50 YEARS AGO TODAY - Have We Forgotten?
Richard B. Gagliano (Rick/Rich)
I am Living and Loving Life…Are You? Let’s engage! (Retired higher education professional)
Q. Mr. President [Richard M. Nixon], what do you think the students are trying to say in this demonstration?
THE PRESIDENT (Richard M. Nixon]. They are trying to say that they want peace. They are trying to say that they want to stop the killing. They are trying to say that they want to end the draft. They are trying to say that we ought to get out of Vietnam. I agree with everything that they are trying to accomplish.
The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre) occurred at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, in the United States and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis. Some of the students who were shot had been protesting the Cambodian Campaign, which President Richard Nixon announced during a television address on April 30. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.
There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of four million students, and the event further affected public opinion—at an already socially contentious time—over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings)
The Kent State shootings on May 4th, 1970 became the central theme of the Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young (CSN&Y) song: "OHIO"
RELATED KENT STATE HISTORICAL LINKS:
- https://dept.kent.edu/sociology/lewis/lewihen.htm
- https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/kent-state
- https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=2496
- https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0504.html
- https://time.com/3839195/life-magazine-kent-state/
50 YEARS
AGO
?TODAY
