Pat Dollard | Young Americans

So, if I hear that CSNY “Four dead in O-Hi-O” one more time I think I will scream!

“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming …”

FYI, CSNY … It was Ohio’s then Governor, James Rhodes who called in the guard … after a previous couple of days of “peace, love, and understanding” on the Kent State University campus and in the city of Kent. NOT Pres. Richard Nixon.

(SIDEBAR):

Ya hear that, former Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco? The state’s governor calls in the National Guard in the event of a disaster or civil unrest … unless you pick up the phone and call the White House and say, “You take it, sir.”

Oh, and while I’m at it … The Vietnam War was Kennedy’s and Johnson’s war … Nixon just had it dumped in his lap like some tangled ball of so much armchair politically and media over-managed yarn. First he tried to untangle it … and then he just quit.

(END SIDEBAR)

I had just turned 12 years old a couple weeks before the Kent State University shootings. I refuse to call it The Kent State University Massacre … Massacre implies direct and malicious intent on the person(s) who inflicted the deaths being deemed as massacres.

May 4, 1970 WAS NOT a massacre.

As a matter of fact, a cherry-picking expadition by me of an old Temptations song, “Ball Of Confusion” better sums up what happened that spring day here in O-Hi-O …

“… Run, run, run but you sure can’t hide. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. … Well, the only person talking about love thy brother is the…(preacher.) And it seems nobody’s interested in learning but the…(teacher.) … Ball of confusion. Oh yeah, that’s what the world is today. … The sale of pills are at an all time high. Young folks walking round with their heads in the sky. … And the band played on.
So, round and around and around we go. Where the world’s headed, nobody knows. … Fear in the air, tension everywhere. … Eve of destruction, tax deduction, city inspectors, bill collectors, Mod clothes in demand, population out of hand, suicide, too many bills, Hippies moving to the hills. People all over the world are shouting, ‘End the war.’ … That’s what the world is today … Sayin’… ball of confusion.”

Usually we are spoon-fed one side of the Kent State University shooting story. That being the big bad mean blood-thirsty National Guard thug soldiers went gunnin’ for poor, innocent young free-lovin’ hippie types. Hell, you would think the Guard stood around and chortled as they took target practice on all those hand-holdin’ kumbia singing youths.

The fact of the matter is, while there was a percentage of KSU students involved in the organized protest spanning four days, many were overly curious students hanging around to get out of class and see the show … while the rest were east and west coast interlopers of socialist student groups, such as SDS … Weather Underground (See: you know … like Hussein’s buddy Bill Ayers types), who were bussed in for the planned event. Professional protesters …

There was not this perceived prancing and dancing about the armed Guard, popping daisies into the barrels of their rifles … No, the Guard was taunted, spat upon, hit with rocks, bottles and whatever else was aerodynamically available.

Now, I’m NOT saying that is justification for opening fire. But understand the ‘ball of confusion’ that was rolling faster and faster down that hill to that afternoon. Tear gas had been used on the protesters, so some of the Guard were wearing gas masks.

(TIMELINE SIDEBAR):

BTW, this particular display of peace and brotherly love was bestowed on Kent City police … ‘pigs’, ‘fuzz’, ‘the man’ … just days before May 4th on May 1st., in addition to vandalism, looting, and general drunk/drug and disorderly in the City of Kent. So, it was already established that ‘authority’ was not going to be an issue or a problem for these highly motivated people.

On May 2nd the city of Kent’s Mayor Leroy Satrom had declared a state of emergency and called the governor for his assistance and to please send in the National Guard.

By the evening of May 2 the Army ROTC building was fully engulfed in flames, thanks to the peaceful protesters … Oh, but they weren’t happy and content with just standing around cheering as the structure burned. No, when city firefighters and police arrived those brother-lovin’ kids just greeted them with rocks and bottles. … (I feel all warm and fuzzy inside right about now) … But wait … Those wonderful children TOOK one of the fire hoses, dragged it off and slashed the hell out of it … Must’ve thought it was some nasty anaconda trying to harm the brave firefighters …

Enter the National Guard in the late evening.

Of course, those vibrant youths were extremely excited to see the Guard setting up camp on campus grounds. Why! HOW DARE THEY! I mean, after all, it IS state property … and both the mayor and governor ordered them there … But how on earth could their orders override those of the leaders of the Commie/Socialist puke groups? The campus was their territory now … They had just spent the last two days marking it with piss, paint and trash. It had been conquered! Claimed for The People’s Republic of Anarchy.

Sunday, May 3rd the campus of Kent State University was now manned by nearly 1000 Ohio National Guard. (Now, remember, KSU was NOT the only college campus across the nation to be the stage for the violent and destructive antics of these “give peace a chance” professional anarchists. It was just the latest in the master plan …)

Gov. Rhodes held a presser and stated, “They’re worse than the brownshirts and the communist element and also the nightriders and the vigilantes … They’re the worst type of people that we harbor in America. I think that we’re up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America.” He contemplated getting a court order that would pretty much have declared martial law to end the demonstrations … Best laid plans …

Despite a city curfew issued by city of Kent Mayor Satrom, “students” insisted on gathering. Tear gas was used as the Guard began forcing them back to the dorms … Of course, this didn’t go without injury on both sides. And tensions mounted … and mounted.

(END TIMELINE SIDEBAR)

On May 4th Kent State University tried to head off the protesters’ planned event for noon by dispensing leaflets saying it had been canceled.

Still the KSU campus ‘victory bell’ was rung to signal the ‘let’s get it started’ for the hordes.

Over the next few hours there was no turning back. The police, the Guard and school officials tried to reason with the students to break it up and leave the campus. But they had a master plan they were not going to deviate from. To make as much trouble and destruction as possible for all authorities, the university, and the Guard. Over the course of four days and several warnings they persisted. THEY escalated the situation minute by minute. They, in the end, obtained exactly what they had come for to the city of Kent, Ohio on that first weekend in May 1970 … a “massacre” for the television cameras and the history books … From high above in space it must have looked to the alien eye like some psychotic war between two groups of ants on a hill.

So, amid all that big ball of confusion, tear gas, gas masks, sweating and frustrated Guardsmen, angry and spiteful students and bussed-in professional protesters, drugs and alcohol, the bottles, rocks, trash, fire, previous days’ tussles, and the stress and strain of the time in our then troubled country … for whatever reason given or not, ordered or not, shots rang out and then … Allison Krause, Jeff Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder were sacrificed for the Communist/Socialist antiwar anti-American cause …

and a Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young hit song was born …