Forty years ago today, four students at Kent State University — Allison Krause, Jeff Miller, Sandy Scheuer and  William Schroeder — were murdered by agents of the US government. It was maybe the signature event of my generation in terms of demonstrating how far the government would go to stifle dissent. None of the students were armed, and none presented even the  remotest threat to the National Guardsmen on campus. Yet, no soldier was ever prosecuted for the crime.
A few days after the killings, protesters at my high school in East Meadow, New York, were set upon by right-wing students shouting anti-Semitic slogans. It was no Kent State, but it was an indication that the roots of Kent State were deeply embedded in our soil. When African-American Congressmen are spat upon by tea party members in Washington DC, we are reminded yet again that the poison continues to spread.
In 2007, I wrote a book called “Generation on Fire” in response to Kent State, but primarily as a tribute to the remarkable courage and rebellious spirit that sparked so many of the great changes that came out of the 1960s, Â The last chapter was devoted to the memory of Allison Krause, as told by her boyfriend, Barry Levine, and her mother Doris while I cried into my tape recorder. Here is a pdf of the chapter. Feel free to pass it around. I posted a few more pictures on the book’s Web site here.
It’s been forty years but I’m still very pissed off about Kent State and Richard Fucking Nixon and the cowards who fired those deadly bullets but who still get to drink their beers and sun their big bellies in their backyards while four kids who had been looking forward to long, happy lives, are instead in the ground, their families still devastated
We don’t know who you are, but you do. I hope that every moment of contentment you’ve had since that afternoon has been offset by misery and guilt. I wonder whether some time today you’ll pause to think with regret about the lives you destroyed. But I doubt it. After all, they shoot students, don’t they?
The US govenment sucks!!!
Thanks. This means a lot.
kent state was a watershed event in my life, a loss of innocence from which i have not after 40 years recovered. i feel almost cowardly or weak or soft about this. after all i was not in the jungles of viet nam ( i was a conscientious objector) and fought my viet nam war in the comfort of the streets of southern illinois university. but the memories of that day still haunt me; the response of the government, spiro’s agnew’s speeches, the statements of other students at kent state (those students shouldn’t have been there in the first place!), nixon’s statements of “regret” about what happens when dissent turns violent, the attitudes of the “silent majority” and the “hardhats”. i left america that day and after 40 years still feel alone and isolated in the middle of my own country.
Thank you, i remember what happened that day.
I remember the Kent State Massacre quite well, including Nixon’s calling the students “bums”. However, from a physical distance (I was living in Philadelphia at the time), I didn’t really *feel* what had happened. The interview with Barry Levine and Doris Krause was my first opportunity actually to “be there” at that time with *real* people. Reading it left me momentarily devastated. So many lives were ruined unnecessarily at the behest of our government!. I’m at a loss for more words….
At first, I thought my country was just making mistakes, with the war and all. After experiencing the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, I decided that my country was fucked up. After Kent State, I decided this wasn’t my fucking country anymore, even though I stayed here. Still fell that way.
Bad typo…still FEEL that way. Guess that proves I was there and can’t see or type worth a shit.