Kent State Shooting (assassinated, kings, African, American)

[Caleb Longstreet]

Yeah, I forgot, you must have been one of the legions that quietly welcomed them home. The war was without one of the more controversial ones ever fought. I don't think Korea was all that popular nor were the two previous to that.

As it relates to Kent State, it wasn't quite as televised as the other campuses around the country such as Berkely for example. This one just happened to get 4 kids killed in the process. How Kent State arose to that level of tension is beyond me. The area was relatively sedate compared to say Newark, Los Angeles, and other major metros.

When the curfew lifted 30 days later people were busy with RFK and perhaps his assassination dwarfed the newsworthiness of the Kent State shootings?

[DewDropInn]

Originally Posted by Caleb Longstreet

Yeah, I forgot, you must have been one of the legions that quietly welcomed them home.

Just in case this was addressed to me, I was.

[Caleb Longstreet]

Originally Posted by DewDropInn

Just in case this was addressed to me, I was. Yep. At the airport. Holding them and crying my eyes out.

Glad to hear it. Someone needed to welcome them. I remember most in my town admired them. Oddly, the returning vets shrugged it off and went back to normal lives. Surreal. Even at 11 years of age. Not a popular war.

[villageidiot1]

Originally Posted by Caleb Longstreet

You proved my point yourself. Either they were very choreographed in your photo, or they pretty much had the same thought. You are looking at a snapshot with a limited field of view. Add gas masks and their view is less.

Couple that with the fact that you mentioned the hits were, between what 71 and 300 feet? Take 100 some odd semi-automatic rifles with 8 round magazines and fire them into a DENSE crowd and you ARE going to have casualties. The ones shot in the back are running after the first volley. I believe the shooting went on for 7 seconds for the majority of the shooting?

Yeah, you are going to have some hit in the back. My question is, how did they miss so many? Did they really shoot over their heads as reported (some of them anyway) later? How many were hit by the same round. At that range and with that caliber, one can easily imagine it hitting in the torso of some and exiting their backs only to hit someone else in the front or back???

Bring us the whole, unbiased film clip and you will see the subtle, yet important differences. They wago wheeled a bit. Both the oncoming and openly hostile crowd as well as the guardsmen as the moved to a slight echelon yo their right. Some took dead aim, some looked confused. All had their gas masks and until the shooting, had been steadily RETREATING.

I know this is not a popular version. However, it is factually accurate. Above all, man with big loaded gun faces you? Run like a biotech fool. Causes no longer matter. Safety and preservation of oneself....does.

Wow! I didn't prove your point. What does this sentence mean?

"Either they were very choreographed in your photo, or they pretty much had the same thought."

choreographed? Who is "they?"

You quote my post and then misquote me in your reply. I said, "The students who were shot were 71 to 750 feet away from the Guardsmen. Eight were 300 feet or further away."

Twenty nine of the 77 guardsmen claimed to have fired their weapons, using a final total of 67 rounds of ammunition. The shooting was determined to have lasted only 13 seconds.

The President's Commission on Campus Unrest concluded that "the indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.

The unanswered questions are:
1. Why were only eight of the guardsmen indicted by a grand jury?
2. Why did U.S. District Judge Frank Battisti dismiss charges against all eight on the basis that the prosecution's case was too weak to warrant a trial?
3. What caused 29 National Guardsmen to indiscriminately fire their weapons at unarmed students who were clearly not a threat to them base on the fact they were unarmed and the distance separating a force of 77 Guardsmen?

Here is a link to some additional inormation and pictures: Kent May 4 Center - May 4, 1970 Kent State Massacre non-profit educational charity organization in Kent, Ohio

Can you provide a link to the unbiased film clip you keep referring?

[villageidiot1]

Originally Posted by Caleb Longstreet

Yeah, I forgot, you must have been one of the legions that quietly welcomed them home. The war was without one of the more controversial ones ever fought. I don't think Korea was all that popular nor were the two previous to that.

As it relates to Kent State, it wasn't quite as televised as the other campuses around the country such as Berkely for example. This one just happened to get 4 kids killed in the process. How Kent State arose to that level of tension is beyond me. The area was relatively sedate compared to say Newark, Los Angeles, and other major metros.

When the curfew lifted 30 days later people were busy with RFK and perhaps his assassination dwarfed the newsworthiness of the Kent State shootings?

Do you realize the RFK assasination took place June 5, 1968? You are off by 2 years.

[Deezus]

Originally Posted by Caleb Longstreet

When the curfew lifted 30 days later people were busy with RFK and perhaps his assassination dwarfed the newsworthiness of the Kent State shootings?

RFK was assassinated in 1968 and the Kent State shooting took place in May 1970 however.

[Katiana]

Originally Posted by DewDropInn

Caleb: Really? "Not much fuss" about it locally?

I can assure you it was HUGE news where I lived (So Cal) and stayed huge for months.

BTW: What else did I expect for the times? Let's start with not passing out bullets to the National Guard to shoot students with. Silly me.

Interesting attitude though. Probably because you were 11 and not in danger since I'm guessing you weren't protesting the war.

I was 21 and a college student in Pittsburgh at the time, ~100 miles away. One of the students killed was from Pittsburgh. The shootings were in the news all summer. IIRC, they made national news as well, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young had a song about the shootings "Four Dead in Ohio".

Originally Posted by Caleb Longstreet

Yeah, I forgot, you must have been one of the legions that quietly welcomed them home. The war was without one of the more controversial ones ever fought. I don't think Korea was all that popular nor were the two previous to that.

As it relates to Kent State, it wasn't quite as televised as the other campuses around the country such as Berkely for example. This one just happened to get 4 kids killed in the process. How Kent State arose to that level of tension is beyond me. The area was relatively sedate compared to say Newark, Los Angeles, and other major metros.

When the curfew lifted 30 days later people were busy with RFK and perhaps his assassination dwarfed the newsworthiness of the Kent State shootings?

See above. You need a history review.

[DewDropInn]

Originally Posted by Katiana

See above. You need a history review.

RFK assassination.

Moon landing.

Kent state.

He was wrong on the moon landing date as well. I'm ignoring the snide comments about Californians. Though he does seem to think nothing much was happening in that state when, in fact, it was the epicenter of the aerospace industry and its citizens were a VITAL part of putting us on the moon.

He also stated that Vietnam vets "shrugged off" their not getting welcomed home. Not exactly true as is evidenced by the tens of thousands of vets and their families who descended on Washington D.C. in 1982 for the dedication of the The Wall. THAT was the homecoming they never got and it meant a heck of a lot to them.

[markg91359]

And for the people who said don't issue them ammunition, etc. Huh? That is like saying send police officers out, with a gun on their hip, but don't issue them ammunition either. What good is an unloaded firearm?

Not exactly. Let me draw a comparison to a protest that occurred three years before Kent State. In October 1967, a massive protest took place at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. Anti-war protestors numbered in the thousands and surrounded the building.

At the time, Bob McNamara was Secretary of Defense although he was on his way out of office. McNamara was responsible for defending the building against protesters and this was a significant job. The Pentagon Complex is so huge that the protesters could have obtained entrance to the building at any number of points.

McNamara chose to defend the building by surrounding it with army troops holding rifles. What McNamara did though was refuse to allow ammunition to be issued to the soldiers. It must have been a nerve-racking experience for many of the soldiers. Some of the protesters got so close to the soldiers they did things like unzip the fly on their pants. Endless profanity and insults were hurled.

What was the end result? The soldiers endured a lot of insults and insulting behavior, but not one person was killed.

McNamara had many faults as Secretary of Defense and is blamed (rightfully) as one of the main architects of the Vietnam Conflict). However, he handled this particular event well. The Governor of Ohio and the National Guard could have learned from the experiences of 1967. They chose not too.

[DewDropInn]

Originally Posted by markg91359

What McNamara did though was refuse to allow ammunition to be issued to the soldiers.

One of the reasons I had a question about who issued the ammo: Bill Mauldin wrote that Kent State was the first time he'd heard of the National Guard being issued live ammo. That's been stuck in my mind for many years.

I'm wondering if there are any former NG members here (or anyone else) who know.