May 4, 1970, OSU

[Taosman]

Thank you, cinci!

Thank you, Steve!

I cannot believe that our Guardsmen, our Americans, shot down those kids at Kent. It shook me to the core.
It was complete madness!

 

[BuckeyeRyn]

Thank you for sharing your recounts, guys!

 

[Taosman]

Wanted martyrs? That is absurd!

 

[Taosman]

Guard kneeling and taking aim.

 

[BuckBackHome]

I was a freshman at Kent for the 20th anniversary. I attended one of the anniversary speeches to get a better understanding of things. A reporter came up to me and started asking me questions about what it was like being alive when the shootings occured and now a student there. I had to explain to her a couple of different ways I was not alive in 1970 during the shootings along with most of my freshman class.

I had a professor for a couple of sociology classes who was part of the group charged with inciting a riot. He was quite the character, but a hell of a professor and really challenged how you looked at things.

 

[Oh8ch]

I cannot believe that our Guardsmen, our Americans, shot down those kids at Kent.

Let's be very careful where we point blame for this incident.

Loaded guns were put in the hands of kids not much older than the students who were confronting them. I wasn't at Kent St, but at OSU these two groups danced around one another over a period of several days. There were exchanges that threatened both sides. People were tired. People were stressed. The shots fired at KSU constituted a coordinated volley, so clearly somebody was providing direction at the scene. But I give even that person a pass.

At OSU there were also Highway patrolmen and City police. Trained professionals who understood something about crowd control. Not weekend warriors whose limited training pertained to combat against a hostile foe.

Quit searching an old audio file trying to hear the word 'fire'.

Who decided that there was a threat to our campuses that required armed intervention? Who sent those guardsmen to KSU and OSU? Those are the questions. There is your culprit.

 

[Taosman]

Wasn't it Gov. Rhodes who sent the troops to Kent?
It should have been the State Patrol.

 

[Best Buckeye]

Something I found; Because of the content i inserted it all if it is too long just tell me and ill link it
"At Ohio State University, as at so many other campuses, the ?end the war? rallies were growing bigger and more dangerous. There were riots in the streets, overturned cars sometimes burning, marches on the campus and the odor of tear gas in the air making college a questionable and somewhat dangerous environment. I was 33 years old and managed to complete courses in political theory, political science, public speaking, microbiology, investigative reporting, editorial writing, farm management and animal science. I was considering a career in law and politics and wanted someday to own a farm with ?blue ribbon? Angus cattle crossed with Sante Gertrudas, the latter having great ?length of side?. There was, in addition, the alternative possibility that I would publish a newspaper. My new calling was for public service and obviously framed by the political turmoil unfolding throughout the United States and around the world.

Cont'd http://journals.aol.com/symphonycom...udent-unrest-had-a-huge-impact-on-my-life/607

 

[knoctor]

I was a sophomore at Kent State on May 4th. The weekend prior to the shootings was eerily a kind of festive, carnival like atmosphere. Like clockwork students marched from campus, down Main Street into town. Some were chanting the typical anti-war slogans- a few signs-but most seemed to just be enjoying nice spring weather. A fraternity brother that worked the last shift at Dunkin' Donuts would leave a huge sack of unsold donuts on our porch each morning, and I remember tossing them out to the crowds who clambered after them like kids on an Easter egg hunt.

As I recall, the guard wasn't called in until the ROTC building was burned. I remember sitting up on the knoll and people actually exclaiming "how beautiful" the flames were. Totally surreal. Other students were trying to chop at the hoses and interfering with attempts to put out the fire. It has been debated whether or not the guard shouold have been there or not. My thought was that had they not been called in, the whole campus might have gone up in blazes. I also remember students placing flowers in the muzzles of the guardsmen's guns, spitting in their faces and calling them "baby killers", etc.

My other impression of that time was that the vast majority of the student's involved in the unrest and marches really weren't PROTESTING anything. Most couldn't have found Cambodia on a map. Most were just buying into and joining the party atmosphere.
Truly a tragic event that cut four lives far too short.

 

[Oh8ch]

rallies were growing bigger and more dangerous

the guard wasn't called in until the ROTC building was burned

To be clear about my argument as to who was to blame. Calling in the guard may have been a reasonable thing to do. But it was the decision to call them in and to call them in armed that lead to the deaths. The chain of events that led to some overtaxed 1st louie or captain hollering 'fire' was put in place by that decision and the actions of the guard have to be looked at in the context of events.

I have similar feelings about My Lai and Abu Ghraib. Of course you have to hold specific individuals responsible for their specific actions. But give young men (and women) more power (in the form of authority or weapons) than they are prepared to handle, then put these young people in stressful and unpredictable situations, and these instances are predictable across cultures. We should not be surprised. Ultimate accountability goes to those who put them in such positions without appropriate training, control or oversight.

 

[WoodyWorshiper]

I graduated from Kent State in 1986 and picked up as much info as I could about May 4th. I had a professor who was huge in breaking up the rioters AFTER the actual shootings. The guys name was Sy Baron, a psychology prof, and his actions probably saved dozens of more lifes by just getting the crowds to get the hell out. He actually addressed the crowd that "they will kill you." He ended it by saying he was hungry and going to get something to eat. In private talks with Dr. Baron, he said that the problem on the campuses were really caused by troublemakers from Detroit and Cleveland that would hit the colleges and get groups all fired up. The students weren't the problem, the "professional demonstrators" were.

 

[Jeffcat]

I was a high school sophomore at Brookhaven and four of us took a car down to campus to see what was happening. My memories are not as clear as the others posting here but I do clearly remember watching Ohio Governor James Rhodes on the news appealing to people to stop rioting on campuses"someone is going to be hurt badly or even killed".

We must have arrived only at about 4 in the afternoon. I remember the aggression of the protesters and the over-reactions of the Guardsmen to it on some occasions.

My memory is just being overwhelmed by it all. I really used to like coming down to Pearl Alley and going through the hippie shops. It was cool and lots of fun. They were laid back and welcoming.

The protesters that day were not. They were ridiculing the Guardsmen and shouting at them. Were it not for the Guard busing in units from other cities, these drafted Guardsmen could have been their high school classmates.

The Guardsmen were not without fault on the day and also escalated some of the abuse by over-reacting.

For me, the peace movement lost its innocence that day although it really had lost it much earlier.

The next day, none of the people in my classes at Brookhaven could believe that kids had been shot at Kent State. It was shocking and surreal. That day was the first time that I had ever really observed groups in conflict in America or people in America unwilling to talk to one another.

When I arrived on campus as a student two years later, the peace movement was well and truly over. Long hair was still in fashion, but the peace movement seemed almost to have never occurred. For all intents and purposes, it died on that day in 1970.

Years later, my students at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg figured out that I had been a student during the Vietnam War era and used to come and ask me to watch them demonstrate against Apartheid. They had seen a Vietnam War era demonstration glorified in some movie and were acting it out in their own anti-Apartheid demonstrations.

The Apartheid-era army would not come on campus, but soldiers waited with batons, guns, and dogs at the borders of the campus and, unlike the US, they were quite prepared to hurt and even kill protesters. We enrolled black students in defiance of race laws and our gifted black students often disappeared for months on end in prison and sometimes for good. I used to remind them all that they did not enjoy the rights Americans enjoyed and that troops here were far less patient.

We did not experience violent protests on campuses. Then, during one particularly bad patch in 1990, about fifteen agitators broke into my classroom and started singing banned ANC songs and slogans (e.g., no education without liberation, pass one-pass all, etc) intimidating the students to leave the class. When a white student stood up and pulled a gun to defend his right to an education, I must admit to being very frightened that these kids would kill each other.

As some protester punk yelled slogans behind me, I asked told the class of my experiences as a 16 year old on that day in 1970. About its hollowness and disappointment for all that were involved. As I told them about my friends, once hippies and now stockbroker yuppies, you could see that they knew that "movements" encourage personal sacrifices and actions that people later regret.

I asked them what memories they wanted to take into a nonracial South Africa that would one day come? What would they want to tell their children that they did on this day? How would uneducated people run a country?

A black student sat down and refused to leave. The protesters left about ten minutes later, threatening to return the next day but never to be seen in one of my classes again. The hot-head with the gun sat down and promised to never bring a gun into my class again, a promise that I think he did not keep. He did later do a Masters degree and still contacts me whenever he reads something about me somewhere.

To me, the memories of both days are welded together across time and space. Eventually, we got on with our class and I'd like to think that something good came out of that day in 1970 much later and halfway across the world. But, my memories are of that disappointment and hollowness I felt.

this is a great piece and i just want to note that. i agree with your thoughts and depiction of the events even though i wasn't there.

 

[Thump]

My parents were sophomores at OSU at the time. They said had the shootings not occurred at Kent State first that they almost undoubtedly would have occurred at OSU. It was that close to happening.

 

[cincibuck]

1) I've really appreciated the follow on conversation. Thanks to all for posting.

2) The Ohio Guard of 1970 had very limited training in riot and crowd control. Many of the men I photographed that day were 18 and 19 years old. Many were from small farming communities and it was spring planting time, some worked in factories or other jobs and weren't getting paid for the time they missed, some were students themselves and were missing classes. The name calling done by the students was not limited 'pigs' and 'nazis.' Mother fucker in both noun and adjective formats was often added along with son of a bitch. Taunts of 'tin soldiers' and 'playing soldier' were also popular. The particular unit assigned to Ohio State had also spent time at Athens, Central State/Wilberforce and city riot duty in Dayton, Cincinnati and Columbus. They were clearly tired of this kind of duty and resented 'rich kids who can afford to riot.'
3) I was the assistant S/3 (operations/training) officer for a Transportation Brigade in the 83rd ARCOM, based out of Ft. Hayes at the time. Like the Guard, reserve units had been allowed to sign people beyond our numbers. In our case we were at better than 150% of our strength (TO&E, Table of Organization and Equipment) many of the drivers and mechanics being grad students, salesmen, brokers and lawyers hedging their bets against getting drafted. A year earlier I had been in the field with units of the First Infantry Division and it was an everyday fact that these units were at little more than 50% of their TO&E.
4) Bernie Mehl and Ron Greene, professors I had had prior to leaving school in 67, were excellent teachers in the sense of engaging the student and challenging them to think and to get out and see. I appreciated their classes, but when I came back they had begun to cross boundaries, sending squads of grad students out into the classrooms of other professors, disrupting their classes, publicly challenging or ridiculing those with whom Mehl and Greene had disagreements. I was in a psych class on juvenile delinquency when one of these 'truth squads' stomped in mid-lecture and then began to fire one hostile question after another at the man. When he began to address their questions, they ridiculed him, said he was a racist propagandist and stomped back out. When the riots hit Mehl and Greene hid in their offices and acted as if they had no responsibility to the school, the students or the issues they had helped foment.
5) My thoughts on the war protestors are always skewed by this: Urda Trinkle, a grade school through high school classmate and friend, was killed when students from SDS blew up a chemistry lab at U Wisconsin. They had set the bomb to go off at 6am, "When no one would be in the building," not knowing that Urda was there regularly to check on an experiment she was conducting as a grad student.
6) OSU was shut down for two weeks. All classes reverted to a P/F grading scale. The May Day tradition of a military review on the Oval had all but ended. The review had been moved to the intramural fields by 1968 and even there they were subject to harrassment by protestors who would lie down in front of them, forcing the troops to pass over them or march around them. Mandatory ROTC for freshmen and sophomores had also been ended despite the fact that the ground and a substantial part of the initial cost of building the school had been paid for by the Morrill Act which lent states the money to purchase on the promise that ROTC training of male students would be required.
7) Two excellent reads on the times are They Marched into Sunshine by David Maraniss in which the author focuses on October 17 - 18 1968, first with 1/16th Infantry, First Infantry Division, that walked into an NVA ambush and was damn near wiped out, and a protest/riot at U Wisconsin where students were egged on by a troupe of actors, The Merry Pranksters of Ken Kasey/Peter Coyote fame and agents provocateursfrom SDS, and Kent State by James Mitchner. Both give an excellent picture of the tension on campus and inthe nation during this critical time frame.

 

[Steve19]

Cinci, what a pleasure to read your posts and so sad to know someone who knew that student at Wisconsin.

For the younger crowd, SDS stands for Students for a Democratic Society, by the way. How sad that their name and actions did not match.