On May 4, 1970 at approximately 12:24 PM members of the Ohio National Guard shot at and killed several unarmed Kent State University students. These students were protesting President Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia. While some of the students who were shot at were actively protesting at the time of the shooting, others were simply walking by or casually observing the protest from a distance. How could an appalling incident like this occur? What possessed the members of the Ohio National Guard to shoot at unarmed students?
In order to fully understand the circumstances surrounding the Kent State Massacre, it is important to back track several days and establish a timeline of events leading up to the massacre. On April 30, 1970, then-President Richard Nixon announced to the American public his decision to send US troops into the nation of Cambodia. The first protest against this decision was held the following day, May 1, on the campus of Kent State University. However, due to class schedules, the protest had to end prematurely, with the organizers agreeing to reconvene and continue their protest on May 4. That evening, things got out of control when several hundred people launched violent acts in the street surrounding Kent State. The police arrived within an hour to quell the violence; however, in that brief period, many fires were set and looting was rampant.
The following day, Mayor Leroy Satrom requested the Ohio National Guard be dispatched to his city. There were reports of revolutionaries having plans to destroy the university and city. Threats were also lodged against city officials and local businesses. Due to the close proximity of a National Guard base, the soldiers were able to quickly arrive in the...
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...re can be seen as one of the many important events that occurred in American history during the Vietnam War era.
Works Cited
The Associated Press. Raw Audio: Tape Captures Kent State Shootings. Clip Syndicate. N.p., 1 May 2007. Web. 6 Mar. 2010. .
Kent May 4 Center. Kent May 4 Center. N.p., 20 Feb. 2010. Web. 6 Mar. 2010. .
Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. Atlantic, 1970. MP3 file.
The Ohio Council for the Social Studies Review. The May 4 Shootings at Kent State University: The Search for Historical Accuracy. N.p., Summer 1998. Web. 6 Mar. 2010. .
Ohio History Central. Kent State Shootings. N.p., 1 July 2005. Web. 15 Mar.
2010. .
Protests occurred the next day, Friday, May 1, across United States college campuses where anti-war viewpoints ran high. At Kent State University, many speeches against the war and the Nixon administration were given. Satrom, the Mayor was fearful that local forces would be insufficient to meet the amount of protesters, and he called the Governor's office to make an official request for assistance from the Ohio National Guard for the protest on Monday. At noon on Monday May 4th, General Canterbury of the National Guard made the decision to order the protesters to clear out. A Kent State police officer standing by the Guard made an announcement using a bullhorn. When the protesters did not clear out, they drove across the Commons and started to tell eve...
McElderry, Stuart. “Vanport Conspiracy and Social Relations in Portland, 1940-1950.” Oregon Historical Quarterly. Vol 99, No.2 (Summer 1998), pp. 134-163
Schweikart, Larry, and Michael Allen. A Patriot's History of the United States: from Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror. New York, NY: Sentinel, 2007. Print.
... Conference.” Reader’s Companion to American History. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991. Online. Internet. Available at HTTP: http://www.historychannel.com/. 23 Sept 2001.
What happened at Kent State University? This is a question that many Americans were asking following the crisis on the Kent campus. In the days preceding May 4, 1970, protests, disruption, and violence erupted on the university grounds. These acts were the students’ reaction to President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. The events surround the deaths of four students in Kent, Ohio are disorderly and violent. In the government’s investigation after the shootings, the officials made several recommendations to students of the future. As the massacre is looked back upon, there are several key events that set the tragic day into motion.
Smith, Hedrick. "Barnett Charges Marshalls: Says 'Trigger- Happy' U.S. Officers are Responsible for Campus Bloodshed." New York Times 1 Oct 1962: 2.
On Wednesday February 7th, the protesters met to plan another protest and they made a list of grievances that they took to city hall (The 1968 Orangeburg). The next day was one that made this massacre known by many, many people. The night of February 8th 1968, protesters met highway patrolmen at South Carolina State University. A protester threw a rock and hit a patrol officer so a patrolmen fired a gun to scare them, then after that the protesters were fired upon leaving three shot and twenty-seven injured (Orangeburg Massacre). After the events, the next day the governor at the time, Robert E. Mcnair, said the massacre was “ ‘one of the saddest days in the history of South Carolina’ “ (Orangeburg
On March 24, 1998 in Jonesboro, Arkansas five people were murdered and ten people were injured. The fifteen were victims of an act of gun violence when two young Westside Middle School students decided to attack their school with firearms. Mitchell Scott Johnson born August 11, 1984 age 13 at the time of the shooting and Andrew Douglas Golden born May 25, 1986 age 11 at the time of the shooting. Johnson and Golden were both charged with five counts of murder and ten counts of aggravated assault. Both served their time in the juvenile justice system because in order to be waived to the adult system in the state of Arkansas the offender at the time must have been at least 14 years old. The two severed their time in Alexander Arkansas at the Arkansas Department of Human Services. Johnson was released after seven years on his 21st birthday in 2005. The same went for Golden after serving nine years.
On March 5, 1770 a fight broke out in the streets of Boston, Massachusetts between a patriot mob and British soldiers. Citizens attacked a squad of soldiers by throwing snowballs, stones and sticks. British Army soldiers in turn killed five civilians and injured six others. The presence of British troops had been stationed in Boston, the capital of Province of Massachusetts Bay since 17681. The British existence was increasingly unwelcome. The British troops were sent to Boston in order to protect and support the crown-appointed colonial officials attempting to enforce unpopular Parliamentary legislation.
The Boston Massacre was and is still a debatable Massacre. The event occurred on March 5, 1776. It involved the rope workers of the colonial Boston and two British regiments, the twenty-ninth and the fourteenth regiments. Eleven people were shot in the incident; five people were killed and the other six were merely wounded. The soldiers and the captain, Thomas Preston, were all put on trial. All were acquitted of charges of murder, however the two soldiers who fired first, Private Mathew Killroy, and Private William Montgomery, the two soldiers were guilty of manslaughter. The causes were numerous for this event. There had been a nation wide long-term dislike towards the British, and a growing hatred towards them by the people of Boston. Even before the two regiments were sent in to monitor Boston there was a growing feud before the two sides.
The columbine massacre the day where no one is safe in school or out of school. The columbine massacre is about two students named Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris both seniors 17 years old both two weeks before graduating they killed 12 students, one teacher, and 21 injured to their shooting on April 20, 1999. Both Dylan and Eric were some believe they were bullied by the sport teams in their school so they planned to kill the people who bullied them and other mostly anyone who gets in their way but that wasn’t really why the FBI he said that there target was everyone no one in pacify we will not get in to more details now. Dylan and Eric were both intelligent boys with solid parents and a good home and both had brothers younger than them. They played soccer, baseball, and both enjoyed to work on computers. Both boys were thinking on commit suicide on 1997 but instead started to plan a massacre in 1998 a year before it happened. Then the two boys had got into some trouble for breaking into a van on January 30, 1998 trying to steal some fuses and wires for bombs for them to make, but they got caught in trouble. So the court put them in a program called the juvenile diversion program, but even if they were there they were still planning the massacre and the court also put Eric in some angry management classes and people believe it worked but it didn’t he just did it to look like it work and both boys made it look like they were really sorry but they weren’t. Dylan and Eric both really hated everyone in their school and the court as well after they got caught breaking in to that van that’s when they really started to plan the massacre more and that’s when Harris started he’s journals no one really knows way but they didn’t hate a hand...
"In October 1997, a 16-year old in Pearl, Mississippi, first killed his mother and then went to school and shot nine students, two fatally; in December 1997 a 14-year old went to his school in West Paducah, Kentucky, killed three students and wounded five others; in March last year, two boys, aged eleven and thirteen, killed four girls and a teacher outside their school in Jonesboro, Arkansas; the next month a science teacher was shot dead, allegedly by a 14-year old, at a school dance in Edinsboro, Pennsylvania; last May in Fayetteville, Tennessee, an 18-year old student allegedly shot dead a classmate in the school car park; two days later, in Springfield, Oregon, a 15-year old opened fire at his high school, killing two teenagers and wounding more than twenty (police later found that his parents had been killed at home) ("Lesson"). On April 20th of this year, two teenagers enter their school and open fire, killing 12 students and one teacher before taking their own lives.
Schweikart, Larry, and Michael Allen. A Patriot's History of the United States: from Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror. New York, NY: Sentinel, 2007. Print.
On the 29th o April, 1977 Captain Cook, commander of a British fleet, landed on the eastern shore of Australia, in an attempt to claim the land under the name of Britain. The land was to be claimed by Britain as a land where the British government could send convicts; in an attempt to ease the struggle in the over flowing prisons. Upon Cooks arrival, he was ordered to follow three rules of claiming a foreign land. They were;
As the world recovers from recent school shootings, people wondered why these events have occurred. They are focused on drug use, violent society, video games, bullying, and mental issues to try and explain an unexplainable event. The idea that a person would shoot others for little or no reason gave little relief to the survivors.