On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard was dispersing a protest rally
on the commons of the Kent State University campus in Kent, Ohio,
when soldiers suddenly opened fire on students, killing four and wounding nine others, some seriously.
Antiwar protest movement
In 1969, growing opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War
(1959–75) had produced massive demonstrations nationwide. Public
opinion on the war was divided in early 1970; many Americans were
hostile toward the antiwar movement, which was strongest on college
campuses.
On Thursday, April 30, 1970, President Richard M. Nixon
(1913–1994; served 1969–74) announced that U.S. forces had invaded
territory in Cambodia. The announcement triggered huge demonstrations on college campuses across the country. Kent State was one of these
colleges. On the evening of Friday, May 1, the protest at Kent State turned to rioting. The protests continued on Saturday, and student
demonstrators burned down the university’s Reserve Officer Training
Corps (ROTC) building. Authorities called in the Ohio National Guard
to Kent.
The National Guard used tear gas against students to disperse a
peaceful demonstration on Sunday, May 3. Guardsmen beat several students and bayoneted others, but there were no fatalities. That day, at a
news conference, Ohio governor James A. Rhodes (1909–2001) called
the protesters “the worst type of people that we harbor in America.” He
went on to threaten, “We are going to eradicate the problem, we’re not
going to treat the symptoms.”
The shooting
Outraged over the use of tear gas, the beatings, and the bayoneting, the
students conducted another rally on Monday. Kent State students believed their rally was legal. The senior officer in charge of the National
Guard disagreed and gave the order for the guardsmen to disperse the students. Forty minutes later, they opened fire on the crowd of students
in a thirteen-second sustained volley in which at least sixty-seven rounds
were fired. Four students were killed, and nine were wounded.
Officials claimed at the time that the retreating guardsmen had fired
in self-defense while being attacked by hundreds of students who had
charged to within 3 or 4 yards of the guardsmen’s position. But the incident was photographed and filmed from several angles and recorded on
audio tape, and all of these records showed clearly that the majority of
the dead and wounded students were standing 100 or more yards away.
At least one of the four fatally wounded students had not even participated in the demonstration; one was an ROTC student.
Criminal or not?
Prior to the killings, the guardsmen had been subjected to verbal abuse
by students. Some rocks were thrown at them, and some of the tear gas
canisters they had fired into the crowd were thrown back. Moreover, they
had just come from riot duty in nearby Cleveland, Ohio, where they had
been shot at while trying to contain violence during a truckers’ strike.
They had not gotten much sleep during the several days preceding the
incident.
Still, a Justice Department study and the President’s Commission
on Campus Unrest both concluded that the shootings were unnecessary
and inexcusable and urged the filing of criminal charges against the
guardsmen.
In court
In Ohio, the public was not sympathetic to the students. A special state
grand jury cleared the guardsmen of any crime but charged twenty-five
of the protesters with criminal offenses. Substantial evidence indicates
that the Nixon administration attempted to obstruct the investigation of
the case and prosecution of the guardsmen. In 1971, the case was officially closed. It was opened again in 1974, after Nixon resigned the presidency, but the charges against the National Guard were again dismissed.
Impact
The Kent State shootings were a rare event in U.S. history, in which
American soldiers killed American civilians engaged in protest of government policy. The shootings touched off an enormous nationwide student
strike that shut down more than two hundred colleges and universities and disrupted classes in hundreds more.