38th Annual Commemoration

Other Speakers Include:

All above May 3rd and 4th programs paid for by the Undergraduate Student Senate

NOTE: Following the main commemoration program there will be a performance by Kent State alum Daniel Cohen performing as MC Translation and an anti-war march sponsored by KSAWC and Portage Peace.

Kent State JMC Alumni Reunion, May 23-24
This page originated in 2000 with a reunion of journalism students who covered the events of May 4, 1970.

Now, Kent State is holding an Alumni Reunion Friday, May 23 and Saturday, May 24.

The Alumni Reception will be held Friday from 5 - 7 p.m. Hors d’oeuvres will be served and a cash bar will be provided. During this time, a book-signing will be offered as well as Franklin Hall tours. Franklin Hall is the new home of The Daily Kent Stater, The Burr, WKSU (now called Black Squirrel Radio)and TV-2. The cost for the reception is $10. At 7 p.m., journalism and broadcast alumni reunite with classmates at Ray’s Place downtown and enjoy food and drinks.

The Social Media: Student for a Day event will be held Saturday, May 24. The cost of the event is $20. From 8 - 9 a.m., a continental breakfast will be offered and from 9:15 -- 11:45 a.m., participants can attend social media sessions. At noon, lunch, featuring a panel discussion of JMC Pulitzer Prize winners, will take place. Campus tours will be given at 2 p.m.

Please R.S.V.P. to jmc@kent.edu or call 330-672-8281 by May 14. For more information about the Alumni Reunion, visit www.jmc.kent.edu.

Juan Williams to Address Democracy Issues, April 30
One of the nation’s leading journalists and political analysts, Juan Williams, will speak at Kent State University April 30. Williams will address changing societal, educational and economic issues in the tradition of the university’s ongoing academic study of the rights and responsibilities of living in a democracy.

The university also announced the academic democracy symposium for spring of 2009, with the general theme of “media, memory and history.”

Williams’ speech will be held at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, April 30, in the Kiva of the Kent Campus Student Center. His speech, The Changing Face of America, will explore the effects of the powerful mix of money, race and aging in the new century.

This major address is another in the university-sponsored series of annual discussions of issues relevant to the university community and nation. Since 2000, these events – including democracy symposia, speakers, and other academic activities – have served as a prelude to student-sponsored commemoration activities of May 3-4. Click for DETAILS.

::KSU News Service

What Do You Know
About the Other College Shooting?

But new media coverage may give the shootings their historical due, and some scholars and survivors hope it might also nudge South Carolina legislators to open a state investigation of the 40-year-old tragedy, which never received such scrutiny. [MORE]

BEFORE KENT STATE: Shootings by state troopers that killed three at South Carolina State College in 1968, above, are receiving attention in two TV films.

::New York Times 4/16/08

KSU Remembers Virginia Tech Anniversary

Similar "lie-in" demonstrations for tougher gun laws were planned at Ohio State University, Kent State, Oberlin College and in Cincinnati, as well as at other sites around the nation including the U.S. Supreme Court. [MORE]

::Ohio.com 8/16/08

Audio/Video Documentary:
Four Dead in Ohio: 36th Anniversary of Kent State Shootings

Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3      
Watch 128k stream       Watch 256k stream
      Read Transcript

Click HERE for video of press conference announcing release of 'Get Set! Point! Fire!' audiotape.

Please click on each image.

How It Was: Death at Kent State
Tuesday, March 11, 2008, check your listings for local times.

On May 4th 1970, American soldiers shot down American students on American soil. Ever since, people have argued over who was to blame the protesting students at Kent State University or the National Guardsmen brought in to restore order on campus. By stripping away the rhetoric and dissecting the available evidence, National Geographic Channels How it Was: Death at Kent State casts a dispassionate eye on this national tragedy. The wealth of raw data generated by the event includes still photographs, news film footage, home movies, audio recordings and riveting testimony from key participants on both sides including the first television interview with one of the indicted National Guardsmen. This is Kent State as you've never seen it before.

Thirty years ago, trustees and protesters
faced off over the Gym Annex construction
Thirty years ago this summer, Kent State was embroiled in a controversy that had students pitted against university officials and culminated in 193 arrests.

This summer marks the 30th anniversary of the Gym Annex controversy or "Tent City," when students camped out for two months in 1977 to protest building an addition to the Memorial Gym on part of the May 4 site.[MORE]

::Summer Kent Stater 8/14/07

James Russell, 60, was survivor
of KSU shootings who shed anonymity
James Russell, the oldest of the nine students shot and injured during May 4, 1970, demonstrations at Kent State University, became the first of the survivors to die Saturday.

Russell, 60, died at his Deer Island, Ore., home of an apparent heart attack.

Russell, who converted his art training at Kent into a string of civil engineering jobs, had returned several times to the Kent State campus for remembrances of the shootings. Four students were killed when the National Guard opened fire on students protesting the Vietnam War and nine others were wounded.

Russell was shot in the leg and forehead. Friends and family say he had participated in other protests in Kent in the previous few days but had just paused to watch May 4 on the way to turn in an art project.

"We are living proof that we were targets that day," he said at the 2002 campus ceremony. "All of us were targets." [MORE]

::Cleveland Plain Dealer 6/26/07

Yale University alumnus Paul Keane tried unsuccessfully earlier this year to pursuade Yale to open the now closed Kent State special archives collection and accept the personal papers of former KSU President Glenn Olds. Keane issued numerous letters and e-mails to Yale University President Richard C. Levin without response until last week. [MORE]

::Record-Courier 6/26/07

DAN RATHER INTERVIEWS PROF. JERRY LEWIS: “Long after the names of the battles and the generals are forgotten, we remember wars through their images. During the Vietnam War, those images reverberate in a stark symmetry. There were the images from over there -– young G.I.’s in dense jungle firefights with the determined Vietcong and North Vietnamese, and then there were the images from over here -– young students in massive college campus protests clashing with national guardsmen.” [Click for TRANSCRIPT]

The lethal media silence on Kent State's smoking guns
The 1970 killings by National Guardsmen of four students during a peaceful anti-war demonstration at Kent State University have now been shown to be cold-blooded, premeditated official murder. But the definitive proof of this monumental historic reality is not, apparently, worthy of significant analysis or comment in today's mainstream media. [MORE]

::FreePress.org 5/06/07

May 4 Coverage in the Daily Kent Stater:

Peace talks
Sheehan asks students to combat war through non-violent means
On May 4, 1970, 12-year-old Cindy Sheehan could not understand why the National Guard killed four students at Kent State. "I remember the photos from here," Sheehan said Friday to a crowd gathered on Blanket Hill. "I couldn't understand why our people would kill our own.

Memories from May 4
For every student on campus, the events of May 4 were a different experience. Thirty-seven years later, a few decided to share their memories. Five people. Five angles. Five memories. One day: May 4, 1970. Laura Davis Associate Provost Laura Davis remembers May 4, 1970 as a day of earnest demonstration, both against the war and the presence of the National Guard.

MULTIMEDIA: May 4 Slideshow

Empty combat boots represent fallen Ohioans
Among the daffodils on the hill in front of the May 4 Memorial, 161 pairs of boots were displayed Friday to represent the Ohioans who have died in the Iraq war. Each pair of boots had a tag with the soldier's photograph, name, rank and hometown. The American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker-based non-profit organization, brought its "Eyes Wide Open Ohio" exhibit to Kent State.

Task Force rings bell for Va. Tech
When Sarah Lund-Goldstein, a member of the May 4 Task Force, heard about the Virginia Tech shootings, she knew she wanted to do something. To honor the victims, she came up with the idea of ringing Kent State's Victory Bell on the Commons. On Friday morning, students and community members gathered as Lund-Goldstein rang the bell 32 times.

U.S. Representative calls for change
One of Congress' most vocal critics of the Iraq war took the stage at Friday's May 4 Commemoration, calling for a change in American foreign policy and urging the American people to take action against the war in Iraq. "On May 4, 1970, a place whose mission is to create became a place of destruction.

An interview with the outspoken Noam Chomsky
Since the start of the Vietnam War, Noam Chomsky, an emeritus Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics at MIT, has become increasingly popular with time. By 1992, the Arts and Humanities Citation Index declared him the most cited living person and the eighth most cited person of all time.

After son's death in Iraq, mother starts organization to end war
Rosemary Palmer, whose son, Edward "Augie" Schroeder, was killed in Iraq in August 2005, said Americans have a job to do: Take action to end the Iraq War and "as soon as possible, bring our soldiers home." "Every violent death tears a hole in the soul of the universe," she said.

Political activist: Multiple avenues of activism the way to stop war in Iraq
Political activist Tom Hayden said the time has come to "apply memory to the future" because the "past is a resource to understand where we're going." "The struggle for memories is a very important one for the beginning and end of any social movement," he said.

Kent Police Department has a peaceful May 4 weekend
It was a quiet weekend for the Kent Police Department with few arrests occurring. Though official numbers were not available at press time, Lt. Jayme Cole said there were about nine arrests Saturday night. "There were extra officers on staff, but there weren't any major problems," Cole said.

2007 Commemoration Headlines

CROWD ON THE COMMONS: Students dance to music from a local band near the main stage at the Rembrance Day gathering. [WKSU photo]

BELL TOLLS FOR VIRGINIA TECH: Kent State's Victory Bell rang 32 times at 9:45 a.m. May 1 in memory of those killed by a gunman last month in Blacksburg, Virginia. [WKSU photo]

Kent State ceremony honors Virginia Tech victims

The campus bell tolled Friday for two tragedies separated by a generation as Kent State memorialized its four dead at the hands of Ohio National Guardsmen and the 32 killed at Virginia Tech by a gunman.

The Kent State Victory Bell rang 32 times at midmorning for last month's victims of the Virginia Tech shooter, who took his own life, then rang again at midday for the annual commemoration of the May 4, 1970, shootings at the Ohio college.

The afternoon ceremony on the 37th anniversary of the Kent State shootings, which happened during a Vietnam-era war protest, had the feel of an anti-war rally as speakers denounced the U.S. war in Iraq and called for student activism to halt it.

"This has got to be a peace movement," said anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan {photo, below right], who choked up as she recounted the death of her son in Iraq. "What an honor it is to be welcomed into the Kent State family."

Fellow anti-war activist Tom Hayden urged students to lobby against the war.

The Virginia Tech commemoration was scheduled to coincide with the time of the second of two fatal attacks there April 16.

"I choked up. It's an emotional thing," said Sarah Lund-Goldstein [in photo], a Kent State senior and part of the campus group that organized the commemoration. "We feel it's very important to understand that a grieving campus is not just one from 37 years ago."

A crowd estimated by police at 200 to 300 sat on a sun-drenched, grassy hillside and heard speakers memorialize the Kent State students.

Mary Ann Vecchio, 51, of Miami, the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo showing her with arms outstretched over the body of shooting victim Jeffrey Miller, told the gathering her experience on the campus that the day in 1970 will always be with her.

"Time has passed. Time goes on. We miss you here today," she said, invoking Miller's memory. "I'll always be here at Kent for you."

A survivor, Alan Canfora, said this week that an analysis of static-filled audio from the 1970 campus shootings revealed a military order to open fire. It has long been a mystery what prompted the 13 seconds of gunfire.

After the shootings, the FBI concluded it could only speculate on whether an order was given to fire. One theory was that a Guardsman panicked or fired intentionally at a student and that others fired when they heard the shot. Eight Guardsmen were acquitted of federal civil rights charges.

Canfora, 58, one of nine students wounded in the shooting, located the tape in Yale University's archives about the event. He has called for new federal and state investigations.

::Associated Press 5/04/07

HEADLINE LINKS:

Kent State marks 1970 shootings

Kent State University in Ohio Friday marked the 37th anniversary of the day National Guardsmen shot and killed four students during a Vietnam War protest.

With anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan as the keynote speaker, events include a display of boots representing the number of lives lost in the Iraq War, the Daily Kent Stater reports.

In addition, the university library opened for public viewing an archival collection of letters and other materials dealing with the events that left four students dead and nine wounded.

Materials range from iconic photographs to the original FBI documents with J. Edgar Hoover's signature.

One letter from a group of French students has the letter "X" in President Richard Nixon's name replaced with a Nazi swastika.

Another written by Jonathan Pannor, 9, suggests the country would be better off without a National Guard.

::United Press International 5/04/07
::Photo: Associated Press 5/04/07

Upon his introduction to a packed and excited Kiva audience at Kent State University Thursday, author and peace activist Tom Hayden mused about how his Web site, www.tomhayden.com, was mentioned during his introduction. "They used to call me "Tom Hayden-dot-communist," he joked. [MORE]

:: Record-Courier 5/04/07

Why would the FBI assert that the newly-inaugurated governor of Ohio is "completely controlled"? Media sources like Life magazine noted the governor's alleged ties to organized crime and the Mafia in specific. [MORE]

::Counterpunch 5/04/07

Their faces went blank. "They still shootin' people?" one asked. [MORE]

::Mansfield News-Journal 4/27/07

Many who witnessed the shootings at Kent State University 37 years ago recall a flank of National Guardsmen turning in unison and then firing into the crowd. Were the soldiers following orders? The question has haunted recollections of that tragic day, four young people shot dead.

Now Alan Canfora has come forth with a copy of a tape recording (digitally enhanced), arguing the words ``Right here,'' ``Get set!'' ``Point!'' and ``Fire!'' can be heard. ``The evidence speaks for itself,'' Canfora declared this week. ``There was an order to fire.''

The trouble is, amid the static and high-pitched sounds, little can be detected with any certainty, let alone clear commands. Perhaps an independent assessment, aided by new technology and short of the federal investigation Canfora has proposed, is the avenue to answering this lingering question, for completing a portion of the historical record.

What should be recalled is how invested Canfora has become in that dreadful day, his penchant well-known for imagining conspiracies. Remember, too, that nothing of this kind has surfaced in all the examinations of the past, including court cases, though many have wondered about a silent command.

All these years later, it would be most valuable to learn what led to the gunfire (beyond the carelessness of James Rhodes, then the Ohio governor). It is doubtful that Alan Canfora has heard the truth.

::Akron Beacon Journal 5/03/07

“She never saw it, never knew it was coming. She was dead before she hit the ground. [MORE]

::Chicago Daily Herald 5/03/07

Thirty-seven years after Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder were killed near the spot, a historical marker recalling the May 4, 1970 shootings at Kent State University that resulted in their deaths and the wounding of nine other students was officially dedicated Wednesday.

The double-sided Ohio Historical Marker titled "Kent State University: May 4, 1970" was put in place recenlty in the shade of a tree between Taylor Hall, an academic building, and Prentice Hall, a dormitory. It was officially made a part of the KSU landscape Wednesday, with Tom Grace, Dean Kahler, Joe Lewis, Jim Russell and Alan Canfora, who were wounded in 1970, and numerous fo