Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming, We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming, Four dead in Ohio.
Tin Soldiers… a review of 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence
Growing up in the 60s and 70s I was more politically aware of what was happening in the world. It was not a pretty time for America. In grade school, I had seen the flag-draped coffin of a classmate’s brother carried into the church as we lined the classroom windows to watch. As the events of the Kent State Massacre played out, I had one brother in Vietnam and was only three years from high school graduation and registering for the draft. The war ended my senior year but the scars of the Vietnam War would continue to haunt the nation for decades. The events of May 1970 are important as we as a nation look at selecting the next president.
How times have changed! From the early days of the great philosophers, ideas have emerged, and been discussed and debated on campuses of higher learning. Lately, it appears that on many American college campuses the open discussion of opposing ideas and thoughts regarding controversial issues is being restricted. However, as the 1960s moved into the 1970s, university campuses were the center of the political movement that focused on the Vietnam War.
The controversy continues over what happened on May 4, 1970, on a small Midwestern college campus where Ohio Army National Guard soldiers fired sixty-seven shots at students who were protesting the invasion the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. The result was four dead and nine wounded students on the Kent State University campus. However in 1970, seventeen soldiers died daily in Vietnam.
The story of the Kent State Massacre did not start with a single event but the conglomeration of events which had been simmering over the decade, with sporadic outbursts of violence that culminated on campuses across the U.S. after President Richard M. Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia. Nixon, at the Pentagon, described the anti-war protesters — both students and activist — as “bums blowing up campuses.”
Means starts the story of Kent State with a small group of graduate students, who calling itself the World Historians Opposed to Racism and and Exploitation “WHORE” buried a copy of the U.S. Constitution on the University Commons beside Victory Bell. A student walking by said, “There were maybe 500–600 students milling around talking…Not too much was going on….nothing happened.” Later in the afternoon, a second demonstration by the Black United Students (BUS) ended peacefully after less than an hour.
Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew and others in the conservative wing often blamed “outside agitators” the Students for Democratic Society (SDS), activist like Jerry Rubin, and even outlaw motorcycle gangs for the violence on what had been historically conservative university campuses. Means sets the history of Kent State that grew with returning World War II veterans. However, in 1968, a resident wrote to a national sorority, “We were invaded by a group of students very different from the usual Kent student…ones who seldom attended classes but were ever present passing out literature. We had apparently been chosen to be the next Columbia or Berkeley.” Lafayette Tolliver recalled, “It was almost like if you said ‘outside agitators’ often enough, people would believe that there were agent provocateurs in every dorm, ready to cause havoc.”
The Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) was the face of the Vietnam War on American campuses and often the target of demonstrations against the war (anti-war demonstrators burned 197 ROTC buildings in 1969 and 1970). At Kent State one student, walking on campus lamented the ROTC building as having a sign on the door “Burn Me.” Means steps the reader through a series of events that had nothing to do with the war demonstrations. For example, there were fights in the town’s bar district when the bars closed early leaving young drunk students in the street. The university administrators and the town’s leaders, fearing more demonstrations and violence, set about a string of legal actions culminating with Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes under the Ohio Riot Act ordering the Ohio National Guard to the campus.
What happened next? There is not one story but many that form the story of the Kent State Massacre. Means leads the reader through the side stories to create the cauldron that boiled over when a National Guardsman fired the first shot at the protesters. An earlier demonstration on Ohio State’s campus set the stage for the political battle between Governor Rhodes and Congressman Robert Taft Jr., who the governor accused of “coddling” the protesters while Taft asked, “What is wrong with the wonderful world of Ohio when you have to send troops into a campus amid a pall of tear gas?”
“They are the worst type of people in America, and I want to say they are not going to take over a campus…There is no sanctuary for these people to burn buildings down of private citizens, of businesses in the community, then run into a sanctuary. It’s over with in Ohio. We are going to eradicate the problem. We are not going to treat the symptoms.”
The actions of the guardsmen centers on the controversial question, who fired the first shot. Interestingly, a student made an audio recording of the day of the shootings. The FBI took custody of the tape however, a copy was located in 2007 and audio and forensic specialists were able to identify several commands by the Guardsman to prepare and then open fire. The roar of the M-1 Garand rifles cuts off the actual word “fire” from the recording while one of the guardsman claimed to have heard the word fire but said, “There was so much noise out there, it could have come from anyone…” and went on to say it may have even been part of a “don’t fire” order.
One could think that the recording was the best evidence in proving what happened that day, however, the audio analysis also identified four popping sounds that analysts speculate came from a .38-caliber pistol. A police source acting as a news photographer, placed to report on the students carried a .38-caliber pistol. Reportedly, the pistol was not fired when it was turned into police. Others speculate the pops were slamming doors in one of the nearby dorms.
America was stunned with the news of the shooting. The nation remained divided, with some on the right claiming it should have been long ago, which made it into Neil Young’s ballad. Many newspapers ran the picture of a 14-year-old runaway kneeling over the body of one of the dead students.
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?
Lyrics Ohio Neil Young
Means interviewed former students, Guardsmen, townspeople, and officials to tell the story which not only changed the lives of those on what usually was a peaceful college yard but affected a nation that saw its military shooting at its citizens. Questions will remain and the answers will disappear as the participants die off, however, the photos of the massacre will continue to haunt a nation, at least those that take the time to look at them. 67 Shots is an important read for students of the Vietnam War, those that study, civil-military relations and the political unrest of the 60s and 70s, and especially those that study the political rhetoric that can result in disastrous consequences.
“The sixty-seven shots fired across thirteen seconds at 12:24 pm on May 4, 1970, changed that bargain. Guardsman seemed as surprised as the students that whatever unspoken truce existed had fallen apart for good.”
Dave Mattingly is a writer and national security consultant. He retired from the U.S. Navy with over thirty years of service. He is a member of the Military Writers Guild, NETGALLEY Challenge 2015 and a NETGALLEY Professional Reader.
