4 Dead in Ohio

“Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?”

    Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

Fifty years ago, Ohio National Guardsmen fired on unarmed demonstrators at Kent State University who were protesting President Richard Nixon’s decision to escalate the war in Vietnam by invading Cambodia, killing four and wounding nine others.  Shortly before, “Tricky Dick” had labeled students “bums.”  Early that day, Mississippi police killed two students and wounded 12 at Jackson State. 

Millions of college and high school students all over the country boycotted classes in protest over the more widely publicized event at Kent State.  At the University of Maryland, demonstrators blocked Route 1 adjacent to campus; state troopers invaded campus and beat up many peaceful protestors. When I received my PhD degree weeks later, the university was still under martial law. I went through the ceremony wearing a peace sign.

IUN colleague Patricia Hicks was a student at Kent State at the time of the massacre.  At the time her mother was a Math professor. She recalled:

    On May 4, 1970, I lived in Tri-Towers where all of the action was at Kent State. Bullets literally came through my residence hall to the extent that we had to hide under our beds!! This was on Beloved Mother's birthday!! Seeing this on TV, she drove to Kent State that day. They refused to let the parents on campus; HOWEVER, my Mother, being the Taurus that she was, they HAD to either let her on campus or kill her!! So she made it on campus to see for herself that the campus had been evacuated!!!

Vicki Wakoczeski wrote: “I was at Valpo.  Demonstrators on campus.  Administration building (Kinsey Hall) was torched; destroyed half of the music school.”  University historian Richard Baepler recalled students sitting-in at Kinsey Hall; he was vice president of academic affairs at the time and attempted to calm the situation by various means, including playing the piano.  He told the Vidette-Messenger: “The fire was ruled an arson. Eventually officials learned a couple of students who were under the influence of drugs, had set the fire, never intending it to get out of control, he said. While they were never prosecuted, they were expelled from the university.”

Rick Scott remembered:

  We were only 300 miles away in West Lafayette, Indiana, when this happened. I remember rallies at Purdue, a place that had been normally a sedate and conservative campus, protesting Nixon’s April 30th announcement about expanding the Vietnam War into Cambodia. All hell broke loose that weekend beginning, Friday, May 1st, with a protest outside the ROTC building. After the Kent State killings a few days later, I seem to recall a strong National Guard presence at Purdue and the spring semester ending early (as it did at many schools). I read James Michener’s Kent State: What Happened and Why, a thorough and devastating account. He concluded the fatal shootings were an accident, and has been criticized by those who’ve concluded it was manslaughter or even murder. Intentionality of the young soldiers or their leaders is a difficulty aspect of that tragedy to discern. Regardless, 50 years ago the politicized culture war hardened.

Finished the HBO series on the Atlanta child murders of 40 years. In all likelihood a KKK member was responsible for several of the killings, but Georgia law enforcement authorities covered it up and let all the blame fall on Wayne Williams, convicted of killing two older young men, for fear, unlikely though it was, of setting off a race war.

Miranda appeared in a YouTube video made in a Nashville bar by boyfriend Will Kramer’s band SWT Justice, performing a rollicking rock number, “Last Call.”  It’s an interesting side of Will not apparent on first meeting him. Becca will be a freshman in the fall at Belmont College in Nashville, which hosts an annual country music conference.

Like me, Indiana Historical Society historian and Traces editor Ray Boomhower often posts about Hoosier events and people of historical significance.  Recent entries, which I suspect get mentioned in Boomhower’s new book “To Be Hoosiers” have dealt with astronaut Virgil Grissom, Civil War hero and Ben-Her author Lew Wallace, and President Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893) as responsible for preserving Yellowstone and Sequoia national parks and Grand Canyon Forest Preserve. Like Theodore Roosevelt, whose preservation efforts are better known, Harrison was an avid hunter who enjoyed shooting waterfowl on the Kankakee River, including once on Lew Wallace’s houseboat.

Tom Streit of Indiana Humanities posted this interesting experience:

This past weekend, I launched my kayak from the Hazel Dell Park landing heading downstream the White River toward Broad Ripple. Although I’ve taken this trek regularly, I noticed something I’d never seen before, just north of Oliver’s Woods. At the very top of a sycamore tree sat two eagles and their family of eaglets. Each eagle would swoop down, grab something and bring it back up to its family. I think I watched them for what seemed like an hour before trying to film them for our INSlowMoments campaign. I pulled out my phone from its waterproof bag to capture the footage when some iconic guitar chords rang out.      “Little ditty ’bout Jack and Diane, two American kids doing the best they can.”      Three kayaks came cruising around the corner. One had a boombox strapped to the front, on full blast, as if the sounds of nature was the problem and Johnny Cougar was the solution. My moment of quiet reflection had passed.     My kayak had been idle so long that it felt wrong disturbing the shore as I pushed away. My noisy neighbors gave me a hat tip and kept on their good time. As I paddled away, the Coug started to fade around the bend and my station tuned back into a chorus of sparrows, cardinals and the snare of a woodpecker.     I might not have been able to capture it on video, but that Slow Moment will stick with me for a long time. I hope you find your own Slow Moment somewhere near you—maybe even in your own backyard.