Transcripts For CSPAN3 Kent State 50 Years Later 20240713

Neutrality. This is not an invasion of cambodia. The areas in which these attacks will be launched are completely occupied and controlled by north vietnamese forces. Our purpose is not to occupy the areas. Once enemy forces are driven out of these sankfrng ai areas, we withdraw. These actions are in no way directed to the securitien intere security interests of any nation. 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 i have taken tonight is indispensable for the continuing success of that withdrawal program. A majority of the American People want to end this war rather than to have it drag on. The action i have taken tonight will serve that purpose. A majority of the American People want to keep the casualties of our brave men in vietnam at a minimum. The action i take tonight is essential if we are 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 we all desire. My fellow americans, we live in an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home. We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions which have been created by free civilizations in the last 500 years. Even here in the United States, great universities are being destroyed. Small nations find themselves under attack from within and without. If when the chips are down the worlds most powerful nation, the United States of america, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of t totalitarianism will threaten free nations throughout the world. That speech from april of 1970 by president Richard Nixon that led to the escalation of conflict in cambodia and Southeast Asia and also led to tensions on College Campuses around the country, including Kent State University, four students killed, nine injured. One of the students who witnessed what happened back in 1970 was laura davis. She reflected on what she saw, what she heard in this oral history. All of the people that i was friends with that year had been at the demonstration. Virtually, all of us had witnessed the shootings take place. We heard that the campus was to be evacuated in three hours. And i had a friend who had a car, which was unusual at that time. Hardly anybody had cars. But my friend jeff did. We drove home. I remember seeing a line of hundreds and hundreds of cars trying to get into kent. Trying to get into kent . Trying to get into kent because they were filled with parents. My mother was in one of those cars. The news was broadcast on the radio immediately. A lot of students were from out of state but a lot of students were from the immediate area. My mother didnt own a car herself. She was with her friend that day. They jumped in her car and she was trying to get into kent to find out what had happened to me and to pick me up. But they had blockaded the city at that point, at least coming into kent down route 43. So i went home. I was home before my mother got back home. Around 6 00, my father walked in the back door. I was sitting at the kitchen table. He saw me and the first words out of his mouth were, they should have shot all of them. I said to him, you know, dont you know that one of those people would have been me . And he passed into the other room. I relate that part of my experience because it was very representative of the times. His attitude was the attitude of many people. The attitude of some people even today. It was a shift in public opinion, for sure. And one of the things that i have been doing because of the design work thats going on for the may 4th Visitor Center thats planned and also the creation of the panels and other elements of the walking tour that will be unveiled and dedicated on may 3rd, i know specifically the ways in which that change took place. One of the important ways that may 4th was the day the war came home was that Congress Really rallied and really came together and began withdrawing in very documentable, very real ways its support for nixons war in Southeast Asia. The troops were withdrawn from cambodia within weeks after nixons announcement on april 30th, which was what set off the demonstrations at kent state and at other universities around the country. It did take a while for congress to fully pass enough special provisions so that funding was eventually completely cut off for the war. But that process began specifically in response to may 4th. And also, there was an unprecedented pushing through of a con sti stustitutional amendm lowered the voting age to 18, which was a strong point of contention among College Students and other youth who had chanted the slogan, old enough to fight, old enough to vote. From laura davis in 2010. If you are on the campus of Kent State University, there is now a Museum Dedicated to exactly what happened 50 years ago on may 4, 1970, to give you a sense of what life was like 50 years ago and what that campus went through. The book is titled 67 shots, kent state and the end of american innocence. Joining us from his home in virginia is the author. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for having me. What happened . Why did four students die and nine others injured . Oh, boy. Thats a big question. Well, in the larger the ultimate large sense of this, all the toxic waters of the 1960s flowed together at Kent State University in may of 1970. It was an age of hate. It was an age of distrust. It was a generational divide. I could say, the museum that laura davis was talking about does a wonderful job of capturing this. It has a wonderful walk you can take narrated by julian bond. If you are near kent state, stop and do it. In the more middle east senimmeu had Richard Nixons speech to the nation on that thursday, in this he announced the extension of the war into cambodia. After saying he was going to bring home 150,000 troops. That was a time bomb waiting to erupt and it did the next evening on the streets of kent. The bars down there and off the campus. That demonstration was not there was windows broken. There were trash cans set on fire. But the real problem with that demonstration was it convinced the mayor ofoutside agitators had taken over the campus. The thrust of the dog whistling from the white house under Richard Nixon and from the 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 thats how the guard ended up there. And that changed everything, and that is what the demonstrations were about. Let me ask you about james rhodes. Did he issue the order to kill . Where did that come from . I dont think there was ever an issue. A directive. The guard, however, consisted of a bunch of untrained guys. The same age as the students, as the people fighting in vietnam. They were carrying m1 sniper rifles, lethal to 1,000 feet, to go crowd control. And an m1, you know, i witnessed the wounds that anyone who was hit that next day in a vulnerable spot was dead. There was no question, when an m1 hit you. 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 shoot 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 rhodes did, the guard were in akron, helping to put down a teamsters strike. 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. All happening at once. The students had no leadership, particularly. The University Leadership went awol at the moment they were needed the most. The guard was terribly directed. And the Governors Office was pressing hard to make this a crackdown on outside agitators and crime. Jim rhodes was running for senate at the time, he had used up his terms as governor. The tuesday, the day after the shootings, was the republican primary. He was in contention with robert taft jr. The son of longtime senator taft. And on the thursday before all of this began, the day nixon made his speech, actually, a poll 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 him. At the end of the day, four students died. Tell us about those four students. You know, writing the book was heartbreaking for all sorts of reasons. None of it was more heartbreaking than before he died. Alison krause and Jeffrey Miller were active 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 prominent in the demonstrations and was very easy to pick out in the crowd. A 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 a freshman, he transferred after a year in colorado, he was an rotc on the basketball team. He was stopping by he had his books in his arms, he was curious. He wasnt a demonstrator. He was hit by an m1 bullet and the person next to him saw him picked off of the ground and thrown 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. But rhodes didnt want the campus to close down, that would be buckling to the demonstrators. 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 stick his fist in it and she is bleeding out 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 wouldnt 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 since. By the way, we want to thank kent state for providing us these pictures to look back at what happened 50 years ago on may 4th, 1970. Four students killed, many others injured. We have a line set aside for those who remember exactly what happened. If you were in college in the late 1960s, or in the early 1970s, please give us a call. 2027488002. The other phone lines are divided regionally. Howard, another question, why did they have live ammunition . That is a really good question. Terrible judgment, frankly. Absolutely terrible judgment. The mitigating fact for the guard is that they have to get their armaments from the armories. Everything else was in use in vietnam. Everything except for world war ii m1s. Still, it is a, you know, things would have been so much better if they had buckshot, bird shot. Instead, they had world war ii rifles. The other thing, they had fired a lot of tear gas, but they misjudged their stock of tear gas. On monday, after the guard pursued them, they run out of tear gas. As theyre coming back up the hill, just before they turned to do their shooting, 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 over the 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 all the stuff they can pick up and throw. Theres a certain amount of debris. But nobody is injured badly enough to justify this, not in any way, shape, or form. It is interesting to look at the depositions of the guardsmen. I think the next day they were deposed quickly and they said what they were told to say, they were deposed again in 1973 and again in 1975. As you read the depositions, you see how theyre rearranging events in their minds to justify their actions in a way. These are the guardsmen that shot rifles, didnt necessarily hit anybody, but they shot their rifles, 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. And everything else. You have to have some sympathy for the guard. Because they were just terribly led. Was anyone charged as a result of these killings . No. Yes, a number of students were charged and had to appear in a local court. No guardsmen charged. There was a civil action taken against the guards. The original ask was for like 40 million. I think the settlement was 650,000 which worked out to oh, and half of that i think went to dean taylor, the one most seriously, 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 the headline and an iconic photograph from the cleveland plain dealer. How big was this nationally in 1970 . It was huge, absolutely huge. The first accounts had the guards being shot, not the students being shot. 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 hes listening to the radio. And says, oh, my, god, they shot the guardsmen. So nobody knew, the parents of guardsmen were more terrified initially and so it was a big and the photo youre looking at it is one of the most iconic photos of the american Antiwar Movement. And she wasnt a student. She was a 14yearold runaway from florida that just happened to be there at that moment, at that time. Standing next to Jeffrey Miller when he was hit. And, you know, that photo always reminds me of the painting, the scream. That frozen moment where she is there. A woman she said she tried to put her arms around her. She was frozen and bone cold and that is one of the other things, it was an emotional book to work on. And the book, 67 shots kent state and the end of american innocence. First up. Caller 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 the thinking that cooler heads did not prevail on either side. Would it have been possible, had the students not continued the demonstrations, would it have been better . And the story was a professor that helped students not to be in the line of fire and because of his efforts, more students did live. Thank you for the story. God bless you, sir. Thank you, mark. Mr. Means . Youre right on. Cooler heads did not prevail. Nobody had a plan b. They were all sort of heading towards this disaster. The students didnt have particularly good leadership, because, and this is ironic in a way. The most radical elements on campus had been banned the previous year. Because of some actions in 1969. And they knew how to run demonstrations. A guy named ken hammond makes this point very powerfully. They knew how to run demonstrations. But they werent there. So the students were leaderless and reacting to the way they wanted to, and they did not do what they did at the time. Everybody knew there would be a demonstration at noon on monday. There was no question about it. They said they werent sure about it so they sent robert white and they were having lunch. The guard was massed at one end to do crowd control. That was a failure of leadership and cooler heads, no doubt about it. The guard had no alternative to doing what they did and what they did was just from a Strategic Point of view bone stupid. To march themselves over the hill and into a culdesac. One thing you dont do is go into a culdesac. And glenn frank, he was a geology professor. Hes the hero, if theres any heroes in this. The guard is back at the far end of this commons. Theyve regrouped. They have rearmed, filled their clips again, those that have fired them. The students are filled with anger and testosterone. Whatever it is. And some of them are painting xs on their chest, theyre talking about going down and charging the guard. 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. Glenn frank becomes deeply emotional. And his speech to the students, he looks like an exmarine, he looks a lot like drew carey, who was a kent state student, too. He has a flat top. He is pleading, youre going to be slaughtered, wholesale murder, and the students finally back off. And that sort of bursts the bubble. And the experience, i think his son would agree, it broke glenn frank physically and psychological psychologically. He was never the same again. To me, its always been a mystery of why there is no statue of him on the kent state campus. We have a video of what it looked like as students were fleeing the area. Again, on may 4th, 1970. And to follow up on your point of what happens, one student reflected in an oral history from ten years ago on the 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 stage a sitin. It was like being in a class. People were sitting in rows. What made it more like a class for me was that my geology instructor, glenn frank, was pacing back and forth in front of the rows of people and as he did on the stage when i was in his class. But the difference was, this time he was crying and pleading with us to leave. He convinced us that if we didnt leave the guard would engage in further violence, so we followed him to the other side of the commons. The people i was sitting with, we made a plan and we decided we would follow him quietly across the commons. But when we got to the other side, we each chose a direction we would run in. And we figured that if we ran in different directions, if the guard shooting again, they wouldnt be able to kill everybody. And someone would be alive to tell the story. Laura davis was a freshman in 1970, and that oral history was put together by Kent State University. Nancy is on the phone, good morning. Caller good morning. Thank you so much. I was young, i was 12, my brother was in college at the university of texas and my parents were against the war and when laura davis said that 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. And that made them even more against the war. My question is, and maybe you covered this and 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 made the point earlier that it had. There are several more sides to it. I think the war was winding down. Nixon wanted to bring the troops home, he just didnt know how to do it and still be dick nixon. Things were sliding backwards, and it definitely polarized it further polarized a very polarized nation at that point. And, yes, i think it had a lot to do with 18yearolds finally getting a vote, i think it energized what 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 could have nominated someone that would have given nixon a run for his money. So in a way they almost guaranteed a second term for dick nixon. Although, of course, he blew the opportunity. So, it is kind of a twosided thing. I was, myself, at the time a High School Teacher in washington, d. C. 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 my students. And i was maybe not that far from being a guardsman at that point, too. So the story that laura told, what the caller just referred to, was repeated time and time again. A teacher there talked about a student coming back, campus was cleared. About two days later a student shows up and he is crying and broken. And this student had gone home, he knocked on the door. It was locked, he knocked harder, said mom, dad, where are you . The mail slot pushes open, his parents voices say, we never want to see you again. And that broke my heart. How can you say that . Stephanie is on the phone, good morning. Caller good morning, this is a very painful memory for me. There was so many disappointments. And there was so much hope at the same time. The injustice of sending boys off to war that couldnt even vote was something that was clearly motivating to the students. And i was 20 years old back then, 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 unjust, and this came after the assassinations, and there was so much hope to change the world 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 then pardoned, and that was the end of hope in a way for so many of us. After that, i retreated to a pig farm and decided i was going to go back to nature because 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. Stephanie, thank you. If i could, let me add to her point what the generations of the parents had witnessed with world war ii, the corkorean conflict, the assassinations, and dr. Martin luther king, how did all of this develop in the century for the mood of the parents and the students . As i said earlier, there was an entrenched student leadership, 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 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 on may 4th 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 america, 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 in 1970 and reflected on what he saw. We were worried about 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 marshals. 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 a little first aid and went back to the edge of the parking lot and was just standing there. And the guard came up the hill towards 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 so 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 sandy scheuers body, i didnt know it was her at the time. Sandy, one of the four students who were killed. Here are their photographs as we listen to ron from michigan. Good morning. Caller good morning, gentlemen. I was a 20yearold soldier in vietnam when kent state happened. I was an antiwar activist. 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 get their opinions on what was going on. 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, in 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. Knox when he was in the army, protecting the nations gold supply, carried a rifle that never had live ammunition in it. It gives you some 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 on may 4th, 1970. Half of them were 20 years or younger. You just have to keep that in mind. Four dead there, 24 dead there. Third, the event youre talking about was at jackson State University in mississippi. And it was it happened ten days later, on the 14th of may. Two killed, ten 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 State trooper showed up and sprayed the dormitory with gunfire, 150 rounds in 28 seconds. That story just frankly disappeared. The Scranton Commission 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, jackson state was a dog bites man story. White troopers firing on black citizens in mississippi in may of 1970, it was not an unheardof event. Frank, youre next, from pennsylvania. Caller thank you. I was a seventh term junior at penn State University park 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 15th med, first air calvary division. I spent most of my time at the dispensary. Anyway, we did have 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 who was 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 comrades probably would have clubbed me. And i regret that. I really wanted to render aid to the state trooper. But some good advice by the name of jones gave me while i was in vietnam. Keep your head down, your 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. Because 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 unrest, it was chaired by the former governor of pennsylvania, bill scranton. 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 rivened the nation was, in the absence of trust. The 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 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 correctly, all with semiautomatic rifles, staring at you through their sunglasses. It was scary. And at the white house that weekend, they had done what they had at other times. They had taken d. C. Transit buses and had 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 the third army. The white house was an armed encampment at that point. Thats the famous moment when Richard Nixon takes the notion at 3 30 in the morning to show his valet, sanchez, the washington monument. They get up, get dressed, 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 them up so he 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 wondering what drug could have caused the abberration in front of them. Just a very, very strange moment. It goes to the point that i think is worth making, 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 him proof that this incident was caused by outside agitators. This fit the storyline. It had not been. It was students at the school. So, when he couldnt get when hoover refused or was unable to produce this evidence, nixon lost his faith in the fbi. He formed the plummers, who broke into the Democratic National Headquarters Office and watergate followed. So, its kind of an interesting follow. I think its a legitimate point. And he was in a position to know. If you travel to the campus of Kent State University theres a memorial that reflects on what exactly 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 . Caller 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 credible 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 have 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 electorate on the republican side is an older and whiter audience, but your point about, its not that we dont have credible news media. Because i think 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. There was brinkley, who was it . 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 want 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. Reflecting 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. I was 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 had 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 inaccurate, 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, and mom and dad werent paying for school anymore after that. So 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 before, more than we had ever experienced in our very young lives. We didnt know how to take anything. We heard all the points of view. But they were all consistent and they were all accurate. So its like mr. Means saying accurate things about what actually went on. For decades afterwards, like i said, there are things that were the whole point of view was so inaccurate. I tried i did something very bizarre that day. I actually went around and went to the site where the killings took place. I picked up some bullets, the bullet shells. 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, a 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. But laura davis and some other people have, jerry lewis, sort of goaded them into doing this the right way. And the oral histories are a treasure and a heartbreak. 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 the 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, this was 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, at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, programs on the cold war. American history tv now and over the weekend on cspan3. Every saturday night, American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. Why do you know who Lizzie Borden is . The deepest cause where well find the true meaning of the revolution is the 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 were practiced by enslaved people. Watch history professors lead discussions with their students on topics ranging from the American Revolution to september 11th. Lectures in history on cspan3 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. Television has changed since cspan began 41 years ago. But 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 University planned to ovserve the 50year anniversary of the may 4th, 1970 shootings that left four dead and nine wounded. Due to the coronavirus pandemic,