Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On 67 Shots 20160605

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On 67 Shots 20160605

After words at nine pm eastern, Mitch Mcconnell on his memoir, the long game with senator lamar alexander. Then they talk about the Energy Crisis of the 1970s and the ban of oil to the u. S. In 1973. We wrap. We wrap up at prime time in 11 with 60 minutes correspondent leslie stahl. So talk about how baby boomers are changing the role of grand parents. That all happens on cspan2 book tv. Next up, howard means. Good evening. Welcome to the Hudson Library and historical society. We are so happy you are here for this event. I am on the reference librarian here and tonight we are honored to work welcome howard means to discuss his new book 76 shots at kent state university. It is only 10 miles from here and he decided to have this program of national and local interest. He is a biographer and former editor at the washingtonian. He is the author and coauthor of ten books and some of his other works include the avenger takes its place Andrew Johnson and the 45 days that change the nation. Johnny appleseed, the man the myth and an american story. And he also wrote the first biography on colin powell. Please join me in welcoming mr. Means. [applause] im going to talk about that. Thank you amanda. Amanda is also herself a very accomplished novelist and she has won awards as well. Ive talked to a number of people here who were at kent state in 1970. I was can ask, everybody who went to kent state in 1970, stand up, stand up and raise your hand. Wow. This is scary. This is really scary. Feel free to correct as i go. No, wait till the end to correct phil be a lot of corrections im sure. I want to point out jerry lewis. Would you please stand up back there . He was a big help to me in getting contacts and writing the book and as some of you are probably taking a course here for over 55 on kent state on may 4. What im going to do is start this talk with the slideshow to sort of get us all on the same page about the time and what happen on may 4 so the people who werent at kent state can envision what the situation looked like. It all begins, you can say it begins april 30, 1970, the evening Richard Nixon addresses the nation. He previously two weeks earlier announces theres going to be a draw with 250 troops and on april 30 he announces instead that the war is going to be expanded in cambodia. Any of you who were in vietnam and mightve been surprised the war was expanded in cambodia, it shocked the nation and nixon expected blowback on american campuses and he got it. Not very dramatic all at kent state. Heres nixon addressing the nation and right there is a part that he particularly talked about and thats as close. It was a very strange talk. He was a geography teacher and he walked over and he sat back down. It was just very strange. At the next day, friday may 1 there are two demonstrations, one at midday. This this is a group that called itself world exploitation. It was a very strange acronym and that was one of him. I got ahead of myself. They are bearing the constitution right there. Theres a second demonstration about two hours later and it looks to be fairly tame so they decide to honor a previous commitment and go off to mason city iowa for a Testing Group in which he is the unpaid board chairman. That night things fall apart. Heres what it looks like on the streets about 1130 at night. Lets set the stage. First warm day of spring. Campus day. He told me that earlier. Also, for those of you who can remember, they sold 32 beer. I drank a lot of 32 beer beer and there was a bartender, it was a bar owners dream and he had to drink just as much beer and you felt bloated and nasty by the time you got there. There are a lot of factors involved, that at around midnight or a little bit before midnight some kids come out and they light a fire in the street. They start stocking some cars and talking about vietnam or they eventually raced down water street and throw some rocks and other things and the mayor declares the bars have to be closed. So now youve got all these kids coming out of the bars. They been drinking and a lot of them were there to watch bands. The headliners go on about midnight when they close the bars. A lot of them are also there to see this man perform. Anybody recognize this guy . Thats will chamber and it was game four of the title series and mind you this is game for a not the quarterfinals. The quarterfinals will be held until august sometime. Now will chamberlain, jerry jerry west, willis reed, et cetera, it was a great game. This game starts on the west coast at midnight. Five minutes after it starts kids are heading down to the bar and they close the bar and there on the street. Ugliness ensues. The other problem here is that the city of kent had been affected by the times and the fbi to assume the worst of any demonstration. One of the reasons they had been prepped was this man. Does anyone recognized him . Jerry rubin had a talk at kent two weeks before. It was a talk sanctioned by the university. One of the things he said at that talk was, he was a street theater. He was street theater and if any of you were there you might remember. He said to start the revolution, yet the first kill your parents. Now jerry lewis told me that his students said he was speaking metaphorically. And another student said no, you have to kill your parents. Understandably this upset the residence of kent that students were being told to kill their parents. So you have all that. He goes around, after he gets everybody and estimates 50000 worth of damage. It turns out to be 10000 or the chamber of commerce which is even lower. In the wee hours, he calls the Governors Office and said theres been trouble in the streets of kent. Students were involved and he makes his first inquiry about bringing the National Guard to kent. To the best of my knowledge and the best of anybodys knowledge, the fbi presents along the streets of kent, on friday night, if it existed at all was absolutely minimal. You might remember the dean of student activities. I asked him and he said i thought when i looked at the photographs that i would see all this but it had nothing to do with the kent campus. When i looked at it they were our students, we just didnt know who they were. I said how many were involved. He said said i wouldnt argue if you said zero. At any rate there now at the Governors Office and they hear that sts is coming into kent on saturday. Does anyone know who that is with sean connery . I had to look this up. She was ms. France in 1988 and for darn good reason as far as im concerned. So the close the bar. They cant go and they cant leave cut campus so the university does a great job. They bring in dancers and movies and they forget about one thing. They dont protect their pc building. If one thing was predictable saturday night in kent it was that they were were going to come under assault. There is a big sign on the commons about why is the rtc building still standing. Those of you who remember that time, its the most ready symbol of a military power on campus. They leave unprotected and when the guard rolled in, the sky lit up and read and thats what it look like and they finally disembark. It looks like it was caught on fire. It looked like it was in flames. This is the first time they come on campus. Thats what they say. This is what it looks like when theyre looking east. This is there building looking south. This is an important shot in a way because it sets the stage for monday. Nuts taylor hall where the students live. This is a prime piece of real estate. Every academic department, the Campus Police stood aside and let it burn down basically. They didnt help the fire department. This was prime real estate. The problem is, if you let people burn down a building, what do they do. They they take it as an okay sign. Burn the building down. Were not going to do anything. Thats a terrible message to send to the students. So this is saturday. Sunday jim rhodes comes and roads by one trail was trailing by one vote. He comes down and this is a chance for him to energize and hes not point to mess it up. He comes in has a press conference. He talks to people who have been doing the demonstration. He said we are no longer going to treat the symptoms, we are going to eradicate the problem. Hes being incredibly provocative and irresponsible language, but he could see that hes rallying any loses. Heres what the camps look like on sunday. I like this shot. I love this one because you have this campus scene. Everything looked altogether. This is all a little more questionable. Theres a lot of that going on. Then at night it all falls apart again. Students want to go to the main gate. They want to march on the town and they say no, the confrontation and it gets ugly and thats the situation right there. This is how sunday night ands, except, except this. These are scenes of equipment, this is the kind of equipment they brought with them. They have a campus and you have five of these fully armored and Medium Weight helicopters and of course there carrying m ones. Theres teargas flying everywhere, dropping pellets and chasing people back to the dormitory. By monday morning, when people wake up, this is not a confrontation about kent state. Its a confrontation about the guard having taken over the campus. They talk to person after person after person and they all say the same thing. Its at that point that it fell apart. It was us against the guard. So they wake up monday and they havent occupied campus. Thats the music and Speech Therapy building. I think thats what it is. Then Everybody Knows theres going to be a confrontation on the mall. On the commons, im sorry. Its no secret that professors are talking about it in class. Theyve scribbled it on blackboard and Everybody Knows its going to happen. This is what the scene looks like. This is the taylor hall and of it. Thats a close up. What are they holding in their arms . M ones. There could be not be a worse weapon to do crowd control. It is lethal to a half a mile. In m1, if you line them up 250 yards out, the m1 will hit an engine block with it unless its sitting inside a car. It has incredible speed and power. Its in the terrifying instrument. All you can do within m1 and a bayonet with the crowd is let them get close enough to you to stab them, slice them or blow holes in them. When i look back and the more i thought about this, i think i spent months and months thinking about this, i kept kept coming back to the images from 1965 in birmingham alabama. You will remember them doing crowd control in the streets of birmingham. In retrospect, it was humanitarian crowd control. I never thought i would think of them as a humanitarian, but by comparison it was. The other thing they had to do can crowd control was, one more thing. This is also on monday may fourth. This is the restaurant about a half mile north of campus. Members of them brown derby restaurant had all the administers having lunch discussing what they would do after the guard left the campus. There is a crisis Communication Center. Its a windowless room in the Administration Building and there was a 23 or 24yearold graduate assistant and he was the guy in charge representing the administration interests at the moment that all this happened. He couldnt see anything. He told me he was talking to people with crackly walkietalkies. He has no idea who hes talking to and thats the state of communication between the Senior Administration officials at the restaurant and the campus. Its pretty inexcusable. Okay the guard moves out. Teargas. Now what theyre saying about the teargas. Theres a 70mile an hour wind. Again, the stop of kit teargas, you knew there was 70mile an hour wind. You know who much loss are going to get if you fire teargas at 70mile an hour wind. But this was their bases for crowd control other than the m1s and bayonet. So, i have a little schematic here. For those of you who dont no, this is where the building burned. This is where the National Guard starts out at noon. This is where the kids are on the hillside in front of taylor howell. Its kind of a natural, if it was kind of a baseball stadium. Deep centerfield ray here for the victory bellows. The guard is gonna come up and push the people over the hill and theyre going to go to company a and the troop goes this way. Theres a group that goes off here and company see, this is company see. They go over this way and they just stay at the top of the hill one of the students says oh im sorry, there can be no crowds gathered on the campus. What do crowd summary asked them the garment runs off and sets three people. So some and he said to them, if two students are talking and i, and join the conversation, its an illegal crowd. They said yeah. So its an insane mandate. They take off, there appear, they get up to the top of the hill. The Mission Commander says he hoped with all of his heart when he got to the top of the hill that the students would have dissipated. What are the students chances of students dissipating. Theyve come down to the parking lot down here, the guard will then chase them down and they will march, will you will see in a second, they will march into a culdesac and one thing you never do as much your troops into a culdesac. They turn around the come back here and theres a concrete structure and thats where they turn and fire. Thats sort of the basic movement of things. This is the practice fields. This is the first time that day that they kneeled in a line. They will repeat this gesture. This is the situation. They dont fire and they naturally think theyve won. This is where they first turn and start firing. On the field command, he was not as anybody know how, he was there. They did wonderful work. This is another closeup. This is the moment he turns and hes about 30 feet up the hill. So theyre at this point, the students start diving and parking lots, dashing for protection. I dont want to harp on anybody, but this is what happens. This is john cleary. Let me go back one second, im sorry. The most distant person shot is a guy named douglas mckenzie. He is 250 yards away. He is walking away when he is shot john cleary was 37 yards away. He was advancing the film and shot in the chest. He survived, but barely. He spent three days in intensive care. Youll recognize these photos. Very distinctive looking. You know the story of Bill Schroeder. He won an army rotc scholarship. He went to Colorado College and decided he didnt like his major there. He transferred so he could be a psychology major. He was number two in his class in his rotc class and was on the freshman basketball team. He stopped by to have a look at what was happening. Theres one photograph, you see him sort of holding his books like this. He was going to classes and looking and saying what is this all about. This is the one that breaks my heart every time i try to talk about it. He was a speech major and by every indication didnt have a political bone in her body. She was walking from one class to another which is exactly what they are supposed to do. This was jeffrey miller. He was probably one of the most active. He was a short guy, he darted around a lot. He probably shouted at first and he was shot in the mouth. These are the photos from the yearbook. It sort of exaggerated that sense of innocence. This is not the famous photograph. You can see she has her hands up like this. This is one taken just before that when she realized what happened to the person sitting next to them. For some reason to me, thats a more more powerful photo. That moment of first realization before the shock where shes raising her arms. Then, back to this one time, here you can see the wounded. Thats Doug Mckenzie over there. The guard goes back to its original spot back here. There are group of students that have never left over here. Now the students start filtering back and theyre telling them what happened. The anger and i dont know how many of you were on that side but this is really, and away the most volatile time of the whole incident. The guard is now facing the crowd. Guard knows knows only one thing to do. The students are not going to disperse. Trump 20 of them have stripped to the waist and they have exes on their chest and four head. They felt it. They were so angry that they didnt respect the consequences. This confrontation is largely due to one man. I think glenn frank, when you read the record. How many had him for a course. So you know his story. Hes a former marine, he still looked like a marine. Have you ever seen this. The geology professor who had been a lifer at kent. He has a double which i realized as i was doing this. Do you recognize drew carey . The funny part is that drew carey went to kent state. He was there in 1975. He flunked out after a year or dropped out after year. I thought if anybodys going to make this movie, it should be drew carey. So anyway, glenn frank froze himself between the two groups. Is that him with the beard and the megaphone . Can you tell . I couldnt get confirmation. They had this confrontation and you can see, theres film footage of this. He starts begging and crying and he finally has tears in his voice and at some point he falls to the ground and one of the reason is the emotion but the other reason is that hes looking behind these kids and he sees that theyve had a struggle by National Guardsmen. Now there absolutely ducks in a pond. Finally the moment breaks and the kids disperse. The event has ended. There were 80 guardsmen left. 640 rounds and it wouldve been absolutely horrible if they had done that. Then, one quick thing, so go back to the white house. The chief of staff on monday afternoon, they wake nixon up from a nap and tells him what has happened. Hes immediately horrified. Hes afraid his buddy has done this. Then he immediately sets out, he demands basically to find out that outsiders are responsible for this. So this man, if you recognize, he was theater too. His first goal is to shut him up three days later, he says i think it was murder. It just horrified the white house. It was sort of excusable murder too. You can read more about that. Then, the next night, friday night is the night of the weary and you might remember this photograph, Richard Nixon gives a press conference anything thats very successful. He goes back to his bedroom and he cant sleep. He makes 57 calls in three hours finally at 330 he goes and says have you ever been to the lincol

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