The Unquiet Ghosts of Kent State

The Unquiet Ghosts of Kent State

 

      The shooting in Ohio on 4 May 1970 of four students

      by national guardsmen resonates for a nation still

      embroiled in foreign wars

 

by Stewart J Lawrence

 

Guardian (UK)

 

May 4, 2011

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/04/vietnam-us-military

 

It turns out there won't be an event at Kent State

University this year commemorating the killing of four

university students there during a campus protest against

the Vietnam war on 4 May 1970. The shootings, carried out by

Ohio national guardsmen 41 years ago this Wednesday, shocked

the national conscience - and probably helped force the

Nixon administration to wind down the Vietnam war more

quickly than it intended.

 

Even today, iconic images from the shooting - most notably,

the anguished face of 14-year-old runaway Mary Ann Vecchio,

as she leans over the body of one of the dead students,

which won a Pulitzer Prize that year - remain disturbingly

resonant. They remind us of a time when America was bitterly

divided along racial and regional lines, and experiencing

violent conflict almost daily. Mere words - and non-violent

protest - could get you killed.

 

The assassination in 1968 of Martin Luther King Jr and

Robert Kennedy had already disabused the nation of the idea

that only poor, disenfranchised blacks in the south could be

victims of violent prejudice and hatred. But now, the deaths

of Jeffrey Miller, William Knox Schroeder, Allison Krause

and Sandra Scheuer - barely 20, and all good students with

promising careers ahead of them, suggested that the Vietnam

war had finally "come home". After years of bombing and

burning South-east Asian villages in search of an elusive

and ill-defined "enemy", the nation's imperial war machine

had finally decided to turn its rifles and bayonets on its

own privileged children.

 

Absurdly, perhaps, two of the dead and several of the nine

wounded when a small troop of guardsmen suddenly, and

without warning, fired 67 shots in the direction of

dispersing demonstrators weren't even there to protest the

war. Scheuer was crossing the campus parking lot en route to

her next class. And Schroeder, a campus basketball star, was

actually a member of the campus ROTC recruitment centre,

which protesting students had burned to the ground just

three days earlier. He'd simply stopped by the protest, and

remained on the periphery, to see what all the fuss was about.

 

The proximate cause of the Kent State protest was the Nixon

administration's announcement on 30 April 1970 that it was

authorising a military invasion of Cambodia to attack and

destroy North Vietnamese communist "sanctuaries". Nixon had

been elected largely on his promise to bring the Vietnam war

to a close quickly, in part by "Vietnamising" the conflict,

which meant bringing US troops home. But he'd never revealed

his secret plans to escalate the bombing of North Vietnam,

or to draw neighbouring countries into the conflict.

Democrats, of course, had long considered Nixon an anti-

communist hatchet man, beginning with his political smear

campaign against a Democratic opponent, Helen Gahagan

Douglas, that launched his political career, and helped earn

him the nickname "Tricky Dick".

 

Nixon also harboured a deep and paranoid animus towards

student protesters, whom he frequently called "bums" when he

wasn't labelling them "communists". That sentiment spread to

other political figures, including Ohio Governor James

Rhodes, who was widely viewed as a possible vice-

presidential running mate for Nixon in 1972. Four days

before the Kent State shootings, Nixon had concluded his

speech announcing the Cambodian invasion warning that "we

live in a time of anarchy, abroad and at home", and that he

would not tolerate attacks on the "great institutions which

have been created by free civilizations in the last 500

years", especially, he noted, universities.

 

And on Sunday 3 May, after a third day of protest at Kent

State in which guardsmen had already bayoneted several

students, Rhodes denounced the protesters as "unAmerican"

and said "they're worse than the brown shirts and the

communist element and also the night riders and the

vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbour

in America". He promised that the national guard would

"restore order". And with grisly results, that's what they did.

 

Public reaction to the killings was swift. Students at some

900 universities and colleges launched a fresh wave of

protests, resulting in the first successful student strike

in US history. Kent State itself remained closed for six

weeks. But the country at large remained as divided over

Kent State as it was over the war. A Gallup poll found that

58% of Americans blamed the students for what happened; only

11% blamed the guardsmen, and nearly a third, 31%, remained

"undecided". For some, the burning down of the ROTC centre,

and the throwing of rocks by students constituted a

provocation, and guardsmen interviewed later said they'd

genuinely feared for their lives. The campus administration

had also banned further campus protests after 3 May, but the

students persisted in rallying anyway. And they repeatedly

refused to disperse after the guard fired tear gas and tried

to clear the area with a minimum of force.

 

But could anything, in fact, justify the guardsmen, without

warning, or apparent provocation, firing on unarmed students?

 

Even vice-president Spiro Agnew, a former prosecutor, and no

friend of the protesters, stunned conservatives when he

admitted that while not premeditated, the guardsmen's

actions constituted "murder". Interestingly, though, no

court ever found the guardsmen, or their superiors, legally

culpable for their actions. Most civil lawsuits were also

dismissed. Allison Krause's parents, who sued the state of

Ohio, eventually received a token "apology", and $15,000 in

cash compensation.

 

The Kent State administration officially commemorated the

killings for five years, then withdrew its support, leaving

it to grieving families and supporters to sponsor the annual

event. But last year, on the 40th anniversary, the campus

administration, responding to continued protest, finally

agreed to spend the entire day educating the campus about

the events and their implications. To some, Kent State may

seem like a symbol from an era that has long passed. But

thanks to such commemorative events - and the monuments

erected in honour of the dead - it's also a testament to the

bitter social and political divisions that continue to

simmer in America, and a reminder of the dangers to civil

liberties and social peace that can arise when the nation

goes to war, and sends thousands of its own youth to die on

foreign battlefields for seemingly no good purpose.

 

No campus today is erupting over recent American

interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya. But the memory

of campuses transformed into war zones is still fresh in the

minds of US military planners, as they seek to fashion

limited engagements relying on a strictly volunteer army.

With even the Tea Party movement now calling for an end to

wars that needlessly drain the nation's treasury, were Obama

or another US president to reinstitute a military draft to

put unwilling Americans, especially college students, on the

ground to fight and die, is there any doubt that a new

season of bitter protest could erupt, once again?

 

Stewart J. Lawrence is a Washington, DC-based public policy

analyst and writes frequently on immigration and Latino

affairs. He is also founder and managing director of Puentes

& Associates, Inc., a bilingual survey research and

communications firm.

 

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