Black Hole Sun
13 years ago
Monday, May 4, 2009
Kent State Shootings in Ohio (May 4th, 1970)
This is an extensive collection of images related to the incident at Kent State. The first song you hear is Ohio by Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young (we listened to it in class). You guys can help me identify the other song in the presentation. As we discussed in class, this event did much to solidify anti-war feelings among America's young people at the time.
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19 comments:
I think that the second song was by Nickleback..... How is it possible that NOBODY has been even arrested? It actually probably helped the anti-war movement than help to put it down
A.W. 3rd Period
how many national guardsmen were tryed for what would be murder?
Bobby A.
Why is Nickelback the choice of music?
BR3
It is ashamed that the United States pratically turned on itself all because of teh Vietnam War. What is sad is that this was not the only bloody and fatal riots .
William Finch
I thought that was a really good video. I never really knew that the shootings happened that way. I thougth that we live in a free country where we have freedom of speech? I know that this group was a little wild, but they are college students. They just wanted to show how they stood on he war. We have freedom of speech. So why did they shoot these four young students if THEY might not have even done anything wrong. I think they should have confronted, arrested, and jailed the ones who were throwing and yelling things. I think they handled this the WRONG way.
Christopher Locher
what happened to the troops that were there? did they get into any trouble? what happened to the other protesters? did the school get mad at them?
WW 3rd period
I think thats ridiculous that after they had already done what they needed to do they just turn around and start blasting them. I mean thats just insane.
Nick
It's so stupid how the troops opened fire. They shoulda just broken it up with other things rather than guns.- Joe
I cannot believe that no one was arrested for the shootings
-Cooper
Guys,
Many of you have asked some very good questions about the National Guard and its role/responsibility for the shootings. The following excerpt from "THE MAY 4 SHOOTINGS AT KENT STATE UNIVERSITY: THE SEARCH
FOR HISTORICAL ACCURACY" by Jerry M. Lewis and Thomas R. Hensley (http://dept.kent.edu/sociology/lewis/lewihen.htm)does a very good job of explaining the situation and aftermath (quoted directly):
WHY DID THE GUARDSMEN FIRE?
The most important question associated with the events of May 4 is why did members of the Guard fire into a crowd of unarmed students? Two quite different answers have been advanced to this question: (1) the Guardsmen fired in self-defense, and the shootings were therefore justified and (2) the Guardsmen were not in immediate danger, and therefore the shootings were unjustified.
The answer offered by the Guardsmen is that they fired because they were in fear of their lives. Guardsmen testified before numerous investigating commissions as well as in federal court that they felt the demonstrators were advancing on them in such a way as to pose a serious and immediate threat to the safety of the Guardsmen, and they therefore had to fire in self-defense. Some authors (e.g., Michener, 1971 and Grant and Hill, 1974) agree with this assessment. Much more importantly, federal criminal and civil trials have accepted the position of the Guardsmen. In a 1974 federal criminal trial, District Judge Frank Battisti dismissed the case against eight Guardsmen indicted by a federal grand jury, ruling at mid-trial that the government's case against the Guardsmen was so weak that the defense did not have to present its case. In the much longer and more complex federal civil trial of 1975, a jury voted 9-3 that none of the Guardsmen were legally responsible for the shootings. This decision was appealed, however, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a new trial had to be held because of the improper handling of a threat to a jury member.
The legal aftermath of the May 4 shootings ended in January of 1979 with an out-of-court settlement involving a statement signed by 28 defendants(3) as well as a monetary settlement, and the Guardsmen and their supporters view this as a final vindication of their position. The financial settlement provided $675,000 to the wounded students and the parents of the students who had been killed. This money was paid by the State of Ohio rather than by any Guardsmen, and the amount equaled what the State estimated it would cost to go to trial again. Perhaps most importantly, the statement signed by members of the Ohio National Guard was viewed by them to be a declaration of regret, not an apology or an admission of wrongdoing:
In retrospect, the tragedy of May 4, 1970 should not have occurred. The students may have believed that they were right in continuing their mass protest in response to the Cambodian invasion, even though this protest followed the posting and reading by the university of an order to ban rallies and an order to disperse. These orders have since been determined by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to have been lawful.
Some of the Guardsmen on Blanket Hill, fearful and anxious from prior events, may have believed in their own minds that their lives were in danger. Hindsight suggests that another method would have resolved the confrontation. Better ways must be found to deal with such a confrontation.
We devoutly wish that a means had been found to avoid the May 4th events culminating in the Guard shootings and the irreversible deaths and injuries. We deeply regret those events and are profoundly saddened by the deaths of four students and the wounding of nine others which resulted. We hope that the agreement to end the litigation will help to assuage the tragic memories regarding that sad day.
A starkly different interpretation to that of the Guards' has been offered in numerous other studies of the shootings, with all of these analyses sharing the common viewpoint that primary responsibility for the shootings lies with the Guardsmen. Some authors (e.g., Stone, 1971; Davies, 1973; and Kelner and Munves, 1980) argue that the Guardsmen's lives were not in danger. Instead, these authors argue that the evidence shows that certain members of the Guard conspired on the practice football field to fire when they reached the top of Blanket Hill. Other authors (e.g., Best, 1981 and Payne, 1981) do not find sufficient evidence to accept the conspiracy theory, but they also do not find the Guard self-defense theory to be plausible. Experts who find the Guard primarily responsible find themselves in agreement with the conclusion of the Scranton Commission (Report , 1970, p. 87): "The indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable."
Since the shootings have any of the national guard that were there and shot come forward and talk about what happened? Also has there been any sort of penalty that hurts there military career?
Jack
I agree that the national gaurdsmen should have gotten in trouble ... but also i don't see why the student would ever keep messing with the gaurds men when they're armed with M1s. Especially after they opened fire.
- George c
This was definetely a very moving video.
BR3
i cant believe that no one was arressted, much less tried!!!!!!!!
Why can't we be friends???
John B.
i think that this event helped the anti war activists by having something to talk about and protest with
HW 2nd
The video never said anything about how the students had burned down the R.O.T.C. building, and also at 0:37 seconds it said that Nixon invaded Cambodia, he didn't. Cambodia gave him permission to go into them to stop North Vietnam, and the Vietcong from shipping guns and other weapons through the Ho Chi Minh trail, which goes through Cambodia.
Even though the students burned down the R.O.T.C. building that doesn't make it O.K. to open fire. One of the biggest questions about the shootings is, Why did the gaurds shoot?
The gaurds themselves say that they felt a threat to their lives, and the lives of fellow gaurdsmen, which would be a justified reason to shoot. Others think that they did not feel threatened, which would not be a justified reason to shoot.
It could all be an accident. A gaurd could have been nervous and accidentaly squeezed the trigger too hard, which could have made other gaurds think that the crowd was shooting. Or someone could have set off a firecracker and the gaurds thought it was gunfire. The only people that will ever know are the gaurds.
Cole Gayle 6th period
I cannot believe how a massacre could happen like that in our country. In those times, we pretty much had a Civil War, Pro-war vs Anti-war. Even though i disagree with what the protestors thought, i still cant believe how they can be shot at and killed for standing up for what they believe in. First Ammendment is supposed to protect that right of Freedom of Speech, and those teenagers and college students should not have lost there lived due to a protest supporting there thoughts.
-TVMT 6 pd
Why did the riot start at that school
GJ1
Today you would never have something like that happen because it would cause a world story and the US military would be in a bad spot. It is not right that people were shot while protesting against something that they thought was wrong. Even though the protesters got wild that does not justify those shootings.
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