Today is the fortieth anniversary of the Kent State shootings.
There’s an article out that interviews three of the football players on the 1970 team, one of whom is Nick Saban.
Nick Saban, then a Kent State freshman, now is a national championship coach at Alabama. Four decades later, he can still remember students lying on the ground and ambulances rushing away.
“I’d never seen anybody shot before,” he said over the phone Monday. “Even though I didn’t see them shot, I saw them after they were shot.
“It’s a horrible thing. There’s not a May 4 that goes by that I don’t think about it. Really think about it.
“Forty years seems like a long time. But it doesn’t seem that long to me.”
It’s worth a read.
Get The Picture 
Thanks for the reminder.
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“On May 4, 1970, Kent State became the symbol of a divided, half-crazed America.”…
If there is such a thing as “different, but the same”, that would describe America today. More to come.
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That Massey Hall show is incredible. I bought it in the 2 lp format from the Neil Young Archives series. Incredible.
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A fellow vinyl lover! Good to hear.
And, yeah, it’s an incredible show.
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Aren’t Nottingham’s excuses for the Guard the same excuses people in the South would offer on behalf of the Klan: Its all because of “outside agitators.” A more reasonable explanation is that Guardsman who should not have had live ammo shot into a crowd of unarmed citizens and killed four people who weren’t even protesting. They were just students who were watching. On top of that no one in authority decided it might be a good idea to find out who shot or why.
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“THE MAY 4 SHOOTINGS AT KENT STATE UNIVERSITY: THE SEARCH
FOR HISTORICAL ACCURACY”
Jerry M. Lewis and Thomas R. Hensley
“[T]wenty-eight of the more than seventy Guardsmen turned suddenly and fired their rifles and pistols. Many guardsmen fired into the air or the ground. However, a small portion fired directly into the crowd. Altogether between 61 and 67 shots were fired in a 13 second period.
Four Kent State students died as a result of the firing by the Guard. The closest student was Jeffrey Miller, who was shot in the mouth while standing in an access road leading into the Prentice Hall parking lot, a distance of approximately 270 feet from the Guard. Allison Krause was in the Prentice Hall parking lot; she was 330 feet from the Guardsmen and was shot in the left side of her body. William Schroeder was 390 feet from the Guard in the Prentice Hall parking lot when he was shot in the left side of his back. Sandra Scheuer was also about 390 feet from the Guard in the Prentice Hall parking lot when a bullet pierced the left front side of her neck.”
http://dept.kent.edu/sociology/lewis/lewihen.htm
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This is one of those I remember where I was when moments. I was in the Army in training at Ft Leonard Wood Missouri. Heck, the thing no one remembers is that the Guardsmen were the same age as the students. Scared kids with guns are not a good thing.
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Good song and the fact that anyone died was definately a tragedy. It was even more of a tragedy that some of the kids shot weren’t even protesting, they were going to class. I’ll tell you what though, I read Archibald Cox’s biography a while back and he was President of Harvard around this same time, the campus protestors of those days were doing and getting away with things those of us born since then can’t even imagine college kids doing, e.g., burning down buildings, breaking into school buildings and taking them over, throwing rocks at the cops, etc. (most of which the protestors at Kent State had done in the days preceding the shooting). Putting the shootings in that perspective causes me to at least understand (if not totally excuse) the guardsmen (who were mostly the same age as the students).
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On March 5th, 1770 a group of patriots attacked a squad of British soldiers with rocks, sticks and snowballs. The British soldiers fired upon the crowd killing five Colonists. This event, termed the “Boston Massacre,” was a catalyst for the coming American Revolution. It is no surprise to me that many of my current fellow countryman, including yourself, would presumably have taken the side of the King rather than your own fellow citizens. Fortunately, at that time many colonists were not as willing to excuse the authority of the State and decided that a Goverment that would shoot citizens down in the street without just cause had lost its moral authority to govern. I find it a shame that some forget our own history of resitance to tyranny of any type, including that of the Ohio National Guard.
So remember, when you forgive the Ohio National Guard for shooting down totally innocent citizens, that you are denigrating the sacrifice of those patriots who were far less innocent some 200 years ago.
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Good grief, I don’t think the idea that throwing rocks at people with guns might get you shot is that radical. If you read my comment carefully you’ll see that I said I understand how it could happen given the environment even if I couldn’t excuse it and I specifically said that it was a tragedy that some of the kids who weren’t even protesting but were going to class got shot. The Constitution protects the right to peaceful protest but throwing rocks at cops and burning down buildings crosses the line. The Declaration of Independence recognizes the principle that there may be a time when a government becomes an absolute despotism and in that circumstance citizens have the right and and even a duty to remove such a government by whatever means necessary. I don’t think our current government has come close to an absolute despotism just yet but if you do then sure you’ve got a right to raise hell, throw rocks at cops, burn down buildings and the like, just recognize you may get shot if you walk down that path. Our founding fathers recognized they were risking their lives, these hippie types need to quit playing the victim and own up and take some responsibility for things like Kent State (and I’m not saying the National Guard had no fault they certainly did), but if you are going to act like many of the 60’s protestors did or if you are going to willingly hang around that kind of anarchy be ready to accept the consequences. As I said in the first comment, I don’t excuse the national guard but I understand how it happened given what the protestors were doing back then, if anything I’m surprised it didn’t happen more.
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You first suggested that the actions of some might “totally excuse” the gunning down of innocent people. I’d backtrack too if I were you. Your rationale now is that if you resist the government they might shoot you. I think that we are allfamilar enough with ruby ridge and Waco to know that’s very true.
As for the declaration of independence, review the complaints therein and see if we don’t have a greater tolerance for authority today than they did then. The so-called patriot act was a greater transgression than anything the colonists had to complain about.
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Both of my comments are consistent, the point I am making is that I understand how people got shot at Kent State if I can’t excuse it happening. The behavior that had been going on college campuses at the time was completely over the top. I think the authorities back then generally showed a hell of a lot more restraint than they would today, today they suspend kids for saying the word gun or drawing a picture of one. Imagine if the tea partiers start burning stuff down and attacking police, what will you say then? They are already the subject of every type of slander and suspicion and they are for the most part just talking. You aren’t ”innocent” in my book if you resort to battery and arson in edition to free speech and maybe that’s where we disagree and remember I said at the outset that it was a shame truly innocent kids got shot at KSU but when you look at what happened in the context of the times I understand how some of those young guardsmen could have feared for their own lives. I am not excusing the guard or trying to remove all blame from them but it is time the 60’s anti-war protest movement recieve its own share of the blame for instigating violent confrontation and rampant vandalism, it is little wonder that finally they ran across someone with a gun who was a little jumpy. I’m not holding my breath though, then again taking responsibility for their actions was never what they were good at to begin with, they are typified by that ridiculous guy in Forrest Gump who beats up Jenny and then blames Nixon for it, seeing Forrest kick his *** was a real pleasure. Anyway, I’m glad you’re a dawg fan even if we disagree, good talking to you.
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Sorry, its me “Brandon” not Joe Cox, I posted something on here one day as a joke as Joe Cox and had never cleared the cookies on my phone where it won’t remember me under that name.
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Whether you agree with a particular group’s cause or not is not relevant. I am quite certain that I could find no common ground with Randy Weaver except that I don’t think that the feds should have shot his 12 year old son in the back and shot his wife while holding an infant. I would find little common ground with the Branch Davidians but I was not happy with the manner in which they were quite literally exterminated by our Government. On the other hand, I am somewhat sympathetic to the causes of the victims of government brutality who were part of the civil rights movement, the Anti-Vietnam war movement and the Bonus Army (perhaps the most egregious use of force against a justified and largely peaceful assemblage in our history.) The point isn’t whether I agree or disagree with the cause. This issue is that these are our countryman and I value our collective freedom a lot more than I do order. If a few dollars worth of property is the cost of that, its a cost I’m willing to pay. If you shot someone at 300 yards and claimed fear you go to jail for a long time. If the government does it, they get away with it. However, our country was founded upon one of the most aggressive and violent collective acts of dissent against a government ever in history and the whole premise of this country is that NO ONE is above the law, including our Government. When you approve of the Government doing that which you would not excuse a fellow citizen for, you are quite literally pissing on the legacy of our founding fathers. I think we should keep in mind, due to our own history, that whether we are watching the LA riots or a Tea Bagger Party out of control, that they are doing quite less than say Sam Adams did in the 18th century for us. As such, we should demand a government response that is measured and tempered by our unique American experience and not a response that one would expect to see in China or Burma or Tehran.
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One victim was an Eagle Scout. Sound like someone who was throwing rocks? The Guardsmen and the order-giver should have been tried for manslaughter, at least. The campus hippies at that time were at least respectful of human life since they burned and destroyed property only. The victims didn’t do a thing.
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For those interested, Missouri’s Gary Pinkel also attended Kent State around that time and shared his thoughts with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/stories.nsf/mizzou/story/9C3ED95E527B614E862577190009514C?OpenDocument
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Interesting about Saban. Every now and then he shows you he’s actually human and not a cyborg.
This was really a national tragedy and we should remember it so it doesn’t happen again. Don’t really care for Neil Young, though.
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As a Southern Man, I have mixed feelings about Young. I know I shouldn’t get my feelings hurt too bad, because I’d like to think he wasn’t singing about me, specifically (well, he couldn’t have been, because I was a Southern Boy at the time). Still, I’m a sufficiently defensive Southerner who struggles plenty with the burdens of simultaneously being a Guilty White Liberal and a Proud Southerner that everything Young sings is tainted by an unpleasant combination of shame and resentment. I suspect he’d be pleased to have that effect on me.
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with a cover of what Neal said…
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