A personal reaction to Kent State massacre/ The killings at Jackson State/What I Lost at Kent State

Max,

 

I just feel like sharing my story with you. It's almost like answering the question, "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" I remember where I was and what I was doing when I first learned about the Kent State massacre.

 

I was attending Ohio State then, and I was in an antiwar rally on campus that afternoon. Someone in the rally was carrying a sign saying that 4 students had been killed at Kent State. It was just so shocking. Kent State held some special meaning for me before all that, because I considered attending there as an undergrad and had visited the campus with my parents.

 

Later on, I can't remember when exactly, maybe a week or so later, the Ohio National Guard invaded the Ohio State campus and disrupted everything - tear gas, tanks, certain classroom buildings off-limits.

 

Thanks for sharing this story with us. This reporter did a good job of putting the lie to the official story.

 

Barbara Larcom

 

Jackson State--

 

Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, 21: died from buckshot pellets that punctured his head while a third pellet entered just beneath his left eye and a fourth just under his left armpit

 

James Earl Green, 17: died from a shotgun blast to the right side of his chest

 

Sources:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_State_killings

 

Published on Monday, May 3, 2010 by the Philadelphia Inquirer

What I Lost at Kent State

by Elaine Holstein

On Tuesday, it will be 40 years since my son Jeff was shot and killed on the campus of his college. He and three of his classmates were murdered by the National Guard at an antiwar demonstration at Kent State.

During a 13-second fusillade of rifle fire, Jeff, Allison Krause, Sandy Scheuer, and Bill Schroeder were killed and nine of their fellow students were wounded.

The students who had gathered that day - all unarmed - held a large range of opinions about the seemingly endless war in Vietnam.

Some, including Jeff, objected intensely to the increasing escalation of a war that had begun when they were barely in their teens. In fact, Jeff had written a poem about the war titled "Where Does It End?" in February 1966, shortly before he turned 16.

Others in the crowd had mixed feelings. Some were just onlookers. Some, like Sandy, were on their way to their next class.

And so, May 4, 1970, became one of the blackest days in the history of our country.

It was the day I not only lost my child but also lost my innocence.

I could no longer take on faith what I had been taught all my life about my "constitutional rights," the rights that supposedly made our country different from so many others.

The decade that followed was filled for me with grief, anger, disillusionment, and lawsuits. At the end of our legal battles, we were pressured by the judge and by our lawyers into accepting a settlement in which the parents of the dead students discovered that their sons' and daughters' lives were worth a mere $15,000 each.

It was never about the money for me. I wanted an admission of culpability, and more than that, I wanted an assurance that no mother would ever again have to bury a child for simply exercising the freedom of speech. But all we got was a watered-down statement that better ways must be found, etc., etc.

I also discovered what I perhaps should have known already: that so many of my compatriots did not feel as I did. They believed that the students who were killed or wounded got what they deserved and, as I heard far too often, the National Guard "should have killed more of them." And now - 40 years later - those wounded students are almost senior citizens.

Jeff, however, remains in my memory forever as that bright, funny, passionate 20-year-old.

I have spent 40 years watching my son Russ, Jeff's big brother, grow older. I've valued (perhaps more than I would have if Jeff had not died) the close, satisfying relationship we share.

I've had the great joy of seeing my grandchildren, Jeff (yes, another Jeff Miller) and Jamie, evolve from cute little children into a couple of the most admirable adults I know. I've danced at their weddings and have been made happy by their happiness.

But, once in a while, I wonder about my son Jeff's future, which had so needlessly been cut short.

What would he have been like now at age 60? What sort of career would he have had? Would he have married? And what about those other grandchildren that my husband and I might have enjoyed? Now, as I watch the news on TV each night, I deplore the increasing ugliness of politics, and I'm afraid. I know too well what can happen when hatred takes over.

Please, let us lower the volume and be civil toward one another. For Jeff's sake. And for all of ours.

© 2010 Philadelphia Inquirer

This article was written for the Progressive Media Project. Elaine Holstein is a retired school secretary and social worker.

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/03-1

 

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs