General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhere were you May 4, 1970?
Just to try to give reprieve from the current shit show, I thought perhaps bringing up a past event.
I think I was in 8th grade. I grew up about 20 miles from KSU and a couple of my first year teachers had graduated from there. They interrupted our classes to follow the incoming news. My brother was a student there; didnt see the shootings but there was still blood out on the commons that he saw later that day.
So many shootings now they all run together. Of course this one differed in that it was the National Guard doing the shooting.
pwb
(11,287 posts).
HAB911
(8,911 posts)joy, joy
oldtime dfl_er
(6,931 posts)We walked out and did a spontaneous protest march.
sinkingfeeling
(51,470 posts)murielm99
(30,755 posts)luvs2sing
(2,220 posts)I grew up a couple hours south of Kent. I was sitting in the side yard after school with two friends. We were doing homework, and I was memorizing the poem If by Rudyard Kipling. It was probably around 4pm, so I guess several mothers, including mine, had just turned on the TV or radio because suddenly there were mothers everywhere looking for their kids. My mother and the neighbor woman ran to the side yard where we were. My mother was weeping as she grabbed me. The neighbor woman, who had an older son at Ohio State, wailed, Theyre killing our children! I had no idea what was happening.
After watching the news and eating dinner, I went back to my memorization, but the poem took on greater meaning for me. The next day, after I flawlessly recited it, the teacher, a grouchy old woman who disliked me from day one, asked what the poem meant to me. I told her I thought that if the governor and national guard had been made to memorize it perhaps there would not be four dead students in Kent. And thats how I ended up in the principals office for the first and only time in twelve years of school.
TruckFump
(5,812 posts)In Isla Vista -- enjoying some "home grown."
benld74
(9,909 posts)doc03
(35,363 posts)I started my job that I retired from in 2010 I had 9 days short of 40 years. I remember in those days
we had people then that thought the students deserved to be shot. I remember Republicans saying "Love it or Leave it"
Things are even worse today.
Igel
(35,347 posts)jpak
(41,758 posts)We had a school-wide sit-down strike the next day.
The Principal and Square Teachers were livid.
That said - we may be lurching to a New 1968.
Worst American Year year in my life.
former9thward
(32,068 posts)The invasion occurred May 1, 1970. PSU had one of the last SDS (Students for a Democratic Society for you younger folks) chapters in the nation and when Kent State happened we shut down the University for the rest of the school year. Radicals in the Rose City has a good chapter on the event.
rsdsharp
(9,195 posts)It was my 16th birthday.
flotsam
(3,268 posts)Hekate
(90,773 posts)...outcome for years.
I had been in college in California from 1965-1968, and I was fortunate that my college and my community were not volatile, but my friends and I were deeply affected nonetheless. We worked for Bobby Kennedy and Gene McCarthy. We died inside when Bobby was gunned down, just the latest in a long string of black and white American heroes. When it came time to transfer to a California University, I bought a ticket and went back to where I grew up. As I toted my suitcase through LAX, a plane from Chicago spilled off a load of passengers wearing black armbands, showing that they had been at the disastrous Democratic Convention.
By 1970 it felt like it was never going to end.
But gradually it did get better, and we relaxed.
Still, there are those dark forces -- and they are back.
Dave in VA
(2,039 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)from our wonderfully comfy little first home in West Hollywood.
News wasn't like now in those days, but I heard that morning, so must have been special reports, updates during the day?, and of course my husband and I watched the evening news. When I was older I realized that was a period of emotional distancing to keep the ugliness of Vietnam, Cambodia, assassinations out of the life my husband and I had begun. Not admirable, but tragedies like this were shocking but distant. My little world was far more about our baby's struggles to lift his little head up to look around, and sleep deprivation.
It would have been very different if we'd had a brother there, of course.
Codeine
(25,586 posts)Prison, in my case, being the ICU incubator I spent six weeks in after breaking out of my previous cell before my initial sentence had been completed.
DeminPennswoods
(15,290 posts)Finishing my sophomore year.
maveric
(16,445 posts)One of the cool teachers heard it on the radio after a smoke break and told the class.
Delmette2.0
(4,168 posts)I was very much aware of the war protests and I broke my heart to see the night time news.
elocs
(22,597 posts)Stinky The Clown
(67,817 posts)NCLefty
(3,678 posts)America was joined in grief that day.