Damn Hippies
Students were rioting and attacking the building. The National Guard
had every right to interfere and put down the riot. The protesters were
responsible for the deaths, not the soldiers. Glorifying them as heros is wrong
"Students were rioting and attacking the building"?
Wrong.
"The National Guard had every right to interfere and put down the riot."
Questionable. The President of Kent State University opposed the deployment of troops, sent there against his wishes. And the National Guardsmen were sent in with loaded rifles and bayonets, hardly riot-suppresson gear.
They were sent there to kill.
"The protesters were responsible for the deaths, not the soldiers."
And the Jews were responsible for the Holocaust and the students in Tianneman Square were responsible for that massacre. Any more myths you'd care to spread?
One of the MURDER victims was an engineering student walking to his class! How the hell was he responsible?
The National Guardsmen were murderers. Period.
They weren't rioting.Some triggerhappy,nervous Guardsmen panicked and opened fire.I believe two of them were just walking to class.I write as someone who'd have voted for Nixon.
shareThere was a recent special on the Kent State murders on the History Channel. An interesting bit came to light that places the responsibility for the murders on the FBI. An undercover agent working the protestors was armed. Two witnesses among the students told the camera they recalled seeing the guy pull out his gun and fire.
Undercover Feds working in protest groups were often reported as actually committing activities that the real protestors were blamed for.
Later the witnesses also saw the same guy talking to police, showing them his gun and badge, and being whisked away but definitely not under arrest. When they tried to report they'd seen this narc fire the first shot, the police rebuffed them.
No police records of the undercover agent exist, suggesting another aspect of the coverup concerning responsibility for the murders.
The guardsmen picked off the students like it was hunting season! There are military advisors out there who take pleasure in killing unarmed civillians. They're called war pigs. I'm no hippie, but I do know the difference between right and wrong, and what the guardsmen did was very sick minded. They saw their chance to kill someone under the pretence that they were defending themselves. They took it. What the hippies did was uncalled for, but what the military did was inexcusable.
That Thing That Happened In Waco Where The Church Exploded Was Pretty Freakin Sweet!
A lot of you are taking this movie as historical fact. Having an uncle that attended kent state, he enlightened me. We watched the movie together; he says that there is no lake on the campus at all; there were no motorcycle gangs in town at the time of the shootings; that outoftown s.d.s people were on campus and the movie doesn't even mention it!; that the students or citizens didn't burn down any buildings on the campus and the national guardsmen weren't as aggressive as the movie depicts. I am assuming that this movie was from a liberal point of view and most probably a nixon hater. It seems that only thing the movie got right is that people were shot on the campus of Kent state. All of you Hanoi Jane fans and hoe chi min fans please make a more accurate movie, please!
shareNot true... and I am certainly no liberal. There was a building burned... the old ROTC building which was slated for demolition, anyway. The movie was actually quite balanced... some of the victims' families thought 'too' balanced. Two of the students killed were simply walking between classes including ironically enough an ROTC grad, Bill Schroeder. The other non-protester was a speech therapist/honors student, Sandy Scheuer. Jeff Miller & Allison Krause (not related to the differently-spelled singer) were the other two victims who were involved in the protest. All were UNARMED and none were even close enough to the Guard to be a threat. Do some research, even IF your uncle was truly there. This was an outright tragedy that should never be repeated and those committing it have yet to be brought to justice.
NEVER FORGET MAY 4th, 1970.
Ted in Gilbert, AZ
Now that I've read more into Kent State, I must say, I regret ever calling the guardsmen sick bastards. THEY'RE HEROES! Those hippies were shot because of all the looting, rioting, arson, vandalism, protesting, hooliganism, name calling, rock throwing, and brawling they took part in. If they didn't insist on going around making *beep* of themselves, they might have survived that whole ordeal. As for the two "innocent" people that were shot, they were obviously f ucking around where they shouldn't have been or they wouldn't have been shot. The town of Kent, Ohio was called into a STATE OF EMERGENCY. I bet you those two innocents were nothing more than dicks who were wearing love beads and bell bottoms marching around the campus eager to join the party. Mindless violence like what happened at Kent State is horrible, but I'm gonna have to side with the Ohio National Guard on this one.
To the world you may just be somebody, but to somebody you may just be the world.
As an outsider,what do you think of the human race?
shareYou sound like you're basically defending their executions. I hope I'm wrong.
shareNo I'm not defending their "executions". All I'm saying is that if they weren't raising as much hell as they were, they might still be alive today. Sorry if I sound more than a little harsh.
To the world you may just be somebody, but to somebody you may just be the world.
No I'm not defending their "executions". All I'm saying is that if they weren't raising as much hell as they were, they might still be alive today. Sorry if I sound more than a little harsh.
Not so much harsh as moronic, and pretty quick to flip sides too. I'm afraid that wearing love beads and bell bottoms while being on the same campus as other people who might or might not be comitting criminal acts is not a capital offence - so, yes, you are pretty much defending the summary execution of innocents.
Ah.. this thread's old. Still, it's true.
. share
Those men were frightened. They didn't know what to do. The protesters DID set fire to the ROTC building and the guardsmen WERE pelted with rocks upon trying to contain the situation. There was absolutely nothing civilized about the way the victims were protesting. The guardsmen may have handled the situation badly but how the hell do you handle a situation like that good?
Its just like the siege in Waco, TX. The ATF may have handled that particular situation badly but there is no good way to handle a situation like that.
To the world you may just be somebody, but to somebody you may just be the world.
Correction: in your comment, you seem to have conflated two separate events. Protesters set fire to the ROTC building on the night of Saturday, May 2, approximately 36 hours PRIOR to the May 4 shootings. So there was no immediate cause-effect relationship between its burning and the shootings, because they took place at different times. The gutted building is visible in the background of many of the photos from May 4, but the same photos reveal the crowd was largely nonviolent on that day.
Granted that the Guardsmen were tired and harassed, also poorly-trained and badly-led (up to and including Ohio Gov. James Rhodes, who made an inflammatory speech on May 3 that student protesters were "the worst elements in our society, worse than the Brown Shirts"). On the third hand, hundreds of other antiwar protests occurred that spring, but only two--the ones at Kent State and Jackson State--ended with gunfire and fatalities. So many, many other law enforcement agencies succeeding in "doing it well" despite bad circumstances.
The "lake" shown is the Coosa River which runs along the campus of Gadsden State Community College in Alabama (then Gadsden State Junior College). Kent State declined to allow filming on its campus, and so Gadsden State was chosen because of its resemblance to the Kent campus.
Several locations in Gadsden (my hometown) are shown in the movie, and this movie is a source of some pride for the local oldtimers. The early riot scenes were filmed at 12th St & Forrest Ave, where several vacant storefronts were converted. The Federal Building on Broad Street stands in as Kent City Hall. The historic Printup Hotel was used for interiors in the bar. The first confrontation with the National Guard was filmed on East Broad Street (The Off Campus Book Store's name was not changed for the movie) and the lawn in front of the Alabama Technical College (which later merged with Gadsden State Junior College to form GSCC). The National Guard bivouac camp was Murphy Stadium, the football field of the old Gadsden High School. Most of those buildings are still there. Most shooting was on the campus of GSJC. Only the bell wall and ROTC building were added by the filmmakers. The ROTC building had to be burned twice because of technical problems with the first take.
Several of my friends are in the movie as extras. I had the opportunity. The filmmakers were looking for college age kids, especially guys with long hair (mine was past shoulder length) and without strong southern accents (I had very little accent even then) for speaking parts. But I had an unusually difficult class schedule, I was a senior at Jacksonville State that semester studying Economics and Statistics, I was working as a truck driver to pay for school, and I didn't think I could take on the additional time and effort of being in a movie. I have always regretted that decision.
Davidemartin--
The narc is mentioned in Michener's book. I think it's Peter Mathiesson's (sp?) THE TRUTH ABOUT KENT STATE which actually has a picture of him talking with the Natl. Gd. officers. He was (or was pretending to be) a journalist. He's identified as "Terry" something. While I haven't seen the History Channel special, it sounds as if it made him a little more mysterious than it had to; THE TRUTH ABOUT KENT STATE was published ca. 1972, a long time ago. It's not like his presence is something newly discovered.
The best part of Mathiesson's book is the 50+ pages of chronological photos that record the progress of the disturbance. They show clearly that at the time of the shooting, the NG were not being threatened by any students, and the closest of the students to be shot was ca. 50 feet away. The closest of the dead students was more than 100 ft. away. The photos also show that a group of the guardsmen turned in unison on the hilltop and opened fire simultaneously.
For all those reasons, I tend to think there must have been an order or agreement to open fire, rather than a panicked reaction to a shot from the narc.
Use the address below for an article printed yesterday in the Cleveland newspaper. The gist is that analysis of a 40 year-old recording of the shootings reveals orders to the guard to get ready to fire, and perhaps a fire order:
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/05/new_analysis_of_40-year-old_re.html
Here's some more. Further analysis of the tape discloses an altercation and pistol shots about 70 seconds before the Guard opened fire. There are also photos of the narc, Terry Norman.
http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2010/10/analysis_of_kent_state_audio_t.html
http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2010/10/analysis_of_kent_state_audio_t.html
Fascinating article.
"Did you make coffee? Make it!"--Cheyenne.