Kent State Shooting Part III

 Strubbe Tape and further government reviews

In 2007 Alan Canfora, one of the wounded students, located a static-filled copy of an audio tape of the shootings in a Yale library archive. The original 30-minute reel-to-reel audio tape recording was made by Terry Strubbe, a Kent State communications student who turned on his recorder and put its microphone in his dormitory window overlooking the campus. At that time, Canfora asserted that an amplified version of the tape reveals the order to shoot, "Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!". The tape was declared to have been recording for 10 minutes prior to the sound of the first shot, with the entire sequence of shots lasting 12.53 seconds. Lawrence Shafer, a guardsman who admitted he fired during the shootings and was one of those indicted in the 1974 federal criminal action with charges subsequently dismissed, told the Kent-Ravenna Record-Courier newspaper in May 2007: "I never heard any command to fire. That's all I can say on that." Referring to the assertion that the tape reveals the order, Shafer went on to say, "That's not to say there may not have been, but with all the racket and noise, I don't know how anyone could have heard anything that day." Shafer also said that "point" would not have been part of a proper command to open fire.

A 2010 audio analysis of the Strubbe tape by Stuart Allen and Tom Owen, who were described by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as "nationally respected forensic audio experts", concluded that the guardsmen were given an order to fire. It is the only known recording to capture the events leading up to the shootings. According to the Plain Dealer description of the enhanced recording, a male voice yells, "Guard!" Several seconds pass. Then, "All right, prepare to fire!" "Get down!", someone shouts urgently, presumably in the crowd. Finally, "Guard! ..." followed two seconds later by a long, booming volley of gunshots. The entire spoken sequence lasts 17 seconds. Further analysis of the audiotape revealed that what sounded like four pistol shots and a confrontation occurred approximately 70 seconds before the National Guard opened fire. According to The Plain Dealer, this new analysis raised questions about the role of Terry Norman, a Kent State student who was an FBI informant and known to be carrying a pistol during the disturbance. Alan Canfora said it was premature to reach any conclusions.

In April 2012, the United States Department of Justice determined that there were "insurmountable legal and evidentiary barriers" to reopening the case. Also in 2012, the FBI concluded the Strubbe tape was inconclusive because what has been described as pistol shots may have been slamming doors, and that voices heard were unintelligible. Despite this, organizations of survivors and current Kent State students continue to believe the Strubbe tape proves the Guardsmen were given a military order to fire and are petitioning State of Ohio and United States government officials to reopen the case using independent analysis. The organizations do not desire to prosecute or sue individual guardsmen, believing they are also victims.

One of these groups, the Kent State Truth Tribunal, was founded in 2010 by the family of Allison Krause, along with Emily Kunstler, to demand accountability by the United States government for the massacre. In 2014, KSTT announced their request for an independent review by the United Nations Human Rights Committee under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the human rights treaty ratified by the United States.

Memorials and remembrances

In January 1970, only months before the shootings, a work of land art, Partially Buried Woodshed, was produced on the Kent State campus by Robert Smithson. Shortly after the events, an inscription was added that recontextualized the work in such a way that some people associate it with the event.

Each May 4 from 1971 to 1975, the Kent State University administration sponsored an official commemoration of the shootings. Upon the university's announcement in 1976 that it would no longer sponsor such commemorations, a group of students and community members formed the May 4 Task Force for this purpose. The group has organized a commemoration on the university's campus each year since 1976; events generally include a silent march around the campus, a candlelight vigil, a ringing of the Victory Bell in memory of those killed and injured, speakers (always including eyewitnesses and family members), and music.

On May 12, 1977, a tent city was erected and maintained for more than 60 days by several dozen protesters on the Kent State campus. The protesters, led by the May 4 Task Force but also including community members and local clergy, were attempting to prevent the university from erecting a gymnasium annex on the part of the site where the shootings had occurred seven years earlier, which they believed would obscure the historical event. Law enforcement finally brought the tent city to an end on July 12, 1977, after the forced removal and arrest of 193 people. The event gained national press coverage, and the issue was taken to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1978, American artist George Segal was commissioned by the Mildred Andrews Fund of Cleveland, in agreement with the university, to create a bronze sculpture in commemoration of the shootings, but before its completion, the sculpture was refused by the university administration, who deemed its subject matter (the biblical Abraham poised to sacrifice his son Isaac) too controversial. Segal's completed cast-from-life bronze sculpture, Abraham and Isaac: In Memory of May 4, 1970, Kent State, was instead accepted in 1979 by Princeton University and currently resides there between the university chapel and library.

In 1990, twenty years after the shootings, a memorial commemorating the events of May 4 was dedicated on the campus on a 2.5-acre (1.0 ha) site overlooking the university's Commons where the student protest took place. Even the construction of the monument became controversial and, in the end, only 7% of the design was constructed. The memorial does not contain the names of those killed or wounded in the shooting; under pressure, the university agreed to install a plaque near it with the names.

In 1999, at the urging of relatives of the four students killed in 1970, the university constructed an individual memorial for each student in the parking lot between Taylor and Prentice halls. Each of the four memorials is located on the exact spot where the student fell, mortally wounded. They are surrounded by a raised rectangle of granite featuring six lightposts approximately four feet high, with each student's name engraved on a triangular marble plaque in one corner.

In 2004, a simple stone memorial was erected at Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School in Plainview, New York, which Jeffrey Miller had attended.

On May 3, 2007, just before the yearly commemoration, KSU president Lester Lefton dedicated an Ohio Historical Society marker. It is located between Taylor Hall and Prentice Hall between the parking lot and the 1990 memorial. Also in 2007, a memorial service was held at Kent State in honor of James Russell, one of the wounded, who died in 2007 of a heart attack.

Kent State University: May 4, 1970 in 1968, Richard Nixon won the presidency partly based on a campaign promise to end the Vietnam War. Though the war seemed to be winding down, on April 30, 1970, Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia, triggering protests across college campuses. On Friday, May 1, an anti-war rally was held on the Commons at Kent State University. Protestors called for another rally to be held on Monday, May 4. Disturbances in downtown Kent that night caused city officials to ask Governor James Rhodes to send the Ohio National Guard to maintain order. Troops put on alert Saturday afternoon were called to campus Saturday evening after an ROTC building was set on fire. Sunday morning in a press conference that was also broadcast to the troops on campus, Rhodes vowed to "eradicate the problem" of protests at Kent State.

Kent State University: May 4, 1970 On May 4, 1970, Kent State students protested on the Commons against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and the presence of the Ohio National Guard called to campus to quell demonstrations. Guardsman advanced, driving students past Taylor Hall. A small group of protesters taunted the Guard from the Prentice Hall parking lot. The Guard marched back to the Pagoda, where members of Company A, 145th Infantry, and Troop G, 107th Armored Cavalry, turned and fired 61–67 shots during thirteen seconds. Four students were killed: Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder. Nine students were wounded: Alan Canfora, John Cleary, Thomas Grace, Dean Kahler, Joseph Lewis, D. Scott MacKenzie, James Russell, Robert Stamps, and Douglas Wrentmore. Those shot were 20 to 245 yards away from the Guard. The Report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest concluded that the shootings were "unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable."

In 2008, Kent State University announced plans to construct a May 4 Visitors' Center in a room in Taylor Hall. The center was officially opened in May 2013, on the anniversary of the shootings.

A 17.24-acre (6.98 ha) area was listed as "Kent State Shootings Site" on the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 2010. Places normally cannot be added to the Register until they have been significant for at least fifty years, and only cases of "exceptional importance" can be added sooner. The entry was announced as the featured listing in the National Park Service's weekly list of March 5, 2010. Contributing resources in the site are: Taylor Hall, the Victory Bell, Lilac Lane and Boulder Marker, The Pagoda, Solar Totem, and the Prentice Hall Parking Lot. The National Park Service stated the site "is considered nationally significant given its broad effects in causing the largest student strike in United States history, affecting public opinion about the Vietnam War, creating a legal precedent established by the trials subsequent to the shootings, and for the symbolic status the event has attained as a result of a government confronting protesting citizens with unreasonable deadly force."

Every year on the anniversary of the shootings, notably on the 40th anniversary in 2010, students and others who were present share remembrances of the day and its impact on their lives. Among them are Nick Saban, who was a freshman in 1970 and later won seven college football National Championships as the head coach of the LSU Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide football teams; surviving student Tom Grace, who was shot in the foot; Kent State faculty member Jerry Lewis; photographer John Filo; and others.

In 2016, the site of the shootings was named as a National Historic Landmark.

In September 2016, Kent State University Libraries Department of Special Collections and Archives began a project, sponsored by a grant from the National Archives' National Historical Publications and Records Commission, to digitize materials related to the actions and reactions surrounding the shootings.

Cultural references

Documentary

1970: Confrontation at Kent State (director Richard Myers) – documentary filmed by a Kent State University filmmaker in Kent, Ohio, directly following the shootings.

1971: Allison (director Richard Myers) – a tribute to Allison Krause.

1971: Part of the Family (Director Paul Ronder) – one of the three segments profiles the family of Allison Krause.

1979: George Segal (director Michael Blackwood) – documentary about American sculptor George Segal; Segal discusses and is shown creating his bronze sculpture Abraham and Isaac, which was initially intended as a memorial for the Kent State University campus.

2000: Kent State: The Day the War Came Home (director Chris Triffo, executive producer Mark Mori), the Emmy Award-winning documentary featuring interviews with injured students, eyewitnesses, guardsmen, and relatives of students killed at Kent State.

2007: Vier Tote in Ohio: Ein Amerikanisches Trauma ("4 dead in Ohio: an American trauma") (directors Klaus Bredenbrock and Pagonis Pagonakis) – documentary featuring interviews with injured students, eyewitnesses and a German journalist who was a U.S. correspondent.

2008: How It Was: Kent State Shootings – National Geographic Channel documentary series episode.

2015: The Day the '60s Died (director Jonathan Halperin) – PBS documentary featuring build-up of events at KSU, archival photos, and film, as well as eyewitness reminiscences of the event.

2017: The Vietnam War: The History of the World (April 1969 – May 1970) Episode 8 (directors, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick) – PBS documentary series featuring build-up of events at KSU, archival photos and film as well as eyewitness reminiscences of the event.

2020: Fire in the Heartland: Kent State, May 4, and Student Protest in America – documentary featuring the build-up to, the events of, and the aftermath of the shootings, told by many of those who were present and in some cases wounded.

Film and television

1970: The Bold Ones: The Senator – A television program starring Hal Holbrook, aired a two-part episode titled "A Continual Roar of Musketry" which was based on a Kent-State-like shooting. Holbrook's Senator character is investigating the incident.

1974: The Trial of Billy Jack – The climactic scene of this film depicts National Guardsmen lethally firing on unarmed students, and the credits specifically mention Kent State and other student shootings.

1981: Kent State (directed by James Goldstone) – television docudrama.

1995: Nixon – directed by Oliver Stone, the film features actual footage of the shootings; the event also plays an important role in the course of the film's narrative.

2000: The '70s, starring Vinessa Shaw and Amy Smart, a mini-series depicting four Kent State students affected by the shootings as they move through the decade.

2002: The Year That Trembled (written and directed by Jay Craven; based on a novel by Scott Lax), a coming-of-age movie set in 1970 Ohio, in the aftermath of the Kent State killings.

2005: Thank You For Smoking (directed by Jason Reitman) – In the satirical film, based on the novel of the same name, the narrator Nick Naylor describes fellow lobbyist Bobby Jay as having joined the National Guard after the Kent State shooting "so that he too could shoot college students."

2009: Watchmen (directed by Zack Snyder) – Depicts a reenacted scene of the shooting in the few opening moments of the film.

2013: "Freedom Deal: The Story of Lucky" (directed by Jason Rosette (as 'Jack RO') – Cambodia-made film dramatizing the US & ARVN incursion into Cambodia on May 4, 1970, as told from the perspective of two refugees fleeing the conflict. Includes US Army radio references to the Kent State protests, with accompanying archival footage.

2017: The Vietnam War (TV series), episode 8 "The History of the World" (April 1969 – May 1970), directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Includes a short segment on the background, events, and effects of the Kent State shootings, using film footage and photographs taken at the time.

Literature

Graphic novels

Issue No. 57 of Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson's comic book Transmetropolitan contains homage to the Kent State shootings and John Filo's photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio.

Derf Backderf's 2020 graphic novel, Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio depicts the events and the circumstances leading to them in detail.

Plays

1976: Kent State: A Requiem by J. Gregory Payne. First performed in 1976. Told from the perspective of Bill Schroeder's mother, Florence, this play has been performed at over 150 college campuses in the U.S. and Europe in tours in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s; it was last performed at Emerson College in 2007. It is also the basis of NBC's award-winning 1981 docudrama Kent State.

1993 – Blanket Hill explores conversations of the National Guardsmen hours before arriving at Kent State University ... activities of students already on campus ... the moment they meet face to face on May 4, 1970 ... framed in the trial four years later. The play originated as a classroom assignment, initially performed at the Pan-African Theater and was developed at the Organic Theater, Chicago. Produced as part of the Student Theatre Festival 2010, Department of Theatre and Dance, Kent State University, it was again designed and performed by current theatre students as part of the 40 May 4 Commemoration. The play was written and directed by Kay Cosgriff. A DVD of the production is available for viewing from the May 4 Collection at Kent State University.

1995 – Nightwalking. Voices From Kent State by Sandra Perlman, Kent, Franklin Mills Press, first presented in Chicago April 20, 1995, (Director: Jenifer (Gwenne) Weber). Kent State is referenced in Nikki Giovanni's "The Beep Beep Poem".

2010: David Hassler, director of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State, and theater professor Katherine Burke teamed up to write the play May 4 Voices, in honor of the incident's 40th anniversary.

2012: 4 Dead in Ohio: Antigone at Kent State (created by students of Connecticut College's theatre department and David Jaffe '77, associate professor of theater and the director of the play) – An adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone using the play Burial at Thebes by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney. It was performed November 15–18, 2012, in Tansill Theater.

Poetry

The incident is mentioned in Allen Ginsberg's 1975 poem Hadda be Playin' on a Jukebox.

The poem "Bullets and Flowers" by Yevgeny Yevtushenko is dedicated to Allison Krause. Krause had participated in the previous days' protest during which she reportedly put a flower in the barrel of a Guardsman's rifle, as had been done at a war protest at The Pentagon in October 1967, and reportedly saying, "Flowers are better than bullets."

Peter Makuck's poem "The Commons" is about the shootings. Makuck, a 1971 graduate of Kent State, was present on the Commons during the incident.

Gary Geddes' poem "Sandra Lee Scheuer" remembers one of the victims of the Kent State shootings.

Deborah Wiles' book Kent State (2020) provides a multi-perspective view of the Kent State shootings.

Prose

Harlan Ellison's story collection, Alone against Tomorrow (1971), is dedicated to the four students who were killed. An essay in his Los Angeles Free Press column The Other Glass Teat dated May 15, 1970, discusses the events and his reaction to them. He describes television interviews with BGen Robert Canterbury (without naming him), who commanded the guard that day, and the student strikes in response to the murders.

Lesley Choyce's novel, The Republic of Nothing (1994), mentions how one character hates President Richard Nixon due in part to the students of Kent State.

Gael Baudino's Dragonsword trilogy (1988–1992) follows the story of a teaching assistant who narrowly missed being shot in the massacre. Frequent references are made to how the experience and its aftermath still traumatize the protagonist decades later when she is a soldier.

Stephen King's post-apocalyptic novel The Stand includes a scene in Book I in which Kent State campus police officers witness U.S. soldiers shooting students protesting the government cover-up of the military origins of the Superflu that is devastating the country.

Music

The best-known popular culture response to the deaths was the protest song "Ohio", written by Neil Young for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. They promptly recorded the song, and preview discs (acetates) were rushed to major radio stations, although the group already had a hit song, "Teach Your Children", on the charts at the time. Within two and a half weeks of the shootings, "Ohio" was receiving national airplay. Crosby, Stills, and Nash visited the Kent State campus for the first time on May 4, 1997, where they performed the song for the May 4 Task Force's 27th annual commemoration. The B-side of the single release was Stephen Stills' anti-Vietnam War anthem, "Find the Cost of Freedom".

There are many lesser-known musical tributes, including the following:

 

John Denver wrote the song "Sail Away Home" in response. When he introduced the song at the 1970 Philadelphia Folk Festival, he told the audience he wrote the song two days after the shootings. The song appeared on his 1970 album Whose Garden Was This.

Paul Kantner and Grace Slick wrote the song "Diana", which appears on their 1971 album Sunfighter. This song also appears on the bonus tracks version of the Jefferson Airplane album Thirty Seconds over Winterland as an introduction to the song "Volunteers". Part 1 of the song was written in response to the story of Weather Underground member Diana Oughton, and part 2 is a response to the Kent State shootings.

Harvey Andrews' 1970 song "Hey Sandy" was addressed to Sandra Scheuer.

Steve Miller's "Jackson-Kent Blues", from the Steve Miller Band album Number 5 (released in November 1970), is another direct response.

The Beach Boys released "Student Demonstration Time" in 1971 on Surf's Up. Mike Love wrote new lyrics for Leiber & Stoller's "Riot in Cell Block Number Nine", referencing the Kent State shootings along with other incidents such as Bloody Thursday and the Jackson State killings.

Bruce Springsteen wrote a song called "Where Was Jesus in Ohio" in May or June 1970 in response to the Kent State shootings.

Former Yes frontman Jon Anderson has said that the lyrics of "Long Distance Runaround" (from the album Fragile, released in 1971) are also in part about the shootings, particularly the line "hot color melting the anger to stone."

Pete Atkin and Clive James wrote "Driving through Mythical America", recorded by Atkin on his 1971 album of the same name, about the shootings, relating them to a series of events and images from 20th-century American history.

In 1970–1971 Halim El-Dabh, a Kent State University music professor on campus when the shootings occurred composed Opera Flies, a full-length opera, in response to his experience. The work was first performed on the Kent State campus on May 8, 1971; it was revived for the 25th commemoration of the events in 1995.

In 1971, the BBC commissioned George Newson's Arena, a sociopolitical piece of contemporary music theatre climaxing in the Kent State shootings (conductor, Boulez; singer, Cleo Laine). The piece is said to be one of the most important of its time in Britain.[169]

Actress and singer Ruth Warrick released in 1971 a single with the song "41,000 Plus 4 – The Ballad of the Kent State", homage to the four students killed at Kent State.

Dave Brubeck's 1971 cantata Truth Is Fallen was written in response to the slain students at Kent State University and Jackson State University; the work was premiered in Midland, Michigan, on May 1, 1971, and released on LP in 1972.

The Isley Brothers' antiwar medley "Ohio/Machine Gun" was included on their 1971 album Givin' It Back. Both parts of the medley are covers, with "Ohio" being the aforementioned Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song, and "Machine Gun" being a Jimi Hendrix song.

The All Saved Freak Band dedicated its 1973 album My Poor Generation to "Tom Miller of the Kent State 25". Tom Miller was a member of the band who had been featured in Life magazine as part of the Kent State protests and lost his life the following year in an automobile accident.

Holly Near's "It Could Have Been Me" was released on A Live Album (1974). The song is Near's response to the incident.

The industrial band Skinny Puppy's 1989 song "Tin Omen" on the album Rabies refers to the event.

Lamb of God's song "O.D.H.G.A.B.F.E." on the 2000 album New American Gospel, references Kent State, together with the Auschwitz concentration camp, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the Waco Siege.

A commemorative 2-CD compilation featuring music and interviews was released by the May 4 Task Force in May 2005, commemorating the 35th anniversary of the shootings.

Magpie covered the topic in their 1995 album, Give Light. The song "Kent" was written by band member Terry Leonino, a survivor of the Kent State shootings.

Genesis recreates the events from the perspective of the Guards in the song "The Knife", on Trespass (October 1970). Against a backdrop of voices chanting, "We are only wanting freedom", a male voice in the foreground calls, "Things are getting out of control here today", then "OK men, fire over their heads!" followed by gunshots, screaming and crying.

Barbara Dane sings "The Kent State Massacre" written by Jack Warshaw on her 1973 album I Hate the Capitalist System.

Photography

In her 1996 still/moving photographic project Partially Buried in three parts, visual artist Renée Green aims to address the history of the shootings both historically and culturally.

Other references and impacts

In September 2013, a Louisiana State University fraternity hung a sign outside of their house with the text "Getting Massacred Is Nothing New to Kent St.", after a football game. Delta Kappa Epsilon later issued an apology.

In September 2014, Urban Outfitters was criticized by media and social media for the release of a faux vintage Kent State University sweatshirt. The sweatshirt had a red and white vintage wash finish but also included what looked like bullet holes and blood splatter patterns.

On September 1, 2023, vice president and director of athletics, at the University of Central Florida (UCF), Terry Mohajir, apologized to Kent State director of athletics, Randale L. Richmond for a social media post following the UCF Knights, 56-6 August 1, 2023 football victory over the Kent State Golden Flashes in which the UCF Athletics account posted the phrase, "Someone call the National Guard." The post was reportedly intended in reference to an NFL sideline video clip from 1996 of Shannon Sharpe of the Denver Broncos pretending to phone the president of the United States during the Broncos 34–8 victory over the New England Patriots and telling him, "...we need the National Guard….call the dogs off, send the National Guard."