Background

Thursday, May 4, 2017

MAY 4, 1970

MAY 4, 1970:  LEST WE FORGET THE KENT STATE MASSACRE

Four unarmed, innocent students were killed at Kent State University while exercising their constitutional right to peaceably assemble.

Under the responsibility of Ohio Governor James Rhodes and Ohio National Guard Adjutant General Sylvester Del Corso, 29 Guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds during 13 seconds, killing 4 students and wounding 9 others.  

Those killed:  
Alison Krause, age 19
Jeffrey Miller, age 20
Sandra Scheuer, age 20
William Schroeder, age 19

All four students were in good standing with the University.  Only Krause and Miller were participants in the protest about the extension of the Vietnam War into Cambodia.  Scheuer and Schroeder had been walking from class to class.  Ironically, Schroeder was a member of the campus ROTC program. 

The photograph below was awarded the Pulitzer Prize to John Filo.  It shows Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller.



The President's Commission On Campus Unrest (aka The Scranton Commission) later concluded:

"The indiscriminate firing of the rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were UNNECESSARY, UNWARRANTED, AND INEXCUSABLE."

Rot in Hell, James Rhodes, Sylvester Del Corso and Kent Mayor Leroy Satrom!

Listen to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young:





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