Kent State Shooting Part II

 Reaction

The shooting enraged the crowd of protesting students, with some of them preparing to attack the National Guard. Several hundred students sat down in the Commons, demanding to know why the guardsmen opened fire. An officer told the sitting students: "disperse or we will shoot again". Student photographer John Filo also recalled guardsmen telling lingering students that they would shoot again if the students did not disperse. The commander of the National Guard also warned faculty members that the students must disperse immediately. Some faculty members, led by geology professor and faculty marshal Glenn Frank, pleaded with the students to leave the Commons to avoid any further escalation of the confrontation, with Frank telling the students:

I don't care whether you've never listened to anyone before in your lives. I am begging you right now. If you don't disperse right now, they're going to move in, and it can only be a slaughter. Would you please listen to me? Jesus Christ, I don't want to be a part of this...!

After Professor Frank's intervention, students left the area, and ambulances moved in to attend to the victims. Frank's son, who was present, said, "He absolutely saved my life and hundreds of others".

Victims

Killed (and approximate distance from the National Guard):

Jeffrey Glenn Miller; 265 ft (81 m) shot through the mouth; killed instantly.

Allison Beth Krause; 343 ft (105 m) fatal left chest wound; dead on arrival.

William Knox Schroeder; 382 ft (116 m) fatal chest wound; died almost an hour later in a local hospital while undergoing surgery. He was a member of the campus ROTC battalion.

Sandra Lee Scheuer; 390 ft (120 m) fatal neck wound; died a few minutes later from loss of blood.

Wounded (and approximate distance from the National Guard):

 

Joseph Lewis Jr.; 71 ft (22 m); hit twice; once in his right abdomen and once in his lower left leg.

John R. Cleary; 110 ft (34 m); upper left chest wound.

Thomas Mark Grace; 225 ft (69 m); hit in his left ankle.

Alan Michael Canfora; 225 ft (69 m); hit in his right wrist.

Dean R. Kahler; 258 ft (79 m); back wound fracturing the vertebrae; permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

Douglas Alan Wrentmore; 329 ft (100 m); hit in his right knee.

James Dennis Russell; 375 ft (114 m); hit in his right thigh from a bullet and grazed on his right forehead by either a bullet or birdshot; both wounds minor (wounded near the Memorial Gymnasium, away from most of the other students).

Robert Follis Stamps; 495 ft (151 m); hit in his right buttock.

Donald Scott MacKenzie; 750 ft (230 m); neck wound.

Of those shot, none was closer than 71 feet (22 m) to the guardsmen. Of those killed, the nearest (Miller) was 265 feet (81 m) away, and their average distance from the guardsmen was 345 feet (105 m). The victim furthest from the Guard was 750 feet (230 m) away.

In the President's Commission on Campus Unrest (pp. 273–274) they mistakenly list Thomas V. Grace, who is Thomas Mark Grace's father, as the Thomas Grace injured.

All those shot were students in good standing at the university.

Injured National Guard members

Initial newspaper reports had inaccurately stated that several National Guard members had been killed or seriously injured. Though many guardsmen claimed to have been hit by stones that were pelted at them by protesters, only one Guardsman, Sgt. Lawrence Shafer, was injured enough to require medical treatment (he received a sling for his badly bruised arm and was given pain medication) and sustained his injuries approximately 10 to 15 minutes before the shootings. Shafer is mentioned in an FBI memo from November 15, 1973, which was prepared by the Cleveland Office and is referred to by Field Office file # 44-703. It reads as follows:

Upon contacting appropriate officers of the Ohio National Guard at Ravenna and Akron, Ohio, regarding ONG radio logs and the availability of service record books, the respective ONG officer advised that any inquiries concerning the Kent State University incident should be directed to the Adjutant General, ONG, and Columbus, Ohio. Three persons were interviewed regarding a reported conversation by Sgt Lawrence Shafer, ONG, that Shafer had bragged about "taking a bead" on Jeffrey Miller at the time of the ONG shooting and each interviewee was unable to substantiate such a conversation.

In an interview broadcast in 1986 on the ABC News documentary series Our World, Shafer identified the person that he fired at as student Joseph Lewis, who was shot and wounded in the attack.

Aftermath and long-term effects

Photographs of the dead and wounded at Kent State, distributed in newspapers and periodicals worldwide, amplified sentiment against the United States' invasion of Cambodia and the Vietnam War. In particular, the camera of Kent State photojournalism student John Filo captured a 14-year-old runaway, Mary Ann Vecchio, screaming over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller, who had been shot in the mouth. The photograph, which won a Pulitzer Prize, became the most enduring image of the events and one of the more enduring images of the anti-Vietnam War movement.

The shootings led to protests on college campuses throughout the United States and a student strike, causing more than 450 campuses across the country to close with both violent and non-violent demonstrations. A common sentiment was expressed by students at New York University with a banner hung out of a window that read, "They Can't Kill Us All." On May 8, eleven people were bayonetted at the University of New Mexico by the New Mexico National Guard in a confrontation with student protesters. Also on May 8, an antiwar protest at New York's Federal Hall National Memorial held at least partly in reaction to the Kent State killings was met with a counter-rally of pro-Nixon construction workers (organized by Peter J. Brennan, later appointed U.S. Labor Secretary by President Nixon), resulting in the Hard Hat riot. Shortly after the shootings, the Urban Institute conducted a national study that concluded the Kent State shooting prompted the first nationwide student strike in U.S. history; over 4 million students protested, and hundreds of American colleges and universities closed during the student strikes. A student strike occurred at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado and the university's Old Main Building burned down on May 8. The Kent State campus remained closed for six weeks.

Just five days after the shootings, 100,000 people demonstrated in Washington, D.C., against the war and the killing of unarmed student protesters. Ray Price, Nixon's chief speechwriter from 1969 to 1974, recalled the Washington demonstrations saying, "The city was an armed camp. The mobs were smashing windows, slashing tires, dragging parked cars into intersections, even throwing bedsprings off overpasses into the traffic down below. This was the quote, student protest. That's not student protest, that's civil war." Not only was the President taken to Camp David for two days for his own protection, but Charles Colson (Counsel to President Nixon from 1969 to 1973) stated that the military was called up to protect the Nixon Administration from the angry students; he recalled that: "The 82nd Airborne was in the basement of the executive office building, so I went down just to talk to some of the guys and walk among them, and they're lying on the floor leaning on their packs and their helmets and their cartridge belts and their rifles cocked and you're thinking, 'This can't be the United States of America. This is not the greatest free democracy in the world. This is a nation at war with itself.'"

President Nixon and his administration's public reaction to the shootings were perceived by many in the anti-war movement as callous. Then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger said the President was "pretending indifference". Stanley Karnow noted in his Vietnam: A History that: "The [Nixon] administration initially reacted to this event with wanton insensitivity. Nixon's press secretary, Ron Ziegler, whose statements were carefully programmed, referred to the deaths as a reminder that 'when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy.'" Three days before the shootings, Nixon had talked of "bums" who were anti-war protestors on United States campuses, to which the father of Allison Krause stated on national TV: "My child was not a bum."

Karnow further documented that at 4:15 a.m. on May 9, 1970, the president met about 30 student dissidents conducting a vigil at the Lincoln Memorial, at which point Nixon "treated them to a clumsy and condescending monologue, which he made public in an awkward attempt to display his benevolence." Nixon had been trailed by White House Deputy for Domestic Affairs Egil Krogh, who saw it differently, saying, "I thought it was a very significant and major effort to reach out." Neither side could convince the other, nor after meeting with the students, did Nixon express that those in the anti-war movement were the pawns of foreign communists. After the student protests, Nixon asked H. R. Haldeman to consider the Huston Plan, which would have used illegal procedures to gather information on the leaders of the anti-war movement. Only the resistance of J. Edgar Hoover stopped the plan.

A Gallup Poll taken the day after the shootings reportedly showed that 58 percent of respondents blamed the students, 11 percent blamed the National Guard, and 31 percent expressed no opinion. However, there was wide discussion as to whether these were legally justified shootings of American citizens, and whether the protests or the decisions to ban them were constitutional. These debates further galvanized uncommitted opinions through the terms of the discourse. The term "massacre" was applied to the shootings by some individuals and media sources, as it had been used for the Boston massacre of 1770, in which five were killed and several more wounded.

In a speech at Kent State University to mark the 49th anniversary of the shootings, guest speaker Bob Woodward revealed a 1971 recording of Richard Nixon discussing the Attica Prison riot, in which he compared the uprising to the shootings at Kent State and considered that they might have a "salutary effect" on his administration. Woodward labelled the previously unheard remarks "chilling" and among the "most outrageous" of the President's statements.

Students from Kent State and other universities often received a hostile reaction upon returning home. Some were told that more students should have been killed to teach student protesters a lesson; some students were disowned by their families.

On May 14, ten days after the Kent State shootings, two students were killed (and 12 wounded) by police at Jackson State University, a historically black university, in Jackson, Mississippi, under similar circumstances – the Jackson State killings – but that event did not arouse the same nationwide attention as the Kent State shootings.

On June 13, 1970, as a consequence of the killings of protesting students at Kent State and Jackson State, President Nixon established the President's Commission on Campus Unrest, known as the Scranton Commission, which he charged to study the dissent, disorder, and violence breaking out on college and university campuses across the nation.

The Commission issued its findings in a September 1970 report that concluded that the Ohio National Guard shootings on May 4, 1970, were unjustified. The report said:

Even if the guardsmen faced danger, it was not a danger that called for lethal force. The 61 shots by 28 guardsmen certainly cannot be justified. Apparently, no order to fire was given, and there was inadequate fire control discipline on Blanket Hill. The Kent State tragedy must mark the last time that, as a matter of course, loaded rifles are issued to guardsmen confronting student demonstrators.

Legal action

In September 1970, twenty-four students and one faculty member, identified from photographs, were indicted on charges connected either with the May 4 demonstration or the one at the ROTC building fire three days before; they became known as the "Kent 25". The Kent Legal Defense Fund was organized to provide legal resources to oppose the indictments. Five cases, all related to the burning of the ROTC building, went to trial: one non-student defendant was convicted on one charge, and two other non-students pleaded guilty. One other defendant was acquitted, and charges were dismissed against the last. In December 1971, all charges against the remaining twenty were dismissed for lack of evidence.

A grand jury indicted five guardsmen on felony charges: Lawrence Shafer, 28, and James McGee, 28, both of Ravenna, Ohio; James Pierce, 30, of Amelia Island, Florida; William Perkins, 38, of Canton, Ohio; and Ralph Zoller, 27, of Mantua, Ohio. Additionally, Barry Morris, 30, of Kent, Ohio; Leon Smith, 27, of Beach City, Ohio; and Matthew McManus, 28, of West Salem, Ohio, were indicted on misdemeanor charges. The guardsmen claimed to have fired in self-defense, testimony that was generally accepted by the criminal justice system.

On November 8, 1974, U.S. District Judge Frank J. Battisti dismissed civil rights charges against all accused because "the government had not shown that the defendants had shot students with an intent to deprive them of specific civil rights." "It is vital that state and National Guard officials not regard this decision as authorizing or approving the use of force against demonstrators, whatever the occasion of the issue involved," Battisti said in his opinion. "Such use of force is, and was, deplorable."

Civil actions were also attempted against the guardsmen, the state of Ohio, and the president of Kent State. The federal court civil action for wrongful death and injury, brought by the victims and their families against Ohio Governor Rhodes, the president of Kent State, and the National Guardsmen, resulted in unanimous verdicts for all defendants on all claims after an eleven-week trial. The judgment on those verdicts was reversed by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on the ground that the federal trial judge had mishandled an out-of-court threat against a juror. On remand, the civil case was settled in return for payment of a total of $675,000 to all plaintiffs by the state of Ohio (explained by the State as the estimated cost of defense) and the defendants' agreement to state publicly that they regretted what had happened:

In retrospect, the tragedy of May 4, 1970, should not have occurred. The students may have believed that they were right in continuing their mass protest in response to the Cambodian invasion, even though this protest followed the posting and reading by the university of an order to ban rallies and an order to disperse. These orders have since been determined by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to have been lawful.

Some of the Guardsmen on Blanket Hill, fearful and anxious from prior events, may have believed in their own minds that their lives were in danger. Hindsight suggests that another method would have resolved the confrontation. Better ways must be found to deal with such a confrontation.

We devoutly wish that a means had been found to avoid the May 4th events culminating in the Guard shootings and the irreversible deaths and injuries. We deeply regret those events and are profoundly saddened by the deaths of four students and the wounding of nine others which resulted. We hope that the agreement to end the litigation will help to assuage the tragic memories regarding that sad day.

In the succeeding years, many in the anti-war movement have referred to the shootings as "murders", although no criminal convictions were obtained against any National Guardsman. In December 1970, journalist I. F. Stone wrote:

To those who think murder is too strong a word, one may recall that even [Vice President Spiro] Agnew three days after the Kent State shootings used the word in an interview on the David Frost show in Los Angeles. Agnew admitted in response to a question that what happened at Kent State was murder, "but not first degree" since there was – as Agnew explained from his own training as a lawyer – "no premeditation but simply an over-response in the heat of anger that results in a killing; it's a murder. It's not premeditated and it certainly can't be condoned."

The Kent State incident forced the National Guard to re-examine its crowd control methods. The only equipment the guardsmen had to disperse demonstrators that day were M1 Garand rifles loaded with .30-06 FMJ ammunition, 12 Ga. pump shotguns, bayonets, and CS gas grenades. In the years that followed, U.S. military and National Guard personnel began using less lethal means to disperse demonstrators (such as rubber bullets) and changed its crowd control and riot tactics to attempt to avoid casualties. Many of these tactics have been used by police and military forces in the United States when facing similar situations over the decades, such as the 1992 Los Angeles riots and the civil disorder incited by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

One outgrowth of the events was the Center for Peaceful Change, established at Kent State University in 1971 "as a living memorial to the events of May 4, 1970". Now known as The Center for Applied Conflict Management (CACM), it developed one of the earliest conflict resolution undergraduate degree programs in the United States. The Institute for the Study and Prevention of Violence, an interdisciplinary program dedicated to violence prevention, was established in 1998.

According to FBI reports, one part-time student, Terry Norman, was already noted by student protesters as an informant for both campus police and the Akron FBI branch. Norman was present during the May 4 protests, taking photographs to identify student leaders, while carrying a sidearm and wearing a gas mask.

In 1970, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover responded to questions from then-Congressman John M. Ashbrook by denying that Norman had ever worked for the FBI, a statement Norman disputed. On August 13, 1973, Indiana Senator Birch Bayh sent a memo to then-governor of Ohio John J. Gilligan suggesting that Norman may have fired the first shot, based on testimony Bayh received from guardsmen who claimed that a gunshot fired from the vicinity of the protesters instigated the Guard to open fire on the students.

Throughout the years since the shootings, the debate has continued about the events of May 4, 1970.

Three of the survivors have since died: James Russell on June 23, 2007, Robert Stamps in June 2008, and Alan Canfora on December 20, 2020.