How many years has it been since the Kent State Massacre occured?
KENT STATE 1970: May 1 through May 4 Description of Events written by May 4 Task Force students KENT STATE UNIVERSITY On April 30th, President Nixon announced on national television that a massive American-South Vietnamese troop offensive into Cambodia was in progress. “We take these actions,” Nixon said, “not for the purpose of expanding the war into Cambodia, but for the purpose of ending the war in Vietnam, and winning the just peace we all desire.” These were familiar words to a war-weary public. Some felt that this decision was essential for attaining a “just peace” and sustaining America’s credibility in the world. Yet others, particularly students, believed that this action represented an escalation of the war and a return to ex-President Johnson’s earlier hopes for a military victory. As the fires from the artillery began to burn in Cambodia, a raging fire of protest spread across the United States. read more “TASKS OF THE MAY 4 MOVEMENT”, May 4, 2009 speech by ALAN CANFORA, Di
The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre or Kent State massacre, occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The Guardsmen shot into the crowd 67 times for 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis. Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the American invasion of Cambodia, which President Richard Nixon announced in a television address on April 30. However, other students who were shot had merely been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance. There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of eight million students, and the event further divided the country, at this already socially contentious time, along political lin
Today marks the 39th anniversary of the Kent State massacre, when National Guard troops fired on a large crowd of students who were demonstrating against Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. Those killings in Ohio helped shape the attitudes, politics and history of my generation, and so it seems frankly strange that so little public notice is given to the anniversary of Kent State, or to its aftermath on American college campuses. Oh, once a year, the press drags out the photo of the young woman on her knees crying next to a dead student, but that’s pretty much it. We Americans aren’t exactly known for caring deeply about our own history, but regardless of our national amnesia, it’s a simple fact that May 1970 was a turbulent, chaotic time that scared hell out of the established order. Sources: http://blogs.creativeloafing.
