Someone asked me about Kent when they connected with me and in classic form I hit the accept button before I remembered to make a note to email her back. Senility is starting really early. But since I had already started planning what I wanted to say when I realized I didn't remember who I was supposed to say it to, I figured I would just post my thoughts and hope she spotted it.
On May 4th 1970, I was not yet 1 year old so by the time I got to Kent, the whole thing had turned into an annual media circus stripped of meaning other than the fact that we got a half day off classes. Seriously, one year a bunch of us piled into a car and went to the mall to get away. I lived in Engleman Hall, and in fact my freshman year room overlooked the Commons where all the bruogh-ha-ha went on. The whole thing would have had no meaning at all for me had it not been for on professor.
Dr. George "I had the name first" Harrison was a great story teller and an amazing teacher. I had the great fortune to bump into him a few years ago and I got the opportunity to tell him he was one of the most influential teachers I ever had. Dr Harrison enlisted during World War II and at the end of the war went to college on the brand new GI Bill. I saw a picture once of the special housing set up for the new college students, mobile homes by the hundreds. Dr. Harrison and his wife lived in one of those while he got his doctorate in Educational Sociology. He was teaching a class in White Hall (across the street from Engleman and close enough to hear the shots fired) when it happened. I happened to have his class in the spring semester and he took time in class to explain why this was so important.
It wasn't that there were protests, or that people were killed. Every university in the country was having protests. Two kids at Jacksonville State were killed (but they were black, it was a different issue). The leaders of the "revolution" were all rich kids. Rick kids have a lot more latitude in getting into trouble.
Middle class kids are a different story. The kids who were killed at Kent that day where white, middle class kids. To hold the country you have to have the middle class on your side and once you've lost them, you might as well resign. That's what made the difference. Not the timing or the death, but who they were. It was the beginning of the end for the Vietnam Era.
So that's what I remember about Kent's tragic history. I keep waiting to see something like that develop or happen now, but I think they learned their lesson the first time. Back then the middle class was getting affluent enough to start thinking about these things, now the screws are on in all directions. They're making sure the middle class is stretched tight financially and terrified by the terrorist boogey man. I also heard that the government was giving out some kind of coupon for something that will improve your TV reception which will effective drug the middle class with entertainment. The revolution will not be televised because there's a reality show in that time slot.
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Comments: 10
I was 13 when the Kent State massacre occurred. Living only 2 hours south of there, we felt it hard. There were riots at OSU, and many of the high schools, including the one I would eventually attend. I remember being horribly afraid for my brother and my neighbors who attended high school here. It was a senseless tragedy, and you're right, it affected the middle class like no other event of the war had. It brought it home.
Funnily enough I just re-bought Graham Nash's "Songs for beginners" and got it today, it has his version of that song OHIO on it.