"Tin Soldiers"
The Kent State shootings had a significantly more powerful effect on students than the invasion of Cambodia.
“I don’t care whether you’ve never listened to anyone before in your lives. I am begging you 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.”
-Kent State Professor Glen Frank, May 4, 1970
On Monday May 4th, while NC State students protested the United States invasion of Cambodia, events in Ohio rose up and swallowed the nation. On Kent State’s campus a weekend of student arson, police curfews and the arrival of the National Guard boiled over into madness. A Monday meeting on the open green by a few thousands students was met by National Guardsmen and teargas. The students refused to disperse, some of the guardsmen advanced…and suddenly fired. It has never been explained why the guardsmen fired sixty-seven bullets at a group of youths, the results however, are nationally famous. The shootings killed four students and wounded another nine. This was one of the most important actions of the Vietnam War and transformed the national discussion of the war. It also drastically expanded the anti-war protests across U.S. colleges; before May 4th only one-hundred and thirty schools were in revolt. After the shootings more than 2,100 colleges rose up, boycotting classes and otherwise challenged the status quo.
In Raleigh, students and faculty held a midnight vigil at the NC State Bell Tower. Afterwards several score students marched to Chancellor John Caldwell’s residence to demand action. Little was accomplished outside of the venting of fears and anger. What shocked many was how much the war had come home to rest. As if reaching through the television and attacking them, the Kent State shootings convinced many students that their enemies were the Army and ROTC. There was, however, a great deal of confused information. Several sources claimed that the National Guardsmen had been charged by students (they were not) or that the guardsmen were ordered to murder students (also untrue).
Much like the protests in Ferguson, Missouri the powerful show of force by the National Guard in Kent State seemed entirely out of proportion, and accomplished the opposite of its intent. The college students in Ohio were having a largely peaceful, previously agreed upon protest, and were shot down. The shootings created a this-could-happen-here mindset across American colleges, and NC State was no different. But, also like Ferguson, violent protests only undercut the power of student's anger. Could the protests stay peaceful?
See a word picture for May 4th of the Technician (before the shootings)