Four Dead in Ohio

What if you knew her....................
And found her dead on the ground

In May 1970 students at Kent State University were holding anti-war demonstrations to protest at the the American invasion of Cambodia. Because of the unrest Kent's Mayor Leroy Satrom declared a state of emergency on May 2 and, later that afternoon, asked Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes to send the National Guard to Kent to help maintain order.

When a protest was staged the Guard ordered the crowd to disperse but
When it was obvious the crowd was not going to disperse, the A group of 77 National Guard troops began to advance on the hundreds of protesters with bayonets fixed on their weapons. The Guardsmen were wearing gas masks and had little training in riot control. They soon found themselves trapped on an athletic practice field which was fenced on three sides, where they remained for ten minutes. Outnumbered, the Guardsmen attempted to withdraw back in the direction from which they had come, but the protestors followed.

When they retreated to the top of a nearby hill, 29 of the 77 guardsmen fired 67 shots at the students. The firing was determined to have lasted only thirteen seconds, although a New York Times reporter stated that "it appeared to go on, as a solid volley, for perhaps a full minute or a little longer." The question of why the shots were fired is widely debated. The Adjutant General of the Ohio National Guard told reporters that a sniper had fired on the guardsmen, which itself remains a debated allegation. Many guardsmen later testified that they were in fear for their lives, which was questioned partly because of the distance of the wounded students. Time magazine later concluded that "triggers were not pulled accidentally at Kent State"—a conclusion also reached by several studies about the tragedy. The President's Commission on Campus Unrest avoided the question of why the shootings happened, but harshly criticized both the protesters and the Guardsmen, concluding that "the indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable."

The shootings killed four students and wounded nine. Two of the four students killed, Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller, had participated in the protest, and the other two, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder, were simply walking from one class to the next.

President Nixon attempted to justify the shootings with the statement, "This should serve as a grave reminder that when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy."

For further information read: Wikipedia:, with many links.

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In 1995 Rikke B. Johansen , M.A. student in English at the University of Copenhagen wrote:

What happened at Kent State in 1970 obviously made an impact on the American people. It was the first time armed troops killed, without warning, white, middle-class students on their own campus. Ten years later a former KSU student wrote:

"There was something terribly wrong with a society that could kill its own children...for excercising rights of speech and assembly which those children had been taught were inherent in the American Way."

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