Thirteen seconds of gunfire at Kent State pushed four million students into strike
On May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guard soldiers fired about 67 shots in 13 seconds at an anti-war rally on the Kent State campus, killing four students and wounding nine. Two of the dead were simply watching between classes. The shock swelled a national student strike to more than four million participants.
The immediate spark was Cambodia. On April 29, 1970, American and South Vietnamese troops crossed into the eastern part of that neutral country to attack North Vietnamese bases, and President Richard Nixon announced the operation on television on April 30. Critics saw it as widening a war Nixon had promised to end, and campuses across the country erupted. The war had grown enormously since the early 1960s, from 900 advisers under Eisenhower to more than 500,000 troops by 1968, and Nixon was also seeking to end student draft deferments.
Kent State had a history of protest, including clashes in 1969 that led the university to revoke the charter of Students for a Democratic Society. About 500 students rallied on the campus Commons on May 1 and planned another gathering for May 4. That night, a crowd downtown lit a bonfire and threw bottles at police; the mayor declared a state of emergency, closed the bars, which only increased tensions, and asked Governor Jim Rhodes for help. Rumours spread that radicals planned to burn businesses and the campus military training building.
At the May 4 rally, more than 300 students protested while several hundred more looked on. Twenty-eight guardsmen opened fire. Allison Krause, 19, and Jeffrey Miller, 20, were among the protesters killed; Sandra Lee Scheuer and Schroeder had been watching from more than 300 feet away. One of the nine wounded was left permanently paralysed.
Outrage spread instantly. Walkouts hit hundreds of universities, colleges and high schools, deepening divisions over Vietnam at an already tense moment. Eight guardsmen were later charged with violating the students' civil rights and acquitted by a judge, who nonetheless warned officials not to read the verdict as approval of force against demonstrators, calling such force deplorable.
Source: Kent State shootings
