newspapers that tried and mostly succeeded in telling the truth when the mainstream papers were putting out the "official" government lines. I remember much more----none of it very good. Now we're in 2 or 3 unfunded wars with the mostly poor fighting again in some faraway land for--for what???I would suppose follow the money is always a place to begin some understanding. Isn't it ever thus??

 

When it happened, I was a senior in high school, heading to an east coast campus full of radical students. It was quite disturbing. Years later, I married a woman who went to Kent State during those times.

Scratcho, I agree. Things haven't changed that much since then, except for the volunteer military. I just wish young folks would get angry and protest more.

 

I was 9 when this happened. that whole period late 60's 70's I remember seeing images on the news but didnt really grasp what was going on...And some of us kids would start asking in school too but the teachers didnt want to go there...And when you stop and think about it, it doesnt matter if you were against the war or for it On that day America murdered its young on our own soil, and thats just terribly wrong..

 

There was a similar thing to the incident that you described in Chicago happened in Philadelphia. Except they burned down about 4 blocks killing mostly women and children. Mike Chitwood the Police chief of Philly at the time was ousted. The only place that he could find a job after that was Portland, Maine.

Stay Brown,
Rev J

 

Rev,I may have had it wrong. Maybe it was Philly and not Chicago to which I referred. These things rise from the mists of my mind--so long it has been.I certainly remember the '68 Democratic convention and the police riots where everyone --women-children and everyone in sight was beaten with clubs by the rioting police. Walter Cronkite called them nazis on the air. Mayor Daly was complicit.

 

As I understand it, an FBI snitch who was given a gun may have fired first, from behind the protesters lines, causing the guard to believe they were being fired upon. Or at least, some of the guard, most didn't seem to have any clue what happened. They just saw and heard shooting in a tense situation, and presumed themselves in combat.

Of course, students had been brutally attacked for days.... Using a bayonet on your own citizens for protesting shows about the same intent to kill as shooting them, even if it fails, and that'd been happening plenty.

I have a somewhat "till the death" mindset in general, but I think crowds should not have dispersed, but should have surged and held their ground, either peacefully or with the standard "petrol bomb". Can't kill em all....

But what can I say, I was decades from even existing.

 

http://www.may41970.com/Jackson State/jackson_state_may_1970.htm. You can post here as you wish - as long as the spirit is pure.

 

Thank-you.
And thank-you for posting that link to the Jacksonville story. I didn't know the details. Just that it had happened.
Sad...

 

Your heart is in the the right place - your location is a bit off. The event on Lynch Street happened in Jackson, Ms at what was then (I believe) Jackson State College. I was living in Jackson during that period but it was not as indelibly etched on my soul like Kent State. Perhaps because it was dubbed a riot, or perhaps the way the newspapers carried it, I don't know. Perhaps because it was an all black school and I am a white protestant - for whatever reason, their tragedy was just as profound to those at Jackson State as at Kent State.

 

I don't know why I have JacksonVILLE stuck in my head lol. The first I heard of the Jackson story was on the Kent State documentary aired in I think 2000. It could have been downplayed because of the colour issue? I didn't realize it was an all black college 'till I read your post. Again, in the documentary they just skimmed over it.
It is still hard to believe that this happened in the States. Scary.
I guess that is why kids don't demonstrate anymore. Mission accomplished

 

^^I think that part of the reason protests are losing momentum at least for me is that they are becoming kind of commercialized. I stopped going years ago and found myself in downtown San Francisco running errands during one. I saw a dude with a little cart selling $.03 Mardi Gras beads with peace signs on them for $3.50. I remembered every 2 blocks there being people with trash cans and bullhorns extolling people to give donations. I was broke at the time being surrounded by "Stop the War" and "Give us money". It just got to the point where "Give us money" seemed more prevalent. I figured I could do more against the war psychically by working on myself.

Stay Brown,
Rev J

 

No draft-no protests. By design,of course. A draft would make the young ones focus more on WHY they would/should be sent thousands of miles from home to engage in warfare and who is taken and who is not. And why.

 

Well Scratch I see your point. But the way the military recruits leaves alot to be desired. Making commercials that make war look like a video game and even putting a video game on their website. Going to poor areas like the inner city and the farm lands where kids feel like they have nothing to look forward to etc.

In Berkeley a couple of years ago the city council declared the Marine recruitment office unwelcome. The protest group "Pink for Peace" was told that they couldn't block the sidewalk in front of the recruitment station. The city of Berkeley told them that they could use the one parking spot in front of the office. So they pulled up a flatbed truck and set up rocking chairs on it and protested. The funny thing is that I walked by to see what the hub bub was about and counted 9 old ladies the youngest of which looked about 60 on the back of the truck knitting. On the ground in front of the Marine office were about 13 cops in full riot gear. Kind of bizarre.

Stay Brown,
Rev J

 

Funny. I guess there's nothing a cop would like better than to knock some knitters senseless!! Much easier than a bunch 'a rambuncious youngins that prefer to live instead of being shipped off to the next war.

 

As time goes by we forget. National Guard - 4 dead in Ohio - Kent state. How sad that as our numbers are reduced, others forget.