Vietnamese forces. Our purpose is not to occupy the areas. Once enemy forces are driven out of these sanctuaries and once there military supplies are destroyed, we will withdraw. These actions are in no way directed to the security of any nation, any government that chooses to use these actions as a pretext for hardening relationships with the u. S. Will be doing so on its own responsibility and 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 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 have it drag on interminably. 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 an absolute minimum. The action i am taking 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 that we all desire. My fellow americans, we live in an age of anarchy, abroad and at home. We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions that have been created by three civilizations in the last 500 years. Even here in the United States, great universities are being systematically destroyed. Small nations all over the world find themselves under attack from within and from without. If, when the chips are down the worlds most powerful nation, the United States of america acts like a pitiful, helpless child, and forces the two italian arias him totalitarianism and threatens 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. It led to tensions on College Campuses around the country including Kent State University. Four students were killed and nine were injured. One of those students who witnessed what happened back in 1970 was laura davis. She reflected on what she saw and heard in this oral history. All of the people i was friends with that year had been at the demonstration. Virtually all of us hadd witnessed the shooting take place. We heard of the campus was to be evacuated in eight hours. I had a friend with a car. Hardly anybody had cars, but my friend jeff did. We drove home. I remember seeing a line car of hundreds of cars trying to get into kent. They were filled with parents. My mother was in one of thosedi cars. Othe news was broadcast on the radio immediately. A lot of students were from out of state, but a lotof s of studs were from the immediate area. My mother did not own a car herself, but she was with her friend that day. They jumped into her car and she was trying to get into kent to find out what had happened to me and pick me up. They had blockaded the city at that point. At least coming in down route 43. My mother got back home. Before my father walked in the back door and 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, dont you know them, that one of those people would have been me . And he passed into the otherer room. Entai relate that part of my experience because it was very s representative of the times. Somehis attitude was the attitue of many people. The attitude of some people even today. Hingit was a shift in Public Opinion for sure. One of the things i havehat been doing because of the design work that is going on for the may 4 Visitor Center ele that ws planned into the creation of the panels and other elements of the walking tour that will be unveiled and dedicated on may 3, itook know specifically e ways in which that change took place. Of theone of the important wayst may 4 was the day the or came home was that Congress Really rallied and came together and began hdwithdrawing in veryra documentable and real ways its support for nixons warys i in southeast asia. The troops were withdrawn froman cambodia within weeksnoun after nixons announcement on aprilat 30, which is what setions off te demonstrations ather kent state and other universities around the country. It did take a while for eno congress to fully pass enough special provisions so thatt funding was eventually completely cut off for the war. That process began specifically in response toere may 4. There was an unprecedented pushing throughe voti of the constitutional amendment that lowered the voting age to 18, which was a very strong point of contention among college chanted the had slogan, old enough to fight, old enough to vote. From laura davis back in 2010. If you are on the campus of Kent State University there is now a Museum Dedicated to what happened on may 4, 1970, giving you a sense of what life was like 50 years ago and what the campus went through. The book is titled 67 shots kent state and the end of american innocence and joining us from his home in virginia is the author of that book, howard means. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for having me. What happened, why did four students die and nine others injured . Thats a big question. And the ultimate large sense of this, all of the toxic orders of the 1960s flowed together at can State University that weekend. It was an age of hate. It was an age of distrust, there was a generational divide. The museum that laura was talking about does a wonderful job of capturing all this. It has a wonderful walk you can take narrated by julian bond. If you are anywhere near the university you should do it. In a more immediate sense, you had Richard Nixons speech on the thursday, he announced the extension of the war into cambodia. That was a time bomb waiting to a rub to and it did the next evening on the streets of kent. That demonstration there were windows broken and trash cans set on fire. The real problem with that demonstration was it convinced the mayor of kent that outside agitators had taken over the campus. The whole thrust of the dog whistling from the white house under Richard Nixon and the Governors Mansion under jim rhodes, it was outside agitators, outside agitators. There was a call made to the Governors Office by the mayor saying there were outside agitators and asking for help and to send the guard out there. The guard changed the demonstration and what it was about. Did the governor issue any shoot to kill by the National Guard, was that a directive from the state capital . I dont think there was ever an issue. The guard consisted of a bunch of untrained guys about the same age. The students were the same age as the people fighting in vietnam. They were carrying an m1 koran, a sniper rifle lethal to 1000 feet for crowd control. M1 garand, a sniper rifle lethal to 1000 feet for crowd control. Anyone who was shot was dead the next day. You had untrained people carrying guns they never used. No one on campus realized they had live ammunition. Nobody asked. It was not there was never a shoot to kill order that i know of. There is a lot of debate about that and what happened in the heat of things before shot worth shots were fired. The guard happens to be not far away helping to put down control things during a teamsters strike. They were easy to get there and the guard was tired. They had done a few days in akron. They were tired and this was a running protest. The guard took over the campus without asking the administration if they could take over the campus. The Administration Never protected the campus as they should have or their students as they should have. It was this combination of volatile circumstances all happening at once. University leadership went awol at the moment they were needed the most. The guard was terribly directed and the Governors Office, while not having issued a shoot to kill order, pressed very hard to make this a crackdown on outside agitators and crime. Jim rhodes was running for the senate at the time, he had used up his term as governor and he was in contention the day after the shooting was the republican primary. He was in contention with robert taft junior, a longtime senator, and on the thursday before all this began, the day nixon made his speech, the poll had taft winning by 68,000 votes in the primary. He needed southern ohio to come on the more conservative part of the state. On tuesday, after the shootings, he lost by 5000 votes. At the end of the day four students died, tell us about those students. Writing the book was heartbreaking for all sorts of reasons, none of them more heartbreaking than the four that died. Allison cross and Jeffrey Miller were two who were active in the demonstrations that weekend. Jeffrey was fairly near to the guard when all of this happened, he happened to be flipping them the bird the moment he was shot so you have to assume he was targeted specifically. Allison was further back but she had been prominent in the weekend demonstrations. She was very easy to pick out in the crowd. She was a very attractive, tall woman. She was beautiful in a 1970s way. I feel fairly certain she had to have been targeted. Bill schroder who had just transferred. He was a freshman transfer. He transferred after one year at Colorado School of mines and he was in the rotc and on the basketball team. He had stopped by and had books in his arm. He was curious, he was not a demonstrator. He was six foot, 180, hit by an m1 bullet and the person next to him remembered seeing him being picked up off the ground and thrown back, thats how powerful an m1 bullet is. Then she was a music and speech pathology major passing between classes, doing what students are supposed to do on a campus where the classes should not have been open. Rhodes not want to close down classes because that would be buckling to demonstrators. She was standing next to a friend of hers when the shooting started. He told sandy to get down on the ground, he falls down with her, the shooting stops, and he looks over and she has a hole in her throat. She is bleeding out. Dean keller is one of the most heartbreaking stories i know. A guy who was not radical at all and just happened to be there he called all his teachers to tell him he would not be in class that day because he was that kind of guy. He was hit in the spine and has not been able to use his legs ever since. We want to thank Kent State University for providing us many of the pictures we are seeing to take a look back at exactly what happened 50 years ago on the campus of Kent State University on may 4, 1970. 4 students killed, 9 were injured, howard means is joining us from his home in virginia. We have a line set aside for those who remember what happened. If you were in college in the late 60s or early 70s please give us a call at 202 7488002. The other phone lines are divided regionally. Why did they have live in you nation ammunition . Thats a good question. Terrible judgment, frankly. The mitigating factor for the guard is they get their armaments from the armory. They get their rifles from the armory. The armory was empty except for world war ii m1s. Thats all that was there. Things would have been so much better if they had had shotguns loaded with birdshot. They began using rubber bullets at about that time, it would have been better if they had rubber bullets. But they had world war ii sniper rifles with live ammunition. They tried to do crowd control with tear gas, but they misjudged their stock of tear gas. On monday, after the demonstration moves out over this hill and the guard pursued them and herded them down the hill firing tear gas, the guard ran out of teargas. As they are coming back up the hill before they turned to do the shooting, they have no teargas left. They are getting hit with a certain amount of debris. Stones, pieces of wood. Initially, the guard had pushed them down over the hill into a construction site the guard had marched themselves down the hill over to a culdesac next to a construction site. The students had stuff they could pick up and throw. It is interesting to look at the depositions of the guardsmen, i think the next day they were deposed quickly and answered what their commanders told to say. As a result of court action and again in 1975. As you are reading these depositions from the same guard unit, you can see how they are rearranging events in their mind to justify their actions in a way, these are the guards who actually shot rifles and did not necessarily hit anyone area the debris gets more lethal and they are seeing the world from inside a gas mask which is a very strange way to look at the world when you are under assault and when you are tired. You have to have some sympathy for the guard because they were terribly led. Was anyone charged as a result of these killings . No. A number of students were charged and had to appear in the local court. There was a civil action taking against the guard, i think the original ad was for 40 million. The settlement, i dont have the exact figure in mind, was 650,000 which worked out to the one most severely injured and the rest was distributed among it worked out to about 30,000 or 50,000 a person paid by the taxpayers of ohio. This is the headline and one iconic photograph. How big of a story was this nationally . It was huge, absolutely huge. The first accounts had the guards being shot, not the students being shot. It was chaotic the way this information flowed. There was a wonderful scene i picked up from somewhere else where some people were sitting in the backyard and someone is working on the roof and he shouts down to them, he said oh my god they shot the guardsmen. The parents of guardsmen were more terrified initially than the parents of students. The photo you are looking at is one of the iconic photos of the entire movement. Of the domestic american photos it might be the most powerful one. She was a 14yearold runaway from florida who just happened to be there at that moment at that time standing next to Jeffrey Miller when he was hit. That photo always reminds me of the edward munch painting, the scream. That frozen moment. A woman happened to be next to her. She talks about this in her oral history. She said she put her arms around to try to comfort her. She said like a block of ice she was simply frozen. It was an emotional book to work on. The book by howard means, 67 shots kent state and the end of american innocence we have your phone calls. Marcus is up from orlando, florida. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I was a freshman at university of missouri in the spring of 1970. I remember all of those unfortunate days. What i wanted to ask your guest, my understanding at the time was that cooler heads did not prevail on either side. Would it be possible that if the students had not continued with demonstrations things may have been different . The story is there was a professor who helped to herald students out of the line of fire, and because of his efforts many students did live, that was the story. Thank you so much. Mr. Means . You are right on on all the subjects. Cooler heads did not prevail. Nobody had a plan b. They were all heading towards this disaster. The students for democratic society, the most radical element on campus had been banned they knew how to run demonstrations. A guy named ken hammond makes this point very powerfully. They knew how to run demonstrations they were leaderless in reacting to they were open to react if they wanted it because University Leadership did not do what they should have done at the time. Everyone knew there was going to be a demonstration at noon on monday. There was no question about it. They sent their president and all of his top people, at noon that day they were having lunch at a place called the ground derby restaurant well 1000 students were gathering at the commons and the guard was moving in. That was a failure of leadership. The guard had no alternative to doing what they did. From a Strategic Point of view it was bone stupid. One thing you dont do is march into a culdesac. The guy you are talking about is glenn frank, he was a geology professor. He is the absolute hero of this story. After the shootings the students go back to the common side, to the other side of this hill. There are several thousand students there. The guard is at the end of the commons, they regroup and are rearmed. The students are insane with anger, testosterone. Some of them are painting axes on their chest. They are talking about charging the guard. If they charge the guard hundreds would have been killed. They would have been mowed down. Teachers talking them back from the brink. Glenn frank finally becomes deeply emotional. Glenn frank look like a marine, he was an ex marine. He looked like drew carey who was ache penn state student. He pleads and he is crying. Dont, you will be slaughtered wholesale. The students finally back off. That bursts the bubble. The experience of alan frank, glenn franks son who still lives in kent, it broke glenn frank. It broke him physically and psychologically. He was never the same again. To me it has always been a mystery why there is no statue of glenn frank on the penn state kent state campus. We have a photograph of what it looked like when the students were fleeing the area where they were shot on the day of may 4, 1970. The followup on your point on what has happened, laura davis was a student at kent state and she reflects in an oral history she did on the moments you just described. I looked out over the scene and saw what seemed like dozens of clusters of people stand stag in groups looking down at the ground. I realized that what i wass seeing was this huge scene, people standing over go bodiesn the ground. Ovwhat people did was, go over o the slope and stage a sit in. It was like being in a class. Likepeople were sitting in rowsd what made it more like a class for me was that my geology instructor, glenn frank, was pacing back and forth in front of rows ofrtwrig people and as d stage in cartwright hall,when when i was taking his geologyogy cl class. He was crying, he wass pleadinga with us to leave because he was convinced that if he convinced the students stating the sit in if we did not leave than the guards would engage in further violence with the students. We did what he asked us to do. The people i was sitting with made a plan and we decided we would follow glenn frank quietly across thet to commons t when we got to the other side we each chose a direction we would run in and we figured that if we ran in ifstarte difft directions, that if the guard started shooting again they would not be able to kill everybody and somebody would be alive to tell the story. She was a freshman back in 1970 and that oral history was put together by Kent State University to remember what happened and learn from that. Nancy is on the phone from redondo beach, california. Good morning, thank you. I was young, i was 12 and my brother was in college at the university of texas. My parents were against the war. When laura davis said when her father walked in and saw her and said they should have killed them all, i gasped because i thought her father would say thank god you are all right. I feel so fortunate that my parents were against the war and that made them more against the war. Mr. Means, did this turn the country against the war even it is a good question. It had. Thursday there is another side to that. I think the war was winding down. Nixon would have liked to have brought the troops home. He just did not know had to do it and still be dick nixon. After the tet offensive, things started sliding backwards. But it definitely polarized, further polarized, a very polarized nation at that point. I think it had a lot to do with 18yearolds finally getting the vote. I think it energized a fading movement. It radicalized the Democratic Party so much that, in 1972, they nominated george mcgovern, who did not have a snowballs chance of winning when they could have nominated someone who might have given nixon a run for his money. They almost guaranteed a second term for dick nixon, although he blew the opportunity. It is kind of a twosided thing, but i was myself at the time a High School Teacher in washington, d. C. I was 25. My students were juniors and seniors. One of the reasons it affected be so strongly then was it could have been my students. They were just a euro removed just a year removed from the students i was teaching. The story the caller just referred to was repeated time and again. Students going home from kent and being told they wished they shot them all. In our teacher there an art teacher there talked about a student coming back. Two days later, the student shows up and is crying and broken. This student had gone home. He knocked on the door, the front door was locked. He knocked harder and said, mom, dad, where are you . And the mailslot pushes open, and he hears his parentsvoices saying we never want to see you again. That broke my heart, too. Stephanie is on the phone. Good morning. This is very painful for me in many ways. There was so many disappointments and so much hope at the same time. The injustice of sending boys off to war that could not even vote was something that was clearly demotivating to the students. I was 20 years old back then. I was in school at nyu. The fact that the authorities, whoever they were, were willing to let their own children die, to kill their own children and this came after the assassination. There was so much hope to change the world for the better and than all of these things just crushed that hope. To see nixon lying and resigning before he could be impeached and then pardoned, it was like 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 teaching because the politics that i was so active in was crushing. I have been an activist all my life and still am, but it was so emotional at the time and nobody feels those emotions like a 20yearold. It was just crushing. Thank you. Let me add to her point. What the generations of the parents had witnessed with world war ii and the korean conflict, the assassination of president kennedy and also dr. Martin luther king, how did all of this in 1970 resolve into the mood of the students, parents, and country . There was this toxic flow from out of the 60s that just happen to come together at kent state. If these states dish events had happened at berkeley, columbia, at the university of wisconsin, where there was an entrenched Student Leadership and where the university had some experience with serious protests, i think the result would have been different. Kent state was a 21,000 person school. It was very laissezfaire. And with students and i do not mean this is an insult but who were naive, a lot of them. They were studying to be High School Teachers, a lot of them. That is why kent state originally came to exist. As a teacher myself i had a sense of how naive teachers were. I think these students believed that the guardsmen, at least initially, the guardsmen were there to help them, protect them. They could not imagine for the life of them that the guard would actually shoot them. I think students at a place like berkeley, like in may 4, 1970, would not have had naivtiy or that attitude or expectation. That played into this a bit too. The combination of naivete, all these horrible float horrible forces flowing forward, the generational divide, it was just a timebomb that was going to explode somewhere and unfortunately it exploded at kent. It killed four students who should not have been killed. A man on the faculty in 1970 reflected on what he saw. O 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 teargas the demonstrators, observers, and faculty marshals. I went past taylor hall and went down into the parking lot. Tudei saw a student some distane off laying on the ground. Ee n i went over to the student. It turned out to be a blind student who had beenenth tear gassed. I walked back to the edge of the parking lot and just standing there. The guardsmen came up the hill towards the pagoda. When they got to the pagoda, the right rear echelon of guardsmen turnedi do and fired. Knew those were real bullets. I dove for cover behind a bush and was on the ground quickly enough that the guard finished their firing and 13anks seconds. I remember saying, what should i do . A student rushed up and said, dr. Lewis, those were blanks, werent they . I said no. Here are the photographs of the four students that were killed as we listen to ron from michigan. Good morning. I was a 21yearold soldier in vietnam when kent state happened. I was an antiwar activist. When that happened, i was receiving antiwar literature. I signed up and i joined Vietnam Veterans against the war at that time. A short time later, after kent state, there was a fracking incident. I cannot say if it was revenge or had any relation to the massacre, but for my talking to the soldiers at that time because that what i was doing, talking to soldiers and most of them just did not care or else they were kind of glad it happened. 25 years later, Vietnam Veterans against the war to go to kent state to participate in a memorial service. You had a question earlier, professor, in which somebody asked were there any incidents like this . In south carolina, 10 black students were killed by state troopers for protesting the war peacefully on their campus. How do you answer that . Jerry lewis, just quickly. I remember asking jerry, did you have any sense they were using live ammunition . He told me that he had been a guard at fort knox when he was in the army, protecting the nations gold supply. He carried a rifle that never had live ammunition. They gives you a sense of how insane it was for these people out there. Secondly, i open my book with many stories of the 24 americans who died in vietnam on may 4, 1970. Half of them were 20 years or younger. You have to keep that perspective in mind. Third, the event you are talking about, ron, was at jackson State University in mississippi. It happened 10 days later on the 14th of may. Two killed, 10 wounded. The students have begun to protest because there was a rumor that Charles Evers had been murdered. The Mississippi State troopers showed up and basically sprayed the dormitory with gunfire. 150 rounds fired in 28 seconds as i remember. That story just disappeared. It disappeared in the Scranton Commission report, which devoted three quarters to kent state, one quarter to jackson state. Kent state was a man bites dog story. It turned to civilians being killed by american soldiers. Jackson state was a dog bites man story. White troopers firing on black citizens of mississippi was not unheard of. I was a seventh term junior at penn State University when we got word of the kent state situation. What made me more unique was the fact that i was a vietnam veteran. I was a medic with Alpha Company 15th med, first air calvary division. Anyway, we did have widespread writing on the campus. There were a number of fires that were set. Although there were no National Guard troops on campus, we did have a rather large detachment of Pennsylvania State troopers. This is to say that i am always going to remember. I remember walking past atherton hall. There was a state trooper injured by flying debris. My instinct was, having been a medic, to run over to him and render assistance, but i had long hair. If i have moved toward the gentleman head and toward the gentleman, his other comrades probably would have caught me, so i kept on moving. I really wanted to render aid to the state trooper, but there was some good advice a man gave me in vietnam. He said keep your head down, your powder dry, be good. To that i added be a man of few words. Thank you for your book. I am going to read it because that is an important part of my life and history. Thank you for your call. You mentioned the report. This is what the cover looks like. Howard means, your response . It is a wonderful story. It is a sad story when you have to fight all your instincts. That goes to how riven the nation was. The absence of trust. There was a huge demonstration in washington. I remember walking down to that from the corner of wisconsin in massachusetts avenue and massachusetts avenue. You had to go through Sheridan Circle in Dupont Circle down to the mall. At every radius on those circles there was a jeep with four soldiers, i think army, if memory serves me quote correctly. All of them with semiautomatics just staring at you through their sunglasses. It was scary. At the white house, they had done what they did at other times. They surrounded the white house to make a kind of wall. They had got the 82nd airborne in. They were staying in the basement of the executive office building. The white house was an armed encampment at that point. That was the same as when Richard Nixon takes an ocean at 3 30 in the morning takes a notion at 3 30 in the morning to show someone the washington monument. There are tens of thousands of people sleeping in the mall. Nixon starts waking up the guard so we can talk to them. These hippielooking people are looking at him thinking what drug could have caused the apparition in front of them. In a way, halderman, nixons chief of staff, argued that kent state broke nixon. It was the end of his presidency in this regard he charged j. Edgar hoover with finding him proof that kent state have been caused by outside agitators. It was not. It was students at the school. When he could not get hoover when hoover was unable to produce this evidence, nixon lost his faith in the fbi, eventually formed his own unit called the plumbers, who eventually broke into the dnc headquarters. Watergate followed. I think it is a legitimate point. Halderman was in a position to know. If you travel to kent state, there is a memorial that reflects on exactly what happened on may 4, 1970. 50 years ago. We will look at the scene inside the museum and listen to gary in washington, d. C. Good morning. Gary, you with us . Yes i am. Please go. Ahead good morning and thank you, mister means. Mr. Nixons speech was incendiary to those of us on the left in those years. It was complaining about students destroying civilization, destroying universities. People on the left and i was on the left we just did not believe him. I was teaching in michigan at the time. We knew kent state very well. 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. That was probably a critical factor. I agree with the caller from penn state, that you could tell which side you are on by how you dressed. This is a question i want to put to mr. Means is the country divided more today or then . My own view is it is more divided today because you cannot tell who people are by the way they dress. It is the absence of a credible news media. People retreat into their own poles. I think the division is deeper. What do you think, mr. Means . Let me add that we did have a draft in the 1970s. That is a question i have spent a lot of time thinking about lately, especially with this anniversary coming up. I do not know the answer. I think that in 1970 it was divided more radically by age. I think in our own time, it is divided horizontally. Obviously the electorate on the republican side is an older and whiter audience. It is not that we do not have a credible news media. It is that you can hibernate with whatever news view you want. Kent state was reported by three networks and a handful of magazines you trusted. Time, newsweek, life. There was cronkite and one other person i guess. I forget who at abc at the time. You could not truly live in your own news world. You can now, which makes it possible which gives you a support system for whatever you want to believe. It was much harder to do that in 1970. A good point about there was a draft in 1970. If the vietnam war was the end of that draft. We can argue whether National Service should be reinstated. Another oral history from a student at kent state. What he saw, heard, and what he remembers. [video clip][v we were not posing a we threat. I thought to myself, i am suremi they are not firing live ammunition. They are firing blanks to disperse the crowd. After probably four or five seconds of firing, i realized that, even if they are firing blanks, i could be f injured. It was at that point that i dove to the ground. They continued to fire another seven or eight seconds. When they stopped firing isstop when i stood up, looked around, and saw that, clearly, they had been firing tha live ammunition because there were students who were wounded. John cleary was at the base of that sculpture. He was the first person i saw who was not getting up when the rest of us were. Ti 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. Bill in waynesboro, pennsylvania, good morning. In 1970, i was 19 years old. I was a student at the university of Maryland College park. I want to read a paragraph i wrote about the kent state killings. I wrote this several years ago. A little background. In 1969, 1970, 1971, there were huge demonstrations against the vietnam war. In washington dc, one of the demonstrations, the Washington Post estimated that there were more than one Million People there. They were getting larger and larger. At the university of maryland and many other colleges, there were demonstrations across the country. At the university of maryland, the National Guard was called in. I was covering some of those demonstrations for the student newspaper, as was the entire staff of the newspaper at the time. That is just some background. Heres what i wrote about kent state. On may 4, 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 heavy 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, thank you for the call. I will add to that because we have another student on the phone. Betty is joining us from austin, texas. Betty, what do you remember . I was a late call lake hall, which had a view of the hillside. I saw a pop of smoke after the shots went off. Something made me go to the doors of the hall and opened the doors. And it was a good thing because they were stampeding, trying to get away from the shots. It is nice to see mr. Meansrecollection or research of what he has done. It was accurate. There were so many things that were so inaccurate for years. Robert mitchum wrote a bestseller called kent state that was totally inaccurate. He was not there. His descriptions were 180 degrees different from what actually transpired. I happen to have known about 9 10 of the people he interviewed for his book, and they gave very different recollections. So thank you to mr. Means for being accurate. It certainly changed many peoples lives, including my own. I moved to texas. It changed many peoples lives. Can you recall what you were thinking later in the day, into the evening . We all had hair standing up on the backs of our next. We were all horrified and had a journaling going more than ever before, more than we had ever experienced. We did not know how to take anything. We heard all points of view, but they were all consistent and accurate. So it is nice to hear mr. Means saying accurate things about what actually went on. For decades afterwards, the whole point of view was so inaccurate. I did something very bizarre that day. I actually went to the site where the killings took place and i picked up some of the bullet shells. I dont know why i did, but i just did. The bullet shells were so hot they burned my hands. I dropped them. But i picked up several at the time. There was a big controversy over who it was that was doing the shootings, the students are the guardsmen. I called the kent paper, the police, the fbi, the cleveland police, the cleveland plain dealer. Nobody wanted to hear my call to try to tell them this information that i knew what the shells looked like, that i could describe them. No one ever took my statement. It was so interesting and so us against them. That was our point of view at the time. Thank you for the call. Betty, now living in austin, texas. A student at kent state in 1970. Howard means, your final thoughts. When i started this book, i did not know there were 100 25 oral histories sitting in the library at kent state. Every one of them tells a story. It is an amazing cache of documentation. The university is to be congratulated for the care they have taken. They did not do this initially. Initially, they wanted to obliterate the memory of what happened there. But lauren davis and some other people, jerry lewis and others, have goaded them into doing this the right way. Those oral histories are a treasure and a heartbreak. They are deeply emotional reading. The book is titled 67 kent state and the end of american innocence. How did it end our innocence . And the most immediate sense, it ended our innocence and thinking that the military would not fire on american citizens. 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. You are protesting. The grownups were afraid of you. I think this was reasserting especially for people like jim rhoesthe hauthority of the state over its citizens in a unattractive way. Howard means joining us from his home in millwood, virginia. We thank you for joining us on the 50th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State University. Thanks for having me