September 28, 2019 • 38 mins
On May 4, 1970, four days of anti-war protests at Kent State University in Ohio culminated in the unthinkable when Ohio guardsmen opened fire on protesters, killing four students. How could this tragedy take place? Learn more in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, it's me Josh and for this week's s
Y s K Select, I've chosen this episode on the
history of the Kent State Massacre, somewhat unknown, surprisingly and
definitely largely misunderstood moment in American history and kind of
a bummer, so prepare, but it's a good one. Enjoy, Enjoy.
(00:24):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
there's Jerry. And it's snowing outside, which means it's Stuff
You Should Know Snow Edition. Snow Edition. Yeah, I know
(00:46):
when we're like, we gotta record and get out of
here because this is Atlanta and snow kills us. I
just mainly don't want to be locked away from the snow.
I want to be able to like look out the
window and see it. I can now, but not as
well as I'd like to me. It's just a traffic thing.
Like people are probably leaving work right now. People have
already left the office here. Well, maybe everyone will be
(01:07):
gone by the time I get out there. Okay, you'll
just be the lone guy trudging through the snow. That's right,
like Vigo Mortenson in the road. Yes, although he was
not alone and there wasn't any snow. It was just
nuclear ash. Although there was snow because Charlie's there and
kills herself by going out into the snow. But that's
(01:28):
before everything really takes a downward. Spoiler alert retroactive spoiler alert,
Chuck Yep, are you familiar with Kent State? Yeah? Man,
I've been singing that Neil Young song all day. How
can you not? You cannot by having never heard it?
Like me, shut up? You know that song? Never heard it?
I've never listened to Neil Young. You've never heard the
(01:51):
song Ohio? No? I know the Pretender song, but I
don't think that's about Kent State. I'm shocked, Okay, I
mean you don't have and Young without Like, how's it
go humed for him? No, I'm not gonna Maybe I
have heard it ten Soldiers and Nixon Okay, Yeah, yeah,
I've heard it. I didn't know that was about Ohio
(02:12):
four Dead in Ohio yeah, okay. And I had no idea,
all right. I didn't know what that song was about.
I was just like, oh, Neil young really Yeah, oh man,
get ready to hear it. I'm sure alright, I'm used
to it by now, your bulletproof. Uh. Well, so you're
familiar with the Kent State shootings May four, Um, four
(02:34):
students were killed. I believe another eleven were injured, Yeah,
including one was paralyzed, like some pretty severe injuries. And uh,
this is a big deal. That would be a big
deal in and of itself if it was just some
sort of campus shooting or something like that, Like it
would be a very big deal these days. But what
made the Kent State shootings, for those of you who
(02:56):
aren't familiar with them, such an enormous deal was that
the shootings were carried out by National guardsmen. They were
Americans firing on Americans. Um, Americans on one side of
the equation firing on protesters on the other side. Uh.
And it was one of the darkest points in American history,
modern or otherwise. Yeah, it was. I think what's so
(03:18):
upsetting is it was random. It wasn't you know that
guy's coming at me with a bottle or a brick,
shoot him. It was random shooting into a crowd, Right,
That's the kind of thing that would happen in countries
under like dictatorships, not here in America. But it did
happen here in America, and not just at Kent State.
(03:38):
There was another similar incident just ten days later, um,
that we'll talk about as well. It gets overlooked, but yeah,
it was a very dark moment in American history, and
it came out of the the tensions, um over the
Vietnam War initially, but I think it was more than that.
It was also we should say that's the um, kind
of obvious thing that led to it, but also there
(04:02):
was a real tension also between the establishment and the
anti establishment. Yeah, and um, the people in control and
the people who weren't in control, students, elders, there's just
a lot of tension between two sides, and the dividing line,
the obvious dividing line, was the Vietnam War. Yeah, and UM,
(04:24):
I think if you are not of that generation, you
may not know the full story. Um. You might know
that four people were shot in a protest, and that's
about it. Maybe even if you're from that generation, you
may not know the full story. But we're about to
tell you. Okay, let's take it back a little further
than all right, Vietnam country which had when it's independence
from France and the fifties. Have you ever seen We
(04:46):
Were Soldiers. Yes, it's almost like a snuff film. It's
one of the most graphically violent movies I've ever seen
in my life. But it's about that transition from France
leaving Vietnam and America coming in. Yeah, go ahead. Well
it's just initially serving as advisors and then becoming embroiled
(05:10):
in the war. I forgot all about that movie, yeah,
you know, and Apocalypse Now there are some deleted scenes
of the meeting up with a French family in Vietnam
and like having dinner. Really yeah, and I remember when
I heard about that, I was like, what why were
they French? And then I did a little more homework
on it. Oh oh yeah, if you eat Vietnamese food,
like it's very clearly like, yeah, French influenced, well, all
(05:33):
most food is. But yeah sure, um so anyway, uh,
in the fifties they split between communists North and non
communist South. Vietnam and America didn't want communism spreading throughout Asia.
We had a policy of containment. Yeah, and so Richard Nixon,
um when he won the sixty eight election. Um. Part
(05:55):
of his promise was something called Vietnamization. It's kind of
an awkward word, and that meant to transfer the combat
duties from our soldiers to the South Vietnamese. That sounds familiar,
isn't it? It does? But um, what what happened was
at some point he said, you know what in nineteen
seventy in April, he said, I want to send our
(06:16):
soldiers in the Cambodia. And that caused sort of a
firestorm because it was a bit of a reversal of
what he said he was gonna do, and it, you know,
really embroiled us in the kind of the middle of things. Well, yeah,
he he escalated the war in Vietnam, which was already
a very um contentious issue, and that it was a war,
but also as a war that Congress never openly declared war.
(06:38):
So that's why, historically speaking, it's referred to as the
Vietnam conflict. Um. And so Nixon gets elected partially because
he's saying, I'm gonna get our boys out of there. Yeah,
we're not gonna like let the communists when we're gonna
prop up the Vietnamese, but um, we're gonna get out
of there. Instead, he escalates things by invading Cambodia, where
the Vietcong we're stationed, and that led to immediate protests.
(07:01):
That was April thirtieth, nineteen seventy, that he announced that
we had invaded Cambodia, and the next day is when
the first protest takes place at Kent State. Yeah, and
Kent the The article points out that it was not
the most likely place because it was a little more
blue collar than like say, Ohio State nearby, the Ohio
State University and um man, I'm sorry that is so stupid.
(07:28):
Sorry os U alums and fans and students, but it
is stupid, and everyone outside of Ohio State thinks it's stupid.
They take a lot of pride in that. The I know,
which I think just kind of fans the flames of
um derision. Yeah, you know, I can just start saying
the University of Georgia. That makes a little more sense,
(07:48):
does it. Yeah, what's the difference the Ohio State University
the University of Georgia. It's just it was the University
of Ohio State that would make more sense. Yeah, a
litt more to my ear, I got you my ear right,
there you see it. That's very nice, thank you. Um.
At any rate, uh, I can't say it was a
(08:10):
little more blue collar and you wouldn't think there would
be like protesting, but there was protesting at schools all
over the country. There were and you can read between
the lines here. Kent State had a lower hippie population
than Ohio State. Can we just come up right out
and say it, right, But there were protests there. Um,
there's a protest on May one, and it was a
standard uh war protests three days before the shootings, and
(08:32):
it's kind of when things got kicked off, right, But
these kids were still pretty good. They were at school
holding a protest in the commons, I believe, um, which
was the a k a. The quad or like the
big grassy area between in the middle of campus. Um.
And they said, you know what, this went pretty well.
Let's take the weekend off and we'll meet back here
one day and have another anti war protest because we're
(08:54):
really steamed about this. And everyone said, okay, let's do that,
and for tonight, let's go out and hit the bars
and it. Yeah, this is what they did. The first one.
They buried the constitution as a symbolic gesture. And the
second one they got drunk, right, not at the protest
but later that night. Right, so that Friday protests is
when they buried the constitution. Yes, this is like a
(09:15):
real protest, not just walking around. There's like stuff going
on and like you know, there's symbolic acts. It was
a real protest. Yeah. And if you combine alcohol and protesting,
things might get a little rowdy. So bonfires broke out,
they start throwing bottles at police cars, breaking windows. It's
more the little rowdy. I mean, that's pretty that's a riot.
(09:36):
When you said like bomb fires in the streets and
like throw bottles at at police cars, that you have
just basically said we've drawn a line in the sand.
Where are you gonna do, cops? That is one way
to look at it, for sure. Uh. The mayor, Leroy
Satram said, this is an emergency situation people. I need
(09:56):
to call the governor James Rhodes. We need some help.
I'm going to close the bar, which you know isn't
gonna make anyone very happy. No, And it had an
exacerbating effect apparently because that meant all the people who
weren't riding in the streets who were busy drinking in
the bars were now suddenly in the streets too and
joined the protests and the a k A. The riots, right, Uh,
(10:19):
that's right. And the police were called in. They used
tear gas and said go back to your dorm rooms,
basically get back on campus. And that was Friday. Now
we move on to Saturday. Yeah, and the Mayor's is
obviously a little jumpy. He's hearing rumors circulating that there's
gonna be another the scene from the night before is
going to happen all over again on Saturday. So he
(10:41):
calls the governor of Ohio and UM, here enters the
person who, in my opinion, is single handedly responsible for
what happened at Kent State. So the National Guard arrives. Um,
(11:14):
there were about a thousand protesters. Um that actually burned
down an r OTC building on campus, which is pretty
bold move. And UM, they didn't find out who did
that exactly, but they did cut fire hoses so they
couldn't put out the fire and basically burned it to
the ground. Yeah, the protesters set it on fire and
then cut the fire hoses like they wanted that building burned.
(11:36):
And apparently, UM, that's when the National Guard shows up
a couple like an hour or so later, right, Yeah,
and they, you know, broke everything up obviously. And then
Uh comes Sunday. You've got about a thousand National guardsman
and you've got Governor Rhodes arriving, uh and holding a
(11:58):
press conference and kind of flaming the fire again by
calling the protesters the worst type of people that we
harbor in America. Yeah, he compared to the brown Shirts,
Mussolini's brown Shirts, UM, the communists, UM, pretty much anybody
he could think of that was that would be disparaging.
That's who publicly at this press conference compared him to UM.
(12:21):
And you mentioned that the on Sunday morning, the UM
National Guard was on campus kind of keeping order and everything.
But apparently like the relations between the guardsmen and the
students were pretty amicable, Like people were chatting friendly, Like
there was no tension. It was just kind of like, hey,
I'm nineteen, Hey i'm nineteen, I'm a student at Kent State,
(12:44):
I'm in the National Guard. Let's hang out. And it
wasn't until the governor showed up and held this press
conference that things took a very sudden turn for the worse,
and it wasn't just the brown shirts calling him the
brown Shirts of the worst element that America harbor, but
also saying I may also declare martial law. Yeah, and
(13:05):
that I may message never quite got through in those
confusion as to whether or not that actually happened. And basically,
the National Guard believed that that had happened, and they
took control of the campus and said we're running the
show now. And that's just the National Guard. But the
university officials to the people running the university said, oh, well,
martial laws declared. And they knew that there was a
(13:27):
protest scheduled for the following day, Monday, so they printed
a bunch of flyers and pamphlets saying, hey, your constitutional
rights have been suspended because the universities under martial law,
so all assemblies banned, so don't protest, And that kind
of fell on deaf ears. I guess you could say,
come Monday morning, because the students showed up to protest. Yeah,
(13:50):
that definitely didn't work. Um, by noon, there was about
three thousand people, about five hundred actively protesting, another thousand
just there to be supportive. And um, and it cuts
it's a college campus. About people just checking it out. Yeah,
stopping on their way to class or whatever, you like,
what's going on. I would have done the same thing probably,
(14:10):
And we should say also are our buddy stuff they
don't want you to know? UM host and sometimes producer
Matt Frederick his parents were students at Kent stay and
they stay at home that day. They were like, there's
some bad stuff that's going to go down, and they
were right. Uh So, the article points out at was
(14:32):
less an anti war protest at this point and more
of a protest of the draconian occupation of their campus
martial law by the army and UM which is not
even real, which is just a misunderstanding. Yeah, pretty much.
So the general UM Canterbury says, you know what this
rally is over drive me around in a jeep, give
(14:53):
me that bullhorn, let me tell everyone to go home,
because that'll work. Yeah, I mean, let's go back to
this where these tensions came from. In the first it's
establishment versus anti establishment, and establishment is the type to
stand in a jeep and be driven around with the
bullhorn telling people to disperse. I don't know if there's
ever been a message relayed via bullhorn that doesn't fall
on deaf ears. Yeah, you know, it has the opposite effect, unless,
(15:18):
like I guess, in like a female situations, if you're
trying to like organize people and stuff, that helps. But
I always think of bullhorns is stuff like this, the
general riding around the jeep yelling at people to go home,
and people saying, no, you don understand why we're here
in the first place. So they started throwing rocks at
the jeep, not surprisingly and um not well think you
(15:40):
know tensions at this point this was day four. Yeah,
I I think though, though I'm not justifying, I'm just no, no,
I know you're not at all. But I think it's
really easy to to um to to kind of choose
one side or the other, especially once you know the outcome.
But I don't think it should be overlooked that, like
people are throwing rocks at this dude while he's driving
around in the jeep. People have burned down a building
(16:01):
full of rioted in the streets of the town, the
college town. I mean, like these are real huge events
that scared the pants off of the people who were
running the town, the state, the country. And I mean
to say that they were unprovoked as historically inaccurate. Yeah,
I totally agree with not justifying. But I think a
(16:22):
lot of people might think the story is people got
together to protest and the army came in and shot him, right,
or yeah, and and it was either the protests of fault.
They shouldn't have been protest, they shouldn't have burned down
that building, or you know, it was entirely the National
Guards fault. And you whatever historical event you're looking at,
it's never just one side or the other. Usually there's
(16:45):
all it's always great, and you have blinders on. If
you think otherwise, you should write a history book called
It's Always Great Josh Clark's History of America. I'd buy that,
thanks man. Um. Alright, so where are we? They were
throwing rocks at the General. He at this point ordered
his troops to load their weapons, get the tear gas going.
(17:07):
He said, they threw rocks, and you guys, load your weapons.
That's basically what happened. Um, not because his feelings were hurt. Yeah,
although imagine they were. I guess no matter who you are,
I'm sure if people throw rocks and you're like I
I take that personally. So the National Guard came in.
They pushed them back past the Commons, over a steep
(17:30):
called Blanket Hill and into the parking lot of Prentice
Hall in a practice football field. Then basically the guardsmen
found themselves cornered by a fence, retreated back up the hill.
When they got to the top, out of the seventy
turned and began firing their guns into the crowd. Yeah. So, well,
(17:53):
not all of them into the crowd, we should point out,
most into the air or the ground. Actually, although some
fired directly in the crowd, they all would have fired
directly in the crowd. That would have been a much
higher blood count or body count. Oh yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Um.
And I mean the the protesters were about a football
field away from them, um. And the fact that they
started to walk up the hill and then turn and
(18:14):
shot made it not just an attack of Americans on Americans,
but a surprise attack of Americans on Americans. Yeah. I
would say the students were definitely did not expect bullet retaliation.
Took about thirteen seconds. Um. Four students were killed. Alison Krauss,
not the Allison Krause obviously, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Sure and
(18:38):
William Schroeder, and uh, it's all tragic, but even more
tragically Sure and Schroeder were just walking to class. Yeah,
they weren't even part of this protest. They were in
the wrong place at the wrong time, and like I said,
nine people were wounded in one Dean collar was paralyzed.
And yeah, so those shots they shot into the air
(19:00):
and into the ground, but also into the crowd, and
over about thirteen seconds, they fired between sixty one and
sixty seven shots. I think that could be categorized as
a hail of gunfire. Yeah, thirteen seconds, sixties shots, But
is that that's like a lot of shots a second,
you know, and just from twenty eight guns. And apparently
there was a professor named Glenn Frank who did a
(19:22):
lot to quell the crowd and did talk them into, uh,
not escalating this thing any further. Right, So this article
really kind of glances over this guy's role. And it
wasn't just him, but he was the head of the
faculty marshals, who whose job it was was to basically
keep an eye on the protests. They were like the
university's liaison between the university and the students the protesters,
(19:47):
and this guy and his crew basically single handedly prevented
like a massacre because they saw very quickly that if
they didn't insinuate themselves, but between the guardsmen and the students,
the students were gonna be like, Holy, Holy God, they
just fired live ammunition on us, and they're standing right there,
(20:11):
let's get them. They would have attacked. The consensus is
the students would have attacked out of anger, and that
the guardsmen most definitely would have fired again when being attacked.
UM and these this this faculty member and his team
saw what was about to happen and slid in and
was like wait. So they first they spoke to the
guardsman and said, stop firing, we have to go talk
(20:34):
to the students. Then they went and spoke to the
students for twenty minutes and got him to calm down
enough to to to stop provoking or did not provoker,
advance on the guardsman in retaliation, and saved a lot
of lives. Probably. I wonder if there's a Glenn Frank
statue on campus, there should be agree. Uh. So they
(20:56):
closed school not for the day or the weekend, but
for the rest of the semester, and UM a lot
of colleges did the same. As far as shutting down, well,
because a lot of students went on strike. Yeah, and
like they were forced to the universities were forced to
shut down. Uh. In the following weekend, UM a hundred
thousand people went to d c UM to protest. Neil
(21:17):
Young News to Josh wrote a song about it. M Okay,
(21:41):
so the the shooting has just happened, that the crowd
has been quelled, the dead and Moon would have been
taken away an ambulances and now we've reached the aftermath
that's immediate and otherwise. Yeah, Um, President Nixon wasn't super compassionate.
He had earlier been overheard calling them bums. This wasn't
in his press release, obviously, but it definitely got out
(22:03):
in the press. Did not bode well for his reputation.
And um, he said, when dissent turns to violence, it
invites tragedy. That was the official line. That was the
official line, which is pretty cold. That's the president like, yeah,
you get what you what you pay for. Yeah, very much.
His vice president, um Agnew said it was predictable. UM
(22:26):
also not super compassionate, considering this these were Americans were
shot and killed Uh, two of which were just walking
to class. Uh. He called them a bunch of scared
kids with guns. The National guardsman. That was very priced
the speechwriter for Nixon. Yeah, which is true. Yeah, but
so basically the whole the whole kids, it's gray, you know.
It is like they probably were scared for sure, and
(22:48):
uh and yeah, I think that's fair. I think also
though it's it's one sided too, like he's he's not
saying and then also the other side, we're a bunch
of scared, angry kids with rocks. Yeah, like the only
way and you can't even remove the gray, but you'd
have to find out each person who shot and what
their motive was, because some were probably scared out of
(23:09):
their mind and reacted. There has been some people later
on that said that they some got together and decided
to do this, some of the guardsmen, right, so, when
they had been pushing the crowd back onto the UM
practice football field, apparently while they were loitering there. There
have been allegations that a couple of the guardsmen said, Hey,
(23:31):
when we marched back up the hill, we're going to
turn and fire. It's never been proven, um, but a
few more than a couple of historians have leveled that accusation. Um.
There was also immediate word that the guardsman said that
they were acting in self defense because they there was
a sniper on one of the rooftops and that they
(23:51):
were being fired on. They found out that there were
audio recordings of this, and UM, that was quickly changed
to well, it was self defense because these people we're
throwing rocks at us. There was a presidential commission obviously, UM,
and they concluded it was quote unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.
And then in UH, an FBI investigation found that the
(24:14):
guardsman fabricated their defense and that they were not in
true danger. Right. That was FBI. So the presidential commission
and the FBI investigation both said, like, this shouldn't have happened,
and like it's on the guardsman. But that wasn't the
mood of the nation for the most part. There was
a gallop pole that was conducted shortly after, and UM,
(24:34):
the majority of Americans said that it was the protester's
fault for protesting. Yeah, I mean it went to trial too.
It wasn't just like, oh, well this happened and it's
super sad. Uh. And in federal trial, it was dismissed
because of what was called a weak case by the guardsman,
and then the grand jury in Ohio put the blame
on the university officials and the protesters and not the guardsman.
(24:58):
And then there was a civil trial in nineteen seventy
nine settled out of court where the victims and families
got a collective sum of six d seventy dollars ah
collective some meaning I guess that was for all of them, right, yeah, yeah,
they all split that and no apology was apology was
ever issued. Um, they did issue a sign statement expressing regret.
(25:22):
Do you want to hear it? Yeah, So this is
the sign statement that the that was that came out
of the civil trial that the Ohio National Guard released
to the families of the victims. In retrospect, the tragedy
of May fourth, nineteen seventies should not have occurred. The
students may have believed that they were right in continuing
their mass protests in response to the Cambodian invasion, even
though this protest followed the posting and reading by the
(25:44):
university of an order to ban rallies and in 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 their own, in their own minds,
that their lives were in danger. Hindsight suggests that another
method would have resolved the confrontation. Better ways must be
(26:06):
found to deal with such a confrontation. We devoutly wish
that a means had been found to avoid the May
fourth 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 asswadge the
(26:27):
tragic memories regarding that sad day. I don't apology, no
sort of like we regret, hindsight being we might have
shaid have done something differently right saying we regret instead
of I'm sorry. Is that's a big flashing light. It's
a big death. Uh. And for many years they um
(26:49):
the university itself wasn't quite sure how to handle moving
forward in memoriam and otherwise. UM. In the seventies, they
the officials at Kent State failed. They tried to, but
they tried to commemorate it just once every five years
instead of every year. And everybody who held the visuals like,
well then you have nothing to do with this. And
(27:11):
they kept showing up every year, right like what are
you gonna do? Calling the National Guard and remove us?
And they went. Uh. In nineteen seventy nine, there were
hundreds of arrest because the university tried to bulldoze the
place where it happened to build a gym that didn't happen. Uh.
And it took all the way up until to keep
(27:32):
cars from driving over the spots in the parking lot
where the students were killed. Right. And then finally in
the mid two thousand's, UM, the university is finally reverse
this position and just kind of goes with the flow.
And in two thirteen they opened a visitors center that
is all about commemorating this event as a historical event.
(27:56):
But also I get the impression from the the descriptions
of the visitors center a UM kind of the spiritual
aspect of it. The spiritual aspect of tragedy and is
that just last year? Uh. Now the university UM, they say,
as a nation's leader in UH courses of non violence
and democracy and peace studies and conflict resolution classes were
(28:20):
all established, so they, you know, are trying to lead
the way forward and at least being a symbol of uh,
you know, peaceful protest, right. And people are still trying
to figure out what happened. There's still lots of debate. UM.
Oliver Stone unsurprisingly favors the theory that the government placed
a sniper UM in these protests and that there were
(28:42):
government plant agitators who pushed the protests over the line. UM.
And this idea is supported by the fact that there
were policies by governors and the president to crack down
on dissent on student anti war protests. So there definitely
was a policy that was like, if you want to
get dirty, we'll we'll we'll send our goons to beat
(29:05):
you up. UM. But a lot of people think that
the presence of a snipers totally unsupported. UM. But then
a cassette emerged UH fairly recently that that's an actual
audio recording of that day that says supposedly you can
hear um the phrases get, set, point, and fire, which
(29:28):
means that this wasn't a surprise knee jerk shooting. That
there was an officer commanding the guardsman to shoot. Yeah.
And it also, um, you know what, with modern analysis,
they think that there may have been shots fired before
uh full I think seventy seconds before the guardsmen fired.
(29:48):
There's a a Kin State student named Terry Norman UM
who was a photographer on campus taking pictures, and he
also had a handgun, a loaded handgun, and he denied
that he discharged it. But um, he has been accused
of triggering this by firing shots. And I think they
(30:08):
found evidence, audio evidence that there were shots fired, and
they think it maybe have been Terry Norman. Wow, that
kicked it all off. And can you imagine carrying that around? No?
I could not. And then chuck um. This is a
lot of people say that that Kent State was the
beginning of the um slide towards Watergate. For Nixon, this
(30:32):
is like the beginning of the end for him. Um.
And then we should also talk about what happened at
Jackson State because race relations of this country are so
messed up that everybody talks about Kent State where four
white students died, and no one talks about Jackson State,
which happened ten days later and two black people died,
(30:53):
black students. Yeah, and could have been a lot worse.
Like they basically riddled a dormitory with a hail of
gun fire. So ten days after Kent State UM, at
Jackson State University UM in Mississippi, UH, they were also
carrying out anti war protests, but they were also UM
(31:13):
protests based on racism as well. UM. And when these
students were doing a lot of the similar stuff, a
lot of the same stuff that was happening or had
happened at Kent State, they were UM riding. They had
burned a building on campus down and UM. When firefighters
came out to put out the flames, they started to
(31:33):
get worried that these protesters were going to harm them,
so they called the cops. Well, the cops came out,
tried to disperse the crowd. The crowd didn't disperse, so
they opened fire, and like you said, they riddled the
building that served as the backdrop to this protest with bullets.
Something like four hundred and sixty rounds hit the building, alone.
(31:54):
There's no telling how manyone on the sides or anything
like that. The four hundred and sixty rounds, they said
every window was akin on every floor with bullet fire
on the on a crowd of crowd of students. Um,
and amazingly only two people died. Yeah, Philip Gibbs, he
was a pre law major and a father of an
eighteen monthly son. And James Green. He was seventeen years
(32:18):
old and he was a high school student walking home
from his job at the grocery store. Which again, the
fact that he's not involved in anyway and still died
makes it so much worse. Yeah. And this one, also,
I don't think we pointed out started out because of misinformation.
There was um a rumor that the mayor, Mayor Charles
Evers and his wife had been shot and killed, assassinated
(32:39):
basically it was not true. A relative of Mega Evers, right, Yeah,
he was his brother, and so that's kind of what
sparked everything. In addition to like the anti war protests,
and uh, it was very much about black and white.
Well yeah, I mean like there there. Yeah, so um,
this is a historically black call edge. The cops had
(33:02):
just opened fire on a bunch of students. Twelve people
were hit by injured by gunfire. Two were killed, and
the ambulances weren't called until the police picked up all
of their showcasings and left, and then the National Guard
came in. Yeah, and then after that the police denied
they even took part. Um. I'm not sure how that
(33:23):
panned out. How can you deny that he shot up
a building? So it was Mississippi in and historically black college.
And you probably never heard of Jackson State for NT
until we started researching this. I didn't. I hadn't heard
of it either, and there was only one source we
used that made reference to it. That's how I heard
(33:44):
about it. So that's great. It's just fantastic. That's what
happened against state in Jackson State, in Jackson State. Um,
you got anything else? I got nothing else. Just gotta
be a better ending of this than this. I mean,
these things happened, but there there has to have been
some lesson learned. I think. So it hasn't happened since. Yeah,
(34:06):
that's true. I wonder at least on a campus. Yeah,
we should do one on the Battle for Seattle. Did
they didn't fire live rounds at that though, did they
I'm pretty sure they didn't, but that, Yeah, we should
do one on that as well. Yeah, my friend John
was there agitating is he a black shirt? Now? He
had these funny protest lines about that references Simpsons. I
(34:29):
can't remember her black block, that's where they got the pictures. Yeah, Um,
well I have to interview him then. I don't know
that it would yield much information. Fine, I think he
was just cooping around. Um, all right, Well, if you
want to learn more about Kent State, you can type
in uh that name into the search bar how stuff
works dot com. And we also encourage you to go
(34:49):
look up Jackson State as well. Um. And let's see,
since I said search bar you it's time for listener mail, right, Yes, sir,
gonna call this. Prison guard wrote in, Hey guys, Um,
For the most part, I found the episode on capital
Punishment pretty even handed and interesting. However, I couldn't help
(35:10):
but notice a bit of venom in your voices whenever
you mentioned prison guards, especially in instance of an inmate
taking his own life with a razor blade while he
was being off observed on deathwatch. The implication was that
the guard on duty negligently gave the inmate a razor
in order to encourage him to take his own life.
I don't think we implied that, did we. Um, No,
(35:30):
it wasn't implied. It was more just like what kind
of thing? Like why why did that happen? As a
former prison guard that worked on death row, I have
to tell you, UM, that couldn't be further from the truth.
It's a civil right for inmates to have access to
razor blades for hygienic purposes. I was required to allow
an inmate on death row to keep the disposable razor
(35:51):
for thirty minutes, despite the fact that he had nearly
killed another inmate and murdered a prison official with a
razor blade while serving his senates. I'd imagine an inmate,
even on deathwatch, would have similar rights, but I can't
confirm through experience. UM. Guards that worked on death row
weren't allowed to serve on death watch. This is because
(36:12):
it was feared that we'd form an emotional bond to
the inmates set for execution. I might cause a scene.
So yes, prison guards have feelings and can have empathy
for others. Pop culture and nearly always portrays guards as
heavy as and villains and even smart portrayals of prison
life like Orange is the New Black, as every prison
official character as a comic book mustache twirling villain or
(36:33):
a mouth breathing idiot. It's a hard job and should
be respected as much as other high risk civil servant careers. Um.
A little disappointed you guys continue this trend, but I'm
used to it, so don't sweat it. So that is
from Craig, and he let us off easy, even though
he feels like we insulted his job. Well thanks, Craig.
(36:54):
I think he did exactly what we were kind of
searching for right then. We were just um ah, disgustedly confused.
We're disgustedly ignorant one of the two. Yeah. I will
say that he is probably right on the money. As
far as movie portrayals, it's pretty one note if you're
a prison guard in a movie in general, unless it's
(37:15):
The Green Mile and that movie has problems of its
own or OZ. I never watched Oz. What that was
the first? That Odds is the show that kicked off
all of the shows you love and binge watched. Now,
the idea of binge watching a show began with a
show like Oz because there was nothing like it ever
(37:36):
created before. It was. It all started with Oz, the Wire,
the shield, Um, House of Cards. Orange is a new
black Everything, every breaking bad, all of them. Can thank Oz.
You can thank Oz. You should go watch oz Man.
Thank you Oz. It's good, great man. This one was.
(38:00):
This is something I feel drained a little bit. Yeah, yeah,
emotionally exhausted. I'm still not happy with the ending. I
feel like we could have ended a lot better. But um,
I'll have to think on it all right. Uh. If
you want to get in touch with me and Chuck,
you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
You can hang out on our Facebook page, Facebook dot com,
slash Stuff you Should Know. Um. You can send us
(38:21):
an email to Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot
com and has always joined us at our home on
the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How Stuff
Works for more podcasts for my Heart Radio because at
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Hey everyone, it's me Josh and for this week's s
Y s K Select, I've chosen this episode on the
history of the Kent State Massacre, somewhat unknown, surprisingly and
definitely largely misunderstood moment in American history and kind of
a bummer, so prepare, but it's a good one. Enjoy, Enjoy.
(00:24):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
there's Jerry. And it's snowing outside, which means it's Stuff
You Should Know Snow Edition. Snow Edition. Yeah, I know
(00:46):
when we're like, we gotta record and get out of
here because this is Atlanta and snow kills us. I
just mainly don't want to be locked away from the snow.
I want to be able to like look out the
window and see it. I can now, but not as
well as I'd like to me. It's just a traffic thing.
Like people are probably leaving work right now. People have
already left the office here. Well, maybe everyone will be
(01:07):
gone by the time I get out there. Okay, you'll
just be the lone guy trudging through the snow. That's right,
like Vigo Mortenson in the road. Yes, although he was
not alone and there wasn't any snow. It was just
nuclear ash. Although there was snow because Charlie's there and
kills herself by going out into the snow. But that's
(01:28):
before everything really takes a downward. Spoiler alert retroactive spoiler alert,
Chuck Yep, are you familiar with Kent State? Yeah? Man,
I've been singing that Neil Young song all day. How
can you not? You cannot by having never heard it?
Like me, shut up? You know that song? Never heard it?
I've never listened to Neil Young. You've never heard the
(01:51):
song Ohio? No? I know the Pretender song, but I
don't think that's about Kent State. I'm shocked, Okay, I
mean you don't have and Young without Like, how's it
go humed for him? No, I'm not gonna Maybe I
have heard it ten Soldiers and Nixon Okay, Yeah, yeah,
I've heard it. I didn't know that was about Ohio
(02:12):
four Dead in Ohio yeah, okay. And I had no idea,
all right. I didn't know what that song was about.
I was just like, oh, Neil young really Yeah, oh man,
get ready to hear it. I'm sure alright, I'm used
to it by now, your bulletproof. Uh. Well, so you're
familiar with the Kent State shootings May four, Um, four
(02:34):
students were killed. I believe another eleven were injured, Yeah,
including one was paralyzed, like some pretty severe injuries. And uh,
this is a big deal. That would be a big
deal in and of itself if it was just some
sort of campus shooting or something like that, Like it
would be a very big deal these days. But what
made the Kent State shootings, for those of you who
(02:56):
aren't familiar with them, such an enormous deal was that
the shootings were carried out by National guardsmen. They were
Americans firing on Americans. Um, Americans on one side of
the equation firing on protesters on the other side. Uh.
And it was one of the darkest points in American history,
modern or otherwise. Yeah, it was. I think what's so
(03:18):
upsetting is it was random. It wasn't you know that
guy's coming at me with a bottle or a brick,
shoot him. It was random shooting into a crowd, Right,
That's the kind of thing that would happen in countries
under like dictatorships, not here in America. But it did
happen here in America, and not just at Kent State.
(03:38):
There was another similar incident just ten days later, um,
that we'll talk about as well. It gets overlooked, but yeah,
it was a very dark moment in American history, and
it came out of the the tensions, um over the
Vietnam War initially, but I think it was more than that.
It was also we should say that's the um, kind
of obvious thing that led to it, but also there
(04:02):
was a real tension also between the establishment and the
anti establishment. Yeah, and um, the people in control and
the people who weren't in control, students, elders, there's just
a lot of tension between two sides, and the dividing line,
the obvious dividing line, was the Vietnam War. Yeah, and UM,
(04:24):
I think if you are not of that generation, you
may not know the full story. Um. You might know
that four people were shot in a protest, and that's
about it. Maybe even if you're from that generation, you
may not know the full story. But we're about to
tell you. Okay, let's take it back a little further
than all right, Vietnam country which had when it's independence
from France and the fifties. Have you ever seen We
(04:46):
Were Soldiers. Yes, it's almost like a snuff film. It's
one of the most graphically violent movies I've ever seen
in my life. But it's about that transition from France
leaving Vietnam and America coming in. Yeah, go ahead. Well
it's just initially serving as advisors and then becoming embroiled
(05:10):
in the war. I forgot all about that movie, yeah,
you know, and Apocalypse Now there are some deleted scenes
of the meeting up with a French family in Vietnam
and like having dinner. Really yeah, and I remember when
I heard about that, I was like, what why were
they French? And then I did a little more homework
on it. Oh oh yeah, if you eat Vietnamese food,
like it's very clearly like, yeah, French influenced, well, all
(05:33):
most food is. But yeah sure, um so anyway, uh,
in the fifties they split between communists North and non
communist South. Vietnam and America didn't want communism spreading throughout Asia.
We had a policy of containment. Yeah, and so Richard Nixon,
um when he won the sixty eight election. Um. Part
(05:55):
of his promise was something called Vietnamization. It's kind of
an awkward word, and that meant to transfer the combat
duties from our soldiers to the South Vietnamese. That sounds familiar,
isn't it? It does? But um, what what happened was
at some point he said, you know what in nineteen
seventy in April, he said, I want to send our
(06:16):
soldiers in the Cambodia. And that caused sort of a
firestorm because it was a bit of a reversal of
what he said he was gonna do, and it, you know,
really embroiled us in the kind of the middle of things. Well, yeah,
he he escalated the war in Vietnam, which was already
a very um contentious issue, and that it was a war,
but also as a war that Congress never openly declared war.
(06:38):
So that's why, historically speaking, it's referred to as the
Vietnam conflict. Um. And so Nixon gets elected partially because
he's saying, I'm gonna get our boys out of there. Yeah,
we're not gonna like let the communists when we're gonna
prop up the Vietnamese, but um, we're gonna get out
of there. Instead, he escalates things by invading Cambodia, where
the Vietcong we're stationed, and that led to immediate protests.
(07:01):
That was April thirtieth, nineteen seventy, that he announced that
we had invaded Cambodia, and the next day is when
the first protest takes place at Kent State. Yeah, and
Kent the The article points out that it was not
the most likely place because it was a little more
blue collar than like say, Ohio State nearby, the Ohio
State University and um man, I'm sorry that is so stupid.
(07:28):
Sorry os U alums and fans and students, but it
is stupid, and everyone outside of Ohio State thinks it's stupid.
They take a lot of pride in that. The I know,
which I think just kind of fans the flames of
um derision. Yeah, you know, I can just start saying
the University of Georgia. That makes a little more sense,
(07:48):
does it. Yeah, what's the difference the Ohio State University
the University of Georgia. It's just it was the University
of Ohio State that would make more sense. Yeah, a
litt more to my ear, I got you my ear right,
there you see it. That's very nice, thank you. Um.
At any rate, uh, I can't say it was a
(08:10):
little more blue collar and you wouldn't think there would
be like protesting, but there was protesting at schools all
over the country. There were and you can read between
the lines here. Kent State had a lower hippie population
than Ohio State. Can we just come up right out
and say it, right, But there were protests there. Um,
there's a protest on May one, and it was a
standard uh war protests three days before the shootings, and
(08:32):
it's kind of when things got kicked off, right, But
these kids were still pretty good. They were at school
holding a protest in the commons, I believe, um, which
was the a k a. The quad or like the
big grassy area between in the middle of campus. Um.
And they said, you know what, this went pretty well.
Let's take the weekend off and we'll meet back here
one day and have another anti war protest because we're
(08:54):
really steamed about this. And everyone said, okay, let's do that,
and for tonight, let's go out and hit the bars
and it. Yeah, this is what they did. The first one.
They buried the constitution as a symbolic gesture. And the
second one they got drunk, right, not at the protest
but later that night. Right, so that Friday protests is
when they buried the constitution. Yes, this is like a
(09:15):
real protest, not just walking around. There's like stuff going
on and like you know, there's symbolic acts. It was
a real protest. Yeah. And if you combine alcohol and protesting,
things might get a little rowdy. So bonfires broke out,
they start throwing bottles at police cars, breaking windows. It's
more the little rowdy. I mean, that's pretty that's a riot.
(09:36):
When you said like bomb fires in the streets and
like throw bottles at at police cars, that you have
just basically said we've drawn a line in the sand.
Where are you gonna do, cops? That is one way
to look at it, for sure. Uh. The mayor, Leroy
Satram said, this is an emergency situation people. I need
(09:56):
to call the governor James Rhodes. We need some help.
I'm going to close the bar, which you know isn't
gonna make anyone very happy. No, And it had an
exacerbating effect apparently because that meant all the people who
weren't riding in the streets who were busy drinking in
the bars were now suddenly in the streets too and
joined the protests and the a k A. The riots, right, Uh,
(10:19):
that's right. And the police were called in. They used
tear gas and said go back to your dorm rooms,
basically get back on campus. And that was Friday. Now
we move on to Saturday. Yeah, and the Mayor's is
obviously a little jumpy. He's hearing rumors circulating that there's
gonna be another the scene from the night before is
going to happen all over again on Saturday. So he
(10:41):
calls the governor of Ohio and UM, here enters the
person who, in my opinion, is single handedly responsible for
what happened at Kent State. So the National Guard arrives. Um,
(11:14):
there were about a thousand protesters. Um that actually burned
down an r OTC building on campus, which is pretty
bold move. And UM, they didn't find out who did
that exactly, but they did cut fire hoses so they
couldn't put out the fire and basically burned it to
the ground. Yeah, the protesters set it on fire and
then cut the fire hoses like they wanted that building burned.
(11:36):
And apparently, UM, that's when the National Guard shows up
a couple like an hour or so later, right, Yeah,
and they, you know, broke everything up obviously. And then
Uh comes Sunday. You've got about a thousand National guardsman
and you've got Governor Rhodes arriving, uh and holding a
(11:58):
press conference and kind of flaming the fire again by
calling the protesters the worst type of people that we
harbor in America. Yeah, he compared to the brown Shirts,
Mussolini's brown Shirts, UM, the communists, UM, pretty much anybody
he could think of that was that would be disparaging.
That's who publicly at this press conference compared him to UM.
(12:21):
And you mentioned that the on Sunday morning, the UM
National Guard was on campus kind of keeping order and everything.
But apparently like the relations between the guardsmen and the
students were pretty amicable, Like people were chatting friendly, Like
there was no tension. It was just kind of like, hey,
I'm nineteen, Hey i'm nineteen, I'm a student at Kent State,
(12:44):
I'm in the National Guard. Let's hang out. And it
wasn't until the governor showed up and held this press
conference that things took a very sudden turn for the worse,
and it wasn't just the brown shirts calling him the
brown Shirts of the worst element that America harbor, but
also saying I may also declare martial law. Yeah, and
(13:05):
that I may message never quite got through in those
confusion as to whether or not that actually happened. And basically,
the National Guard believed that that had happened, and they
took control of the campus and said we're running the
show now. And that's just the National Guard. But the
university officials to the people running the university said, oh, well,
martial laws declared. And they knew that there was a
(13:27):
protest scheduled for the following day, Monday, so they printed
a bunch of flyers and pamphlets saying, hey, your constitutional
rights have been suspended because the universities under martial law,
so all assemblies banned, so don't protest, And that kind
of fell on deaf ears. I guess you could say,
come Monday morning, because the students showed up to protest. Yeah,
(13:50):
that definitely didn't work. Um, by noon, there was about
three thousand people, about five hundred actively protesting, another thousand
just there to be supportive. And um, and it cuts
it's a college campus. About people just checking it out. Yeah,
stopping on their way to class or whatever, you like,
what's going on. I would have done the same thing probably,
(14:10):
And we should say also are our buddy stuff they
don't want you to know? UM host and sometimes producer
Matt Frederick his parents were students at Kent stay and
they stay at home that day. They were like, there's
some bad stuff that's going to go down, and they
were right. Uh So, the article points out at was
(14:32):
less an anti war protest at this point and more
of a protest of the draconian occupation of their campus
martial law by the army and UM which is not
even real, which is just a misunderstanding. Yeah, pretty much.
So the general UM Canterbury says, you know what this
rally is over drive me around in a jeep, give
(14:53):
me that bullhorn, let me tell everyone to go home,
because that'll work. Yeah, I mean, let's go back to
this where these tensions came from. In the first it's
establishment versus anti establishment, and establishment is the type to
stand in a jeep and be driven around with the
bullhorn telling people to disperse. I don't know if there's
ever been a message relayed via bullhorn that doesn't fall
on deaf ears. Yeah, you know, it has the opposite effect, unless,
(15:18):
like I guess, in like a female situations, if you're
trying to like organize people and stuff, that helps. But
I always think of bullhorns is stuff like this, the
general riding around the jeep yelling at people to go home,
and people saying, no, you don understand why we're here
in the first place. So they started throwing rocks at
the jeep, not surprisingly and um not well think you
(15:40):
know tensions at this point this was day four. Yeah,
I I think though, though I'm not justifying, I'm just no, no,
I know you're not at all. But I think it's
really easy to to um to to kind of choose
one side or the other, especially once you know the outcome.
But I don't think it should be overlooked that, like
people are throwing rocks at this dude while he's driving
around in the jeep. People have burned down a building
(16:01):
full of rioted in the streets of the town, the
college town. I mean, like these are real huge events
that scared the pants off of the people who were
running the town, the state, the country. And I mean
to say that they were unprovoked as historically inaccurate. Yeah,
I totally agree with not justifying. But I think a
(16:22):
lot of people might think the story is people got
together to protest and the army came in and shot him, right,
or yeah, and and it was either the protests of fault.
They shouldn't have been protest, they shouldn't have burned down
that building, or you know, it was entirely the National
Guards fault. And you whatever historical event you're looking at,
it's never just one side or the other. Usually there's
(16:45):
all it's always great, and you have blinders on. If
you think otherwise, you should write a history book called
It's Always Great Josh Clark's History of America. I'd buy that,
thanks man. Um. Alright, so where are we? They were
throwing rocks at the General. He at this point ordered
his troops to load their weapons, get the tear gas going.
(17:07):
He said, they threw rocks, and you guys, load your weapons.
That's basically what happened. Um, not because his feelings were hurt. Yeah,
although imagine they were. I guess no matter who you are,
I'm sure if people throw rocks and you're like I
I take that personally. So the National Guard came in.
They pushed them back past the Commons, over a steep
(17:30):
called Blanket Hill and into the parking lot of Prentice
Hall in a practice football field. Then basically the guardsmen
found themselves cornered by a fence, retreated back up the hill.
When they got to the top, out of the seventy
turned and began firing their guns into the crowd. Yeah. So, well,
(17:53):
not all of them into the crowd, we should point out,
most into the air or the ground. Actually, although some
fired directly in the crowd, they all would have fired
directly in the crowd. That would have been a much
higher blood count or body count. Oh yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Um.
And I mean the the protesters were about a football
field away from them, um. And the fact that they
started to walk up the hill and then turn and
(18:14):
shot made it not just an attack of Americans on Americans,
but a surprise attack of Americans on Americans. Yeah. I
would say the students were definitely did not expect bullet retaliation.
Took about thirteen seconds. Um. Four students were killed. Alison Krauss,
not the Allison Krause obviously, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Sure and
(18:38):
William Schroeder, and uh, it's all tragic, but even more
tragically Sure and Schroeder were just walking to class. Yeah,
they weren't even part of this protest. They were in
the wrong place at the wrong time, and like I said,
nine people were wounded in one Dean collar was paralyzed.
And yeah, so those shots they shot into the air
(19:00):
and into the ground, but also into the crowd, and
over about thirteen seconds, they fired between sixty one and
sixty seven shots. I think that could be categorized as
a hail of gunfire. Yeah, thirteen seconds, sixties shots, But
is that that's like a lot of shots a second,
you know, and just from twenty eight guns. And apparently
there was a professor named Glenn Frank who did a
(19:22):
lot to quell the crowd and did talk them into, uh,
not escalating this thing any further. Right, So this article
really kind of glances over this guy's role. And it
wasn't just him, but he was the head of the
faculty marshals, who whose job it was was to basically
keep an eye on the protests. They were like the
university's liaison between the university and the students the protesters,
(19:47):
and this guy and his crew basically single handedly prevented
like a massacre because they saw very quickly that if
they didn't insinuate themselves, but between the guardsmen and the students,
the students were gonna be like, Holy, Holy God, they
just fired live ammunition on us, and they're standing right there,
(20:11):
let's get them. They would have attacked. The consensus is
the students would have attacked out of anger, and that
the guardsmen most definitely would have fired again when being attacked.
UM and these this this faculty member and his team
saw what was about to happen and slid in and
was like wait. So they first they spoke to the
guardsman and said, stop firing, we have to go talk
(20:34):
to the students. Then they went and spoke to the
students for twenty minutes and got him to calm down
enough to to to stop provoking or did not provoker,
advance on the guardsman in retaliation, and saved a lot
of lives. Probably. I wonder if there's a Glenn Frank
statue on campus, there should be agree. Uh. So they
(20:56):
closed school not for the day or the weekend, but
for the rest of the semester, and UM a lot
of colleges did the same. As far as shutting down, well,
because a lot of students went on strike. Yeah, and
like they were forced to the universities were forced to
shut down. Uh. In the following weekend, UM a hundred
thousand people went to d c UM to protest. Neil
(21:17):
Young News to Josh wrote a song about it. M Okay,
(21:41):
so the the shooting has just happened, that the crowd
has been quelled, the dead and Moon would have been
taken away an ambulances and now we've reached the aftermath
that's immediate and otherwise. Yeah, Um, President Nixon wasn't super compassionate.
He had earlier been overheard calling them bums. This wasn't
in his press release, obviously, but it definitely got out
(22:03):
in the press. Did not bode well for his reputation.
And um, he said, when dissent turns to violence, it
invites tragedy. That was the official line. That was the
official line, which is pretty cold. That's the president like, yeah,
you get what you what you pay for. Yeah, very much.
His vice president, um Agnew said it was predictable. UM
(22:26):
also not super compassionate, considering this these were Americans were
shot and killed Uh, two of which were just walking
to class. Uh. He called them a bunch of scared
kids with guns. The National guardsman. That was very priced
the speechwriter for Nixon. Yeah, which is true. Yeah, but
so basically the whole the whole kids, it's gray, you know.
It is like they probably were scared for sure, and
(22:48):
uh and yeah, I think that's fair. I think also
though it's it's one sided too, like he's he's not
saying and then also the other side, we're a bunch
of scared, angry kids with rocks. Yeah, like the only
way and you can't even remove the gray, but you'd
have to find out each person who shot and what
their motive was, because some were probably scared out of
(23:09):
their mind and reacted. There has been some people later
on that said that they some got together and decided
to do this, some of the guardsmen, right, so, when
they had been pushing the crowd back onto the UM
practice football field, apparently while they were loitering there. There
have been allegations that a couple of the guardsmen said, Hey,
(23:31):
when we marched back up the hill, we're going to
turn and fire. It's never been proven, um, but a
few more than a couple of historians have leveled that accusation. Um.
There was also immediate word that the guardsman said that
they were acting in self defense because they there was
a sniper on one of the rooftops and that they
(23:51):
were being fired on. They found out that there were
audio recordings of this, and UM, that was quickly changed
to well, it was self defense because these people we're
throwing rocks at us. There was a presidential commission obviously, UM,
and they concluded it was quote unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.
And then in UH, an FBI investigation found that the
(24:14):
guardsman fabricated their defense and that they were not in
true danger. Right. That was FBI. So the presidential commission
and the FBI investigation both said, like, this shouldn't have happened,
and like it's on the guardsman. But that wasn't the
mood of the nation for the most part. There was
a gallop pole that was conducted shortly after, and UM,
(24:34):
the majority of Americans said that it was the protester's
fault for protesting. Yeah, I mean it went to trial too.
It wasn't just like, oh, well this happened and it's
super sad. Uh. And in federal trial, it was dismissed
because of what was called a weak case by the guardsman,
and then the grand jury in Ohio put the blame
on the university officials and the protesters and not the guardsman.
(24:58):
And then there was a civil trial in nineteen seventy
nine settled out of court where the victims and families
got a collective sum of six d seventy dollars ah
collective some meaning I guess that was for all of them, right, yeah, yeah,
they all split that and no apology was apology was
ever issued. Um, they did issue a sign statement expressing regret.
(25:22):
Do you want to hear it? Yeah, So this is
the sign statement that the that was that came out
of the civil trial that the Ohio National Guard released
to the families of the victims. In retrospect, the tragedy
of May fourth, nineteen seventies should not have occurred. The
students may have believed that they were right in continuing
their mass protests in response to the Cambodian invasion, even
though this protest followed the posting and reading by the
(25:44):
university of an order to ban rallies and in 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 their own, in their own minds,
that their lives were in danger. Hindsight suggests that another
method would have resolved the confrontation. Better ways must be
(26:06):
found to deal with such a confrontation. We devoutly wish
that a means had been found to avoid the May
fourth 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 asswadge the
(26:27):
tragic memories regarding that sad day. I don't apology, no
sort of like we regret, hindsight being we might have
shaid have done something differently right saying we regret instead
of I'm sorry. Is that's a big flashing light. It's
a big death. Uh. And for many years they um
(26:49):
the university itself wasn't quite sure how to handle moving
forward in memoriam and otherwise. UM. In the seventies, they
the officials at Kent State failed. They tried to, but
they tried to commemorate it just once every five years
instead of every year. And everybody who held the visuals like,
well then you have nothing to do with this. And
(27:11):
they kept showing up every year, right like what are
you gonna do? Calling the National Guard and remove us?
And they went. Uh. In nineteen seventy nine, there were
hundreds of arrest because the university tried to bulldoze the
place where it happened to build a gym that didn't happen. Uh.
And it took all the way up until to keep
(27:32):
cars from driving over the spots in the parking lot
where the students were killed. Right. And then finally in
the mid two thousand's, UM, the university is finally reverse
this position and just kind of goes with the flow.
And in two thirteen they opened a visitors center that
is all about commemorating this event as a historical event.
(27:56):
But also I get the impression from the the descriptions
of the visitors center a UM kind of the spiritual
aspect of it. The spiritual aspect of tragedy and is
that just last year? Uh. Now the university UM, they say,
as a nation's leader in UH courses of non violence
and democracy and peace studies and conflict resolution classes were
(28:20):
all established, so they, you know, are trying to lead
the way forward and at least being a symbol of uh,
you know, peaceful protest, right. And people are still trying
to figure out what happened. There's still lots of debate. UM.
Oliver Stone unsurprisingly favors the theory that the government placed
a sniper UM in these protests and that there were
(28:42):
government plant agitators who pushed the protests over the line. UM.
And this idea is supported by the fact that there
were policies by governors and the president to crack down
on dissent on student anti war protests. So there definitely
was a policy that was like, if you want to
get dirty, we'll we'll we'll send our goons to beat
(29:05):
you up. UM. But a lot of people think that
the presence of a snipers totally unsupported. UM. But then
a cassette emerged UH fairly recently that that's an actual
audio recording of that day that says supposedly you can
hear um the phrases get, set, point, and fire, which
(29:28):
means that this wasn't a surprise knee jerk shooting. That
there was an officer commanding the guardsman to shoot. Yeah.
And it also, um, you know what, with modern analysis,
they think that there may have been shots fired before
uh full I think seventy seconds before the guardsmen fired.
(29:48):
There's a a Kin State student named Terry Norman UM
who was a photographer on campus taking pictures, and he
also had a handgun, a loaded handgun, and he denied
that he discharged it. But um, he has been accused
of triggering this by firing shots. And I think they
(30:08):
found evidence, audio evidence that there were shots fired, and
they think it maybe have been Terry Norman. Wow, that
kicked it all off. And can you imagine carrying that around? No?
I could not. And then chuck um. This is a
lot of people say that that Kent State was the
beginning of the um slide towards Watergate. For Nixon, this
(30:32):
is like the beginning of the end for him. Um.
And then we should also talk about what happened at
Jackson State because race relations of this country are so
messed up that everybody talks about Kent State where four
white students died, and no one talks about Jackson State,
which happened ten days later and two black people died,
(30:53):
black students. Yeah, and could have been a lot worse.
Like they basically riddled a dormitory with a hail of
gun fire. So ten days after Kent State UM, at
Jackson State University UM in Mississippi, UH, they were also
carrying out anti war protests, but they were also UM
(31:13):
protests based on racism as well. UM. And when these
students were doing a lot of the similar stuff, a
lot of the same stuff that was happening or had
happened at Kent State, they were UM riding. They had
burned a building on campus down and UM. When firefighters
came out to put out the flames, they started to
(31:33):
get worried that these protesters were going to harm them,
so they called the cops. Well, the cops came out,
tried to disperse the crowd. The crowd didn't disperse, so
they opened fire, and like you said, they riddled the
building that served as the backdrop to this protest with bullets.
Something like four hundred and sixty rounds hit the building, alone.
(31:54):
There's no telling how manyone on the sides or anything
like that. The four hundred and sixty rounds, they said
every window was akin on every floor with bullet fire
on the on a crowd of crowd of students. Um,
and amazingly only two people died. Yeah, Philip Gibbs, he
was a pre law major and a father of an
eighteen monthly son. And James Green. He was seventeen years
(32:18):
old and he was a high school student walking home
from his job at the grocery store. Which again, the
fact that he's not involved in anyway and still died
makes it so much worse. Yeah. And this one, also,
I don't think we pointed out started out because of misinformation.
There was um a rumor that the mayor, Mayor Charles
Evers and his wife had been shot and killed, assassinated
(32:39):
basically it was not true. A relative of Mega Evers, right, Yeah,
he was his brother, and so that's kind of what
sparked everything. In addition to like the anti war protests,
and uh, it was very much about black and white.
Well yeah, I mean like there there. Yeah, so um,
this is a historically black call edge. The cops had
(33:02):
just opened fire on a bunch of students. Twelve people
were hit by injured by gunfire. Two were killed, and
the ambulances weren't called until the police picked up all
of their showcasings and left, and then the National Guard
came in. Yeah, and then after that the police denied
they even took part. Um. I'm not sure how that
(33:23):
panned out. How can you deny that he shot up
a building? So it was Mississippi in and historically black college.
And you probably never heard of Jackson State for NT
until we started researching this. I didn't. I hadn't heard
of it either, and there was only one source we
used that made reference to it. That's how I heard
(33:44):
about it. So that's great. It's just fantastic. That's what
happened against state in Jackson State, in Jackson State. Um,
you got anything else? I got nothing else. Just gotta
be a better ending of this than this. I mean,
these things happened, but there there has to have been
some lesson learned. I think. So it hasn't happened since. Yeah,
(34:06):
that's true. I wonder at least on a campus. Yeah,
we should do one on the Battle for Seattle. Did
they didn't fire live rounds at that though, did they
I'm pretty sure they didn't, but that, Yeah, we should
do one on that as well. Yeah, my friend John
was there agitating is he a black shirt? Now? He
had these funny protest lines about that references Simpsons. I
(34:29):
can't remember her black block, that's where they got the pictures. Yeah, Um,
well I have to interview him then. I don't know
that it would yield much information. Fine, I think he
was just cooping around. Um, all right, Well, if you
want to learn more about Kent State, you can type
in uh that name into the search bar how stuff
works dot com. And we also encourage you to go
(34:49):
look up Jackson State as well. Um. And let's see,
since I said search bar you it's time for listener mail, right, Yes, sir,
gonna call this. Prison guard wrote in, Hey guys, Um,
For the most part, I found the episode on capital
Punishment pretty even handed and interesting. However, I couldn't help
(35:10):
but notice a bit of venom in your voices whenever
you mentioned prison guards, especially in instance of an inmate
taking his own life with a razor blade while he
was being off observed on deathwatch. The implication was that
the guard on duty negligently gave the inmate a razor
in order to encourage him to take his own life.
I don't think we implied that, did we. Um, No,
(35:30):
it wasn't implied. It was more just like what kind
of thing? Like why why did that happen? As a
former prison guard that worked on death row, I have
to tell you, UM, that couldn't be further from the truth.
It's a civil right for inmates to have access to
razor blades for hygienic purposes. I was required to allow
an inmate on death row to keep the disposable razor
(35:51):
for thirty minutes, despite the fact that he had nearly
killed another inmate and murdered a prison official with a
razor blade while serving his senates. I'd imagine an inmate,
even on deathwatch, would have similar rights, but I can't
confirm through experience. UM. Guards that worked on death row
weren't allowed to serve on death watch. This is because
(36:12):
it was feared that we'd form an emotional bond to
the inmates set for execution. I might cause a scene.
So yes, prison guards have feelings and can have empathy
for others. Pop culture and nearly always portrays guards as
heavy as and villains and even smart portrayals of prison
life like Orange is the New Black, as every prison
official character as a comic book mustache twirling villain or
(36:33):
a mouth breathing idiot. It's a hard job and should
be respected as much as other high risk civil servant careers. Um.
A little disappointed you guys continue this trend, but I'm
used to it, so don't sweat it. So that is
from Craig, and he let us off easy, even though
he feels like we insulted his job. Well thanks, Craig.
(36:54):
I think he did exactly what we were kind of
searching for right then. We were just um ah, disgustedly confused.
We're disgustedly ignorant one of the two. Yeah. I will
say that he is probably right on the money. As
far as movie portrayals, it's pretty one note if you're
a prison guard in a movie in general, unless it's
(37:15):
The Green Mile and that movie has problems of its
own or OZ. I never watched Oz. What that was
the first? That Odds is the show that kicked off
all of the shows you love and binge watched. Now,
the idea of binge watching a show began with a
show like Oz because there was nothing like it ever
(37:36):
created before. It was. It all started with Oz, the Wire,
the shield, Um, House of Cards. Orange is a new
black Everything, every breaking bad, all of them. Can thank Oz.
You can thank Oz. You should go watch oz Man.
Thank you Oz. It's good, great man. This one was.
(38:00):
This is something I feel drained a little bit. Yeah, yeah,
emotionally exhausted. I'm still not happy with the ending. I
feel like we could have ended a lot better. But um,
I'll have to think on it all right. Uh. If
you want to get in touch with me and Chuck,
you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
You can hang out on our Facebook page, Facebook dot com,
slash Stuff you Should Know. Um. You can send us
(38:21):
an email to Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot
com and has always joined us at our home on
the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you
Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How Stuff
Works for more podcasts for my Heart Radio because at
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