Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Personal Remembrances of the Kent State Shootings, 43 Years Later
Slate ^ | 05/04/2013 | David Rosenberg

Posted on 05/04/2013 9:27:17 AM PDT by Kid Shelleen

On May 4, 1970, four Kent State University students were killed and nine injured when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire during a demonstration protesting the Vietnam War.

In 2010, the site of the Kent State University shootings was placed on the National Register of Historic places by the Department of Interior with support of the Ohio Preservation Office. Carole Barbuto, a communication studies professor at Kent State University who was a junior there in 1970, spoke to Behold about some of the more than 4,000 images (many from student photographers) the university has in its archive related to the events around May 4. Since 2001, Barbuto has taught a course titled “May 4, 1970, and Its Aftermath” and she also led the photo selection process for the May 4 Visitors Center. “It’s a difficult story to tell,” Barbuto said. “It’s a very complex story. There are still many unanswered questions.” Barbuto spoke about her personal and historic knowledge about the famous images, sharing her insight and observations about the killings 43 years later:

(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: Ohio
KEYWORDS: kentstate
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-91 next last
To: Repeal The 17th

Strange days indeed.
JFK’s assassination,Bobby Kennedy, Kent State,The Mob was running wild in NE Oh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Greene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOI1zkRlOZA

It was hard for me to sort it out. I am still sorting it out.


21 posted on 05/04/2013 10:00:13 AM PDT by mylife (Opinions $1, Half Baked Ideas 50c)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: pepsionice

I grew up 6 miles from KS. Those SDS criminals had been agitating for quite some time on the campus. Local news was broadcasting their speeches about “burning the beorgouis in their beds”. My dad slept on the couch with a shotgun.

I feel no sympathy for them.


22 posted on 05/04/2013 10:00:42 AM PDT by Lurker (Violence is rarely the answer. But when it is it is the only answer.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: JimRed

The SDS was very active on campus prior to the shooting. They were an extreme, very organized anti-American group of agitators recruiting students to protest and cause trouble. A good friend of ours, at the time, and attending Kent State was very involved in the militancy, the goal was to create as much turmoil and violence against the establishment as possible. The Feds questioned and scrutinized him thoroughly about the shootings. We have not heard from him in years but the last time we did, he was a card carrying communist.


23 posted on 05/04/2013 10:03:38 AM PDT by Toespi
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: mylife

If this demonstration was anything like the ones that I attended, in those days, the shooting was exactly what the radicals wanted to happen. They relentlessly bait the authorities, hoping for a violent reaction that they can point to as proof that they are right about America. The Kent State affair succeeded perfectly for them.


24 posted on 05/04/2013 10:05:56 AM PDT by Daveinyork (."Trusting government with power and money is like trusting teenaged boys with whiskey and car keys,)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Kid Shelleen
New light shed on Kent State killings[2010]
25 posted on 05/04/2013 10:07:54 AM PDT by Theoria
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kid Shelleen

Many more should’ve been shot and taken out this world. they were violent, unreasoning, anarchist thugs - PERIOD. They had been terrorizing the campus and the town for days, destroying property and threatening school administrators with the vilest obscenities imaginable. They doused trees on campus with gas and torched them and fired bombed the ROTC building, gutting it.

There is not a better example of domestic terrorists, and there is only one thing to be done with them in the interest of self-preservation.


26 posted on 05/04/2013 10:08:00 AM PDT by fwdude ( You cannot compromise with that which you must defeat.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kid Shelleen

I was in Vietnam in May 1970, and I remember thinking:
U.S. Army Special Forces is killing Communists in Vietnam while the U.S. Army National Guard is killing Communists in the United States. Maybe we’re killing the wrong Communists in Vietnam and should return to the U.S. and assist the National Guard in killing the right ones.

Yes, we should have stopped the on going American Communist Revolution right then and there in 1970. It’s probably too late now, as the Communists have already elected themselves a Marxist Communist President of these United States.

I’ll see you in the Gulag.


27 posted on 05/04/2013 10:10:12 AM PDT by DJ Taylor (Once again our country is at war, and once again the Democrats have sided with our enemy.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Lurker

Beat me to SDS. They were also hanging around the High Schools at the time. Before the Kent State incident my teacher Father was well aware of them at his own school. (suburb of Cleveland) They weren’t there for very long ;)

None of us were shocked by just WHO was disrupting at KSU. The knee jerk reactions were exactly what we have now. Not much has changed..only the players.


28 posted on 05/04/2013 10:10:59 AM PDT by bonfire
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: Daveinyork

It was a hopeless situation.
What was the Guard to do? Stand there and take rocks upside the head?

Liberals love to push, but they hate pushback.
IMHO the Guard used extreme restraint.

I is also MHO that the kids that were shot were innocents but they were not targeted.

The Guard was targeted.
The dead were collateral damage, and an aside to what was happening.


29 posted on 05/04/2013 10:15:58 AM PDT by mylife (Opinions $1, Half Baked Ideas 50c)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies]

To: mylife

I often think about what happened, too, My.
KSU - my alma mater......how could this have happened?


30 posted on 05/04/2013 10:16:35 AM PDT by yorkie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: AEMILIUS PAULUS
... I had long believed, and still believe, that the troops should read the protestors the "Riot Act" and if the "protestors" refuse to disperse and go home then shoot them down without restraint.

Well, you got the country you wished for, Comrade.

31 posted on 05/04/2013 10:16:54 AM PDT by Forgotten Amendments (I remember when a President having an "enemies list" was a scandal. Now, they have a kill list.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: Kid Shelleen

The reaction at my school (located on Fiji Hill) was crazy. The college president, who was a leftie himself, ordered the flag to half-mast in honor of the students killed. That wasn’t enough for some students, who set out to burn it. However in trying to cut it down, one of them slashed himself with a knife and had to go to the hospital. Old Glory waved on.

Two students set off a Molotov cocktail at the ROTC building—they didn’t seem to care that the ROTC was being phased out, and the building was to be used for the new Urban Studies program, a future center of liberal-left thought and activism. However, the bomb caused only minor damage.

The campus was finally closed for four days—and a good many students used the opportunity to take off for the beach, to the consternation of the radical leaders.


32 posted on 05/04/2013 10:18:58 AM PDT by Fiji Hill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: All

Looking back on it all, I don’t really understand how I consider myself to have had a happy childhood.

But I had a blast back there and it is still home in my heart.


33 posted on 05/04/2013 10:22:35 AM PDT by mylife (Opinions $1, Half Baked Ideas 50c)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: Kid Shelleen

My father grew up in that area, a generation earlier.

A lot of the losers, screw-offs and dumb-a$$es he went to high-school with went to Kent State.

He was off at a different college, breaking his butt, getting a double-major in Physics and Chemistry; word got back that all the losers who went to Kent State were getting all A’s and B’s.

Doesn’t say much for the Kent State crowd.


34 posted on 05/04/2013 10:24:05 AM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Forgotten Amendments

The Riot act is the English Common Law hardly a “Communist idealogy.” Oderly governing sometimes takes an application of force as George Washington illustarted in the Whiskey Rebellion. Learn your history. Learn the Riot Act. It is the mob in the streets that deserves to be “Comrade!” Seattle May first is right in front of you “Comrade.”


35 posted on 05/04/2013 10:28:02 AM PDT by AEMILIUS PAULUS (It is a shame that when these people give a riot)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies]

To: Leaning Right

I witnessed riots on another campus during that timeframe. Many of the “students” were actually violent mentally challenged non-students. There were about 20 violent aggitators on a campus of 10,000.

The state troopers were undisciplined rednecks - a very dangerous situation. Property damage, but no major injuries.


36 posted on 05/04/2013 10:28:52 AM PDT by The_Media_never_lie (Actually, they lie when it suits them! The crooked MS media must be defeated any way it can be done!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: mylife
They were attacking the ROTC

I was in high school about twenty minutes drive from the KSU campus. They burned down the friggin' ROTC building and threatened to do the same to the town. And the guardsmen, most of whom were themselves around the same age as the rioters, had for the most part not slept for the preceding 72 hours as they were guarding truck convoys, and being shot at from highway overpasses, during a wildcat Teamster strike.

Marching downhill toward and throwing bricks at helmeted guys in gas masks holding loaded M-1 Garands led to a predictable result. In the local area there was shock but far less sympathy for the rioters than was true nationally. If the campus had been evacuated and classes cancelled the only casualties would have been the screaming idiots who apparently felt they were bullet proof. Oh, and Neil Young can still kiss my a**.

37 posted on 05/04/2013 10:29:30 AM PDT by katana (Just my opinions)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

Don't let FR fade away! Donate.

Free Republic Needs Our Reliable Support
Donating Monthly would be Ideal.
Generous FReeper Sponsors are donating $10
for every New Monthly Donor & $1-A-Day Donor!

38 posted on 05/04/2013 10:29:36 AM PDT by RedMDer (May we always be happy and may our enemies always know it. - Sarah Palin, 10-18-2010)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: yorkie

Hi there Yorkie,

KSU was like just part of mylife.
My Brother graduated there, My Lovely Cousin Debbie graduated there.
My Best Friend Gary Graduated there.
My Buddy Randy.

Oh I was on Water St, and the Campus all the time.
So I guess I can say I went to KSU LOL

I never had the were with all to even afford school but I enjoyed the atmosphere at Kent. It was a nice campus for regular kids with dreams.
I should have had a go at YSU’s Engineering program.


39 posted on 05/04/2013 10:29:50 AM PDT by mylife (Opinions $1, Half Baked Ideas 50c)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: katana

It was insane.
National Insanity.

I feel like it is happening again now, but people are more complacent to the stimulus.

Obama keeps pushing societal buttons.


40 posted on 05/04/2013 10:32:18 AM PDT by mylife (Opinions $1, Half Baked Ideas 50c)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-91 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson