Innocence. He talked about the state of the vietnam war and actions in the white house for the antiwar protestest. First president nixon in a white house address a few days earlier. In blatent retaliation, and they are occupied by north vietnamese forces. Once enemy forces are driven out, and once their military supplies are destroyed, we will withdraw. These actions are in no way directed to the security interests of any nation. Any government that chooses to use these actions is a pretext for harming relations will be doing so on its own responsibility and on its own initiative and we will draw the appropriate conclusions. Now let me give you the reasons for my decision. A majority of the American People, a majority of you listening to me, are for the withdrawal of our forces from vietnam. The action that we have taken tonight is indispensable. A majority of the American People want to end this war rather than to have it it drag on. The action that i have taken tonight will serve that purpose. A majority of the American People want to keep the casualties of the brave men at vietnam at a minimum. The action that i take tonight is essential if were to accomplish that goal. We take this action 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 that we all desire. My fellow americans, we live in an age of anarchy. We see mindless attacks on all of the great institutions created by free civiluations in the last 500 years. Even here in the united states, great universities are being systematically destroyed. Small nationing all over the world find themselves under attack from within and white house. If, when the chips are down the worlds most fourf fpowerful na acts like a pitiful helpful giant, the forces of anarchy will threaten free nations and institutions throughout the world. That speech from april of 1970 that led to the escalation of conflicts in cambodia and southeast asia. Four students were killed, nine others were injuries, and one of the students that witnessed what happened was laura davis and she reflected on what she saw and herl in this organize history. All of the people that i was friends with that year had been at the demonstration. Virtually all of us witnessd the shootings take place, and we heard that the campus was to be evacuated in three hours. And i had a friend with a car which was unusual at that time. Hardly anyone had cars, but my friend jeff did and we drove home and i remember seeing a line of hundreds and hundreds of cars trying to get into kent. Trying to get in . Trying to get in because they were filled with parents, my mother was in one of the cars, the news was broadcast on the radio immediate lid, and a lot of students were from out of state and a lot were from the immediate area, and my mother didnt own a car herself, but she was with her friend that day and they jumped in her car, and she was trying to goat in to find out what happened to me and to pick me up, but they blockaded the city at that point. So i went home, i was home before my mother got back home, my father walked in the back door and i was sitting at the Kitchen Table and he saw me and the first words out of his mouth was they should have shot all of them. I said dont you know one of those people would have been me, and he passed into the other room. And i relate that part of my experience because it was representative of the times. It is the attitude of some of the people even today. It was a shift in Public Opinion for sure. One of the things that i have been doing because of the design and the other elements of the walking tour that will be dedicated on may 3rd, i know specifically the ways in which that change took place. And one of the important ways that may 4th was the day the war came home is that Congress Really rallied and came together, and started to communi document the war. The troops were withdrawn within weeks. And it did take awhile for congress to fully pass enough special provisions so that funding was eventually cut off from the war, but it starts specifically in response to may 4th, and a constitutional amendment that lowered the voting age to 18 and it was a very strong point of contention among other youth that chanted the slogan old snuenough to fig old enough to vote. If youre on the campus of Kent State University there is now a Museum Dedicated to exactly what happened eight weeks ago. Giving you a sense of what life was like 50 years ago and what that campus went through. The book is titled 67 shots. Joining us is the author of the book, howard means, thank you for being with us. Thank you for having me. What happened, why did four students die and nine other injured . In the ultimate large sense, they all flowed together at Kent State University in the first weekend of may 1970. It was an age of hate. It was an age of mistrust and a generational divide and right now the museum theyre talking about does a wonderful job of capturing all of this. It has a wonderful walk that you can take narrated by julian bond. If youre near kent, you should stop and do it, but the more immediate sense, you had Richard Nixons speech to the nature on the thursday, which announced an extension of the war into cam bode yoo. After saying that he was going to bring home 150,000 troops. That was a time bomb waiting to erupt and it did. And that demonstration, there was windows broken, trash cans set on fire, but the real problem with that demonstration was it convinced the mayor of kent that outside agitators took over the campus. And the whole thrust of the dog whistling from the white house under Richard Nixon was outside agitators. And that is what really, there was a 1 30 call made to the governors office, announcing saying there are outside agitators asking for help and that is what the demonstrations were about. Let me ask you about james rhodes. Where did that come from . I dont think there was ever an issue. The guard, however, consisted of untrained guys. The same age as the students, as the people fighting in vietnam. They were fighting n 1 sniper rifles, lethal to 1,000 feet to do crowd control. And an m 1, you know, i witnessed the wounds that anyone who was hit that next day in a vulnerable spot was dead. So you had untrained people carrying guns they never used. Nobody on the campus knew they were carrying live ammunition. The president of the campus, white, never asked, nobody asked. So it was not there was never a short to kill order that i know of. There was a lot of debate about what happened in the heat of things just before the shots were fired. What jim ridhodes did, they had done four or five days, so they were tired, this was a there was a running protest, they took over the campus without really asking the administration if they could take over the campus. The Administration Never protected the campus as they should have. They never protected the students as they should have, and it was a combination of volatile circumstances. The University Leadership went awol at the moment they were needed the most. The guard was terribly run. They were pushing hard to make this a crack down on outside agitators and crime. For the senate at the time, he used up his terms as governor, and he was inform a contention, the tuesday, the day after the shootings, was the republican primary. He was in contention with robert taft junior. And on the thursday before all of this began, the day nixon made a speech, actually, paul had taft winning by 68,000 votes in the primary. Rhodes hit the dog whistle. He needed southern ohio to come on strong for him, and on the tuesday, the day after the shootings, he lost by 5,000 votes, it almost worked for them. At the end of the day, four students died. Tell us about those four students. Writing the book was heartbreaking for all sorts of reasons. None of it more than before he died. Alison krause and Jeffrey Miller were in the demonstrations. He was shooting at theberg at the moment he was shot. You have to assume he was targeted specifically. Alison krause was back further and she was very easy to pick out in the crowd. Very attractive tallish woman. She was beautiful in a 1970s way. She was, i feel fairly certain she had been targeted. Bill schroeder, he was after freshman, he transferred after a year, he was an rotc on the basketball team. He was stopping by he had his books in his arms, he was curious. He was hit by an m 1 bullet and the person next to him saw it picked off of the ground and threw it back. And one student who was just passing between classes, doing what students are supposed to do on a campus where the classes probably should not have been open. They didnt want to close down because that would be buckling. A friend of hers says sandy get down on the ground, and he falls down with her, the shooting stops, it only lasted 13 seconds, and he looks over and she has a hole in her throat, and he tries to put his fist in it and she is bleeding out and dies almost immediately. Again a guy who was not radical at all, just happened to be there because he actually he called his teachers to tell them he would not be in class that day because he was that kind of guy. He was hit in the spine and has been without the use of his legs ever senince. We want to thank kent state for providing us these pictures to look back at what happens on may 4th, 1970. Four students killed, nine others injured. We have a line set aside for those who remember exactly what happened. If you were in college in the late 1960s early 1970s, please give us a call. The other phone lines are divided regionally. Another question, why did they have live ammunition . That is a really good question. A terrible judgment, frankly. Terrible judgment. The mitigating fact for the guard is they have to get their armaments from the armories. Everything else was at use in vietnam. Still, it is a, you know, things would have been so much better if they had shot give ups with bird sho bird. Israelis started using rubt bull rubber bullets. The other thing, they had they fired a lot of tier gas, but they misjudged. The guard pursuing them, guarding them down on the other side of the hill, and the guard runs out of tear gas. As theyre coming back up the hill, they have no tear gas left and theyre getting hit with a certain amount of debris, stones, and pieces of wood. The guard initially pushed them down into a hill the guard, im sorry, the guard marched themselves down into a culdesac, a practice field, and the students are there and they have stuff they can pick up and throw. But nobody is injured badly enough to justify this and not in any way, shape, or form. It is interesting to look at the depositions of the guardsmen. I think that next day they were deposed quickly and they said what they were told to say, they were deposed design in 1975 and 1975. As you read them, you see theyre rearranging events in their minds to justify their actions in a way. These are the gaurts men that shot rivals, didnt necessarily hit anybody, but they shot their rivals, and the debris gets more and more lethal, and theyre wearing a gas mask, a very strange way to look at a world when youre under assault and youre hot and tired. You have to have some sympathy for the guard. Was anyone charged as a result of these killings . No, but a number of students were charged by the local court. No guards man. There was no civil action taken. The original ask was for like 40. I think it was 650,000 which worked out to oh, and half of that i think went to dean taylor, the one most severely injured, and the rest was distributed among the other, i guess there were however many it worked out to about 30,000 or 50,000 per person all of that paid by the taxpayers of ohio. Before we get to calls, this is a headline and an iconic photograph from the cleveland plain dealer. How big was this nationally. Thank you, it was just chaotic the way that information flowed. There is a wonderful scene in my book, and some people are sitting in the backyard at kent and someone is working on their roof and he shouts down to them and says oh my god, they shot the guardsman. So nobody knew, they were more terrified initially and so it was a big and the photo youre looking at it is one of the most powerful photos. She was a 14yearold run away from florida that just happened to be there at that moment at that time. And you know, that photo always reminds me of the painting on the screen. That frozen moment where she is there. She said she p put her arms around here. She was froeden and bone cold and that is one of the other things, it was an emotional book to work on. And the book, kent state, the end of american innocents. First up. Thank you so much for taking my call. I was a freshman at the university of missouri and columbia missouri in the spring of 1970. My understanding at the time was to o sympathy that cool er head would prevail. And the story was a professor that helped to be in the line of fire and because of his efforts, more students did live. Thank you, mark. Mr. Means . Youre right on. Nobody had a plan b. There they were all headed toward disaster. The most most radical elements on campus had been banned the previous year. And they knew how to run demonstrations. A guy named ken hammond makes this point very powerfully. They knew how to run demonstrations. The students were leader less and reacting to reacting the way they wanted to, and they did not do what they did at the sometime. And they didnt know noon on monday. Shp they said they werent sure about it so they sent robert white and more all sending comments, and theyre getting ready to march the students to new crowd control. So the guard had no alternative to doing what they did and what they did was just from a Strategic Point of view bone stupid. One thing you dont do is go into a kal degr culdesac. The students will go back to the common side. They have regrouped, they have rearmed, they filled their clips again. The students are filled with anger and testosterone. If they had done that, hundreds would have died. They would have been mowed down. Three teachers, including glenn frank try to talk them back from the brink. And one of the students, looks like a military member, a flat top, he is pleading youre going to be slaughtered, wholesale murder, and the students finally back off. And that is that busts the bubble. And it broke him psychologica y psychologically. To me it has been a mystery of why there is no statute of glenn frank on campus. We have a video of what it looked like as students were fleeing the area. And to follow up on your point of what happens, one student reflected in an oral history from ten years ago on a moment you just described. I looked out over the scene and i saw what seemed like dozens of clusters of people standing in groups looking down at the ground. And i realized that what i was seeing in this huge scene was people standing over bodies on the ground. What people did was go over and staged a sit in. It was like being in a class. What made it more like a class for me is that glenn frank was pacing back and forth in front of the rows of people and as he did on the stage but this time he was crying and pleasing with us to leave. He convinced us that if we didnt leave the guard would engage in in further fighting, but the people they was sitting with made a plan. And when we got to the other side we each picked a direction to run in, and we figured if we ran in different directions, if the guard started shooting again they would not be able to kill everybody and someone would be alive to tell the story. Laura davis was a student and that oral history was put together by Kent State University. Nancy is on the phone, good morning. Good morning. Thank you so much. I was young, i was 12, my brother informs college at the university of texas and my parents were against the war and when laura davis said when her father walked in and saw her and said they should have killed them all, i just, you know, i just gasped. I thought she was going to say that her father would have said thank god youre all right. I feel so fortunate that my parents were against the war. Maybe you covered this or i didnt hear it. Did this turn the country against the war even more . Even more adults as well . Thank you, nancy. It is a very good question. And i think laura davis talked about the point it had. There is a two side another side to that or several more sides. I think the war is winding down. He didnt know how to do it. The after the defense, things were sliding backwards, and it definitely polarized it further polarized a very polar sized nation at that point. And yes, i think it had a lot to do with an 18yearold finally getting a vote, i think it would have been a fading movement in a way, but it radicalized the Democratic Party so much that in 1972 they nominated George Mcgovern who didnt have a snowballs chance of winning, and they might have nominated someone that would have given nixon a run for his money. Although he blew the opportunity. So, it is kind of a twosided thing. I was, myself, at the time a High School Teacher in washington dc when i was 25 my students were seniors, most of them juniors and seniors. These could have been my students, they were just a year removed from being students. And i was maybe not that far from being a guardsman, too. So what you just referred to was repeated time and again. An arch teacher there, talked about a student coming back campus was cleared about two days later and he is crying and broken. And this student had gone home, he knocked on the door on the door. They said where are you and the mail shot pushes open. And he hears his parents voices saying we never want to see you again. How can you see that . Anyway, still. Stefanie is on the phone, can good morning. Good morning, this is a very painful memory. There was so many disappointments. And there was so much hope at the same time. They are just something that is clearly motivating to the students, and i was 20 years old, and i was in school at nyu and active. And you know, the fact that the authorities were willing to let their own children die, to kill their own children on u. S. Soil for protesting a war that in so many ways was injust, and this came after the assassinations, and there was so much hope to change the war for the better and then all of these things just crushed that hope and then to see nixon lying and resigning before he could be impeached, and pardoned, and that was the end of hope in a way for so many of us. After that, i went to a pig farm and decided i was going back to nature because of the politics that i was so active in was so crushing. And i have been active all of my life and i still am, but it was so emotional at that time, and nobody feels those emotions like a 20yearold. It was just crushing. Thank you, if i let me add t point what the generations of the parents had witnessed with world war ii and with the korean conflict, the assassination of president kennedy, as she pointed out, and also dr. Martin luther king. How did all of this kind of envelope into 1970, the mood of the country, the mood of the students and the mood of the parents . Oh, boy. As i said earlier, there was all this toxic flow from out of the 60s that just happened to come together at kent state and its interesting. In a way its important that kent state is part of the story here. If these events happened in berkeley, columbia or the university of with wisconsin, where there was an entrenched student leadership, and where the university had had some experience with serious protests, i think the result would have been different. Kent state was a 21,000person school with a president who was very laissez faire. With students who i dont mean this as an insult at all who were naive. A lot of them were studying to be High School Teachers. Thats originally why kent state came to exist, a school for training teachers. And as a 25yearold teacher then myself, i have some sense of how naive teachers were. So i think these students actually believed that the guardsmen, at least initially, the guardsmen were there to help them, were there to protect them. They couldnt believe they couldnt imagine for the life of them that the guard would actually shoot them. I think students at a place like berkeley in may 4 of 1970 wouldnt have had that naivety or wouldnt have had that expectation. So that plays into this a bit, too. So its a combination of naivety, all these horrible forces flowing forward, the generational divide, the whole american love it or leave it movement. It was just there was a time bomb that was going to explode somewhere and it exploded, unfortunately, at kent. And it killed four students who should never have been killed. Jerry lewis was on the faculty and reflects. We had the bayonets, we had no inclination that the guns were loaded which, of course, they were. As we were beginning to walk down the hill from taylor hall to where the activists were, the National Guard started coming across the commons and began to tear gas the demonstrators and the observers and the faculty marshalls. So i went up past taylor hall, went left, down into the parking lot. As i got to the Prentice Hall parking lot, i saw a student, it turned out to be a blind student who had been tear gassed. I gave him first aid and went back to the edge of the parking lot and was just standing there. And the guard came up the hill toward the pagoda. The right rear echelon of guards turned and fired. I had been in the army so i knew those were real bullets because light travels faster than sound i dove for cover behind a bush and was on the ground quick enough that the guard finished their firing in 13 seconds. I stood up and i remember saying to myself, what should i do . When a student rushed up to me and said dr. Lewis, those were blanks, werent they . And i said no. I pointed to sanny scheuers body, i didnt know it was her at the time. Caller good morning, gentlemen. I was a 20yearold soldier in vietnam when kent state happened. I was an antiwar activists i joined the military to be antiwar, to work against the war in vietnam. And when that happened, i was receiving antiwar literature, and i signed up and i joined Vietnam Veterans against the war at that time. And a short time later, after the kent state incident on our base, there was an incident. I cant say if it was revenge or had any connection to the kent state massacre, but from my talking to the soldiers at that time because thats what i would do. I would talk to soldiers and most of them didnt care or else they were kind of glad it happened, but 25 years later, Vietnam Veterans against the war did go to kent state to participate in a memorial service. And you had a question earlier, professor, in which somebody asked were there any other incidents like this. In my recollection, south carolina, like ten black students were massacred by state troopers for protesting the war peacefully on their campus. Can you give me more information on that, sir . Thank you very much for your book. Ron, thank you. Howard means, how do you answer that . Thank you, ron. Three things there. Number one, jerry lewis, just quickly, before ron called, i remember asking jerry, you know, about this. Did you have any sense that these were live ammunition . And he told me that he had been a guard at ft. Knocx when he wa in the army, protecting the nations gold supply, carried a rifle that never had live ammunition in it. It gives you a sense of how insane it was for people out there. Secondly, i opened my book with the stories, many stories of the 24 americans who died in vietnam in 1970. Half of them were 20 years or younger. You have to keep that in mind. Third, the events youre talking about are at jackson State University in mississippi. And it was happened ten days later, on the 14th of may. Two killed, 10 wounded. And the students had begun to protest because there was a rumor that charles evers, medgar evers brother, had been murdered. He hadnt but there was this rumor and Mississippi StatePolice Showed up and sprayed the dormitory with gunfire, 128 seconds. That story just frankly disappeared. Scranton mission report, which devoted threequarters of its base to kent state, onequarter to jackson state. As i say in the book, kent state was a man bites dog story, civilians being killed by american soldiers. Unfortunately, jacks eb state was a dog bites man story. It was not an unheard of event. Frank, youre next, from pennsylvania. Caller thank you i was a seventh term junior at penn state when we got word of the kent state situation. What made me a little bit more unique, i think, was the fact that i was a vietnam veteran. I was a medic with Alpha Company 15 med first air calvary division. I spent most of my time at the dispensary. Any way, we had widespread rioting on the campus. There were a number of fires that were set and although there were no National Guard troops on the campus, we did have a rather large detachment of Pennsylvania State troopers. This is the thing that im always going to remember. As i was walking up rutledge road, i noticed there was a state trooper injured by flying debris, and my instinct was, having been a medic, was to run over to him and render assistance, but i had long hair. And if i had moved toward the gentleman, his other caomrades would have come at me. I really wanted to render aid to the state trooper. A good advice by the name of jones gav me while i was in vietnam. Keep your head down, powder dry and be good. To that i added, be a man of few words. Thank you for your book. Im going to read it. Thats an important part of my life in history. Frank, thanks for the call, from pennsylvania. And you mentioned the president s report on the commission of campus was chaired by the former governor of pennsylvania, bill skrcranton. Howard means, your response to that caller . Oh, thats a wonderful story. Its a sad story, isnt it . When you cant render help, knowing you have to fight all your instincts. And that just goes to how riveted the nation was, absence of trust. Next weekend theres a huge demonstration in washington the next weekend. And i remember walking down to that from the corner of wisconsin and massachusetts avenue and northwest. Doesnt mean much, but you had to go through two circles, to get down to the mall. And at every radius on those circles, there was a jeep with four soldiers, army if memory serves me krekt correctly, with semi automatic rifles, staring at you through their sunglasses. It was scary. At the white house that weekend, they had done what they had at other times. They had taken d. C. Transit buss and surrounded the white house to make a kind of wall. But more than that, they had brought the 82nd airborne in. I think they were staying in the basement of the executive Office Building along with elements of an army. The white house was an encampment at that point. Thats a famous moment when Richard Nixon takes the notion at 3 30 in the morning to show his valet, sanchez, the washington monument. They go down in the mall, secret Service People with them. There are tens of thousands of people sleeping in the mall and he has the secret service wake up the guard so they can talk to him. You can see a ski nose, neatly dressed and all that sort of stuff and these hippie looking people are looking at him as if what drug could have caused the abberration in front of them. In a way, nixons chief of staff argued afterwards that in a way, kent state broke nixon. It was the end of his presidency in this regard. He had charged j. Edgar hoover to find proof that this kent state incident was caused by outside agitators. This fit the line. It had not been. It was students at the school. So, when he couldnt get when hoover refused or was unable to find this evidence, nixon lost confidence in the fbi. He formed the plummers, who broke into National Headquarters office and watergate followed. So, its kind of an interest in follow. I think its a legitimate point. If you travel to the campus of Kent State University theres a memorial on what exactly reflects on what happened may 4th, 1970, 50 years ago. We look at the museum and listen to gary here in washington, d. C. Good morning. Gary, are you with us . Yes, i am. Good morning. And thank you, mr. Means. This is wonderful. Look, mr. Nixons speech was incendiary to those of us on the left in those years, in that moment. It was complaining about students destroying civilization, destroying universities. People on the left, and i was on the left, we just didnt believe him. I was teaching at Western Michigan University at the time in kalamazoo and we knew kent state very well. I think kent state could have happened anywhere, because these demonstrations across the country were spontaneous. Young men did not want to go and fight in this war, and that probably was the a very critical factor. I agree with the caller from penn state that you could tell in those years which side you were on by how you dressed. This is the question i want to put to mr. Means. Is the country more divided today or then . My own view is, its more divided today, because you cant tell who people are by the way they dress. Its really the absence of a critical news media. People retreat into their own polls. They go to the left or the right, and i think the division is deeper. What do you think, mr. Means . Gary, thank you for the call. Let me add to that, howard means, the fact that we did have a draft in the 1970s. Please respond. Yeah. Boy, ill tell you, thats a question i spent a lot of time thinking about lately, especially with this anniversary coming on. I dont know the answer. I think that in 1970, it was divided more vertically by age. I think in our own time, its divided horizontally. Well, it is to some extent. Obviously, the electric and republican side is an older and whiter audience, but your point about its not that we dont have credible news media. We do. Its that theres so many you can hibernate with whatever news view you want. Kent state was reported by three networks and a handful of magazines that you trusted. Time, newsweek, life. Brinkley, who was it . Walter cronkite. I forget who was abc at that time. Maybe howard k. Smith. But you couldnt cocoon in your own news world. You can now, which makes it possible to believe which gives you an entire support system for whatever you wanted to believe. It was much harder to do that in 1970. Yes, a good point about there was a draft in 1970 and, obviously, the vietnam war was the end of that draft. We could argue whether National Service should be reinstated, but i doubt the draft will. Another oral history. This from 2013, and joe collum who was a student at kent state. What he saw, what he heard and what he remembers. I thought, well, why are they firing . We were not posing a threat. And then i thought to myself, im sure theyre not firing live ammunition. Theyre firing blanks just to as a way to try to disperse the crowd. And after probably four or five seconds of firing, i finally realized that well, even if they are firing blanks, im close enough that i could be injured. So it was at that point that i dove to the ground and then they continued to fire another seven or eight seconds. And when they stopped firing is when i stood up, looked around and saw that clearly they had been firing live ammunition, because there were students who were wounded around me. John cleary, who i didnt know at the time, was at the base of that sculpture, and he was the first person i saw who wasnt getting up when the rest of us were. So, i went to him and lifted his shirt and saw that he had a bullet wound in his chest. Reflected on what happened 50 years ago, lets get back to your phone calls. Another student, bill in waynesboro, pennsylvania. Good morning. Caller good morning. In 1970, i was 19 years old. Is with a student at the university of maryland in college park. I wanted to read a paragraph that i wrote about the kent state killings. I wrote this some several years ago. A little background. In 1969, 70, 71, there were huge demonstrations against the vietnam war in washington, d. C. One of the demonstrations, the Washington Post estimated there were more than 1 Million People there. These demonstrations were just getting larger and larger. At the university of maryland and at many other colleges, there were demonstrations across the country. At the university of maryland, the National Guard was called in. And i was covering some of those demonstrations for the student newspaper, as was the entire staff of the newspaper at that time. So, thats just some background. Here is what i wrote about kent state. On may 4th, 1970, four students were shot dead by ohio National Guardsmen at ohios Kent State University. I remember that day vividly. Prior to that day, it was a heady time for young people and students. It seemed like older people and some politicians were paying attention to the protests and their messages, but when i heard about the four students who were killed, it was chilling. I was stunned. It stopped me cold. I remember thinking, this is a war and the guns are aimed at us. Bill, thanks for the call, from pennsylvania. Im going to add to that, because we have another student on the phone. Betty is joining us from austin, texas. Betty, what do you remember 50 years ago . Caller i was having lunch and i saw looking out of the windows, i was at lake hall, which was a view of the hillside, i saw the puff of smoke after the shots went off, and i something made me just go to the doors of the hall and open the doors. And it was a good thing, because there were stampeding students that were running to try to get away from the shots and the danger. Its nice to see mr. Means recollection or research of what he has done. Its accurate. Theres so many things that were so inaccurate for so many years. Robert mitchum wrote a best seller called kent state that was totally accurate saying he was there. He was totally not there. His descriptions were 180 degrees different from what actually transpired. I happen to have known about ninetenths of the people he interviewed for his book and they gave very different recollections than what they were quoted. So its nice to see mr. Means being accurate. It certainly changed many, many peoples lives, including my own. I moved to texas a, and mom and dad werent paying for school anymore after that. It changed many peoples lives. Betty, before we let you go, as that day unfolded and you had a chance to reflect what you saw, having been on campus at Kent State University, can you recall what you were thinking later in the day into the evening . Caller we all had hair standing up on the back of our necks. We were all horrified and had adrenaline going more than ever i dont know why i did, but i just did. And the bullet shells were so hot, they burned my hands and i dropped them, but i picked up several at the time. There was a big controversy as to whether or not who it was that was doing the shooting. Was it the students or was it the guardsmen . I wanted to get the word out. I called the kent paper. I called the kent police. I called the fbi. I called the cleveland police. I called the cleveland plain dealer. No one wanted to hear my call, the fbi for that matter, to try to tell them this information, that i knew what the shells looked like. I could describe them. And no one ever took my statement. It was so interesting. And so us against them, the youth against the adults, the establishment. And that was our point of view at the time. Betty, thank you for the call, now living in austin, texas, student at kent state in 1970. Howard means, as you hear her story and bill before that from pennsylvania, your thoughts . Theyre wonderful stories. It just reminded me that when i started this book, i didnt know there were 125 oral histories sitting in the library at Kent State University. And so i dove into those and read every one of them. And every one of them tells a story, and half of them are heartbreaking stories. And its just its an amazing cache of documentation, and the university is really to be congratulated for the care theyve taken. They didnt do this initially. Initially, they wanted to obliterate the memory of what happened there. Laura davis and some others have, jerry lewis, sort of goedgoed g goaded them into doing this the right way. Theyre deeply emotional to read them. 67 shots kent state and the end of american innocence, which is my final question. How did it end our innocence . Well, the most immediate sense it ended our innocence into thinking that the guard would always protect us, that the military would not fire on american citizens. I think it also it had a profound effect on Antiwar Movement generally. The innocence of the 60s, you could go to these things, smoke all the pot you wanted when you were protesting. The grownups were afraid of you. And i think this is reasserting, especially people like jim rhodes, reasserting the authority of the state over its citizens and in a very unattractive way. Howard means joining us from his home in millwood, virginia. Thank you for being with us on this 50th anniversary of the shootings on Kent State University. Thank you for having me. Youre watching a special edition of American History tv airing weekdays. Tonight airing at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, the cold war. American history tv now and over the weekend on cspan3. The deepest cause where well find the true meaning of the revolution was in this transformation that took place in the minds of the American People. So were going to talk about both of these sides of this story here, right . The tools, the techniques of slave owner power. Well also talk about the tools and techniques of power that people. Watch history professors lead discussions with their students on topics ranging from the American Revolution to september 11th. Lectures in history on cspan 3 every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv. And lectures in history is available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Our Mission Continues to provide an unfiltered view of government. Already this year weve brought you primary election coverage, the president ial impeachment process and now the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online or listen on our free radio app. And be part of the National Conversation through cspans daily Washington Journal Program or through our social media feeds. Cspan, created by private industry. Americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Kent state planned a 50year anniversary of the may 4th, 1970 shootings that left four dead and nine wounded. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, they produced a program which includes footage of the deadly confrontation between ohio guardsmen and students protesting the vietnam war and recollections from wounded survivors and eyewitnesses