The day after the Kent State shootings in 1970, a Gallup poll showed that 58 percent of respondents placed blame for the students' deaths on the protesters, while just 11 percent blamed the National Guardsmen who shot them. - ThreadSky

kevinmkruse.bsky.social • 344 days ago

The day after the Kent State shootings in 1970, a Gallup poll showed that 58 percent of respondents placed blame for the students' deaths on the protesters, while just 11 percent blamed the National Guardsmen who shot them.

Reposted from Daniel Radosh

Not gonna lie, I feel kind of stupid only just now realizing that the unquestioned historical legacy of Kent State I grew up knowing had to have taken a decade to solidify and that at the time most people, or at least most of the establishment, probably thought those little bastards had it coming

Comments

bostonbean.bsky.social•344 days ago

The establishment media blamed the students. And they never even mentioned the massacre at Jackson State less than 2 weeks later (because those students were black)

rhurst.bsky.social•344 days ago

One might think that in a society that commits much “victim blaming” such as ours fewer people what want to identify as a “victim”. And, yet, Trump and MAGA.🤔

chrisnoto.bsky.social•344 days ago

“What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground…” I was nineteen on that day. I knew, then, that my country would not have to send me to Vietnam to kill me, as they had done to Fred Hampton, the most thrilling public speaker I ever heard, just a couple of miles south of where I lived.

theskeptibrarian.bsky.social•344 days ago

My vague memory is of my father being very mad that the students had taken over the ROTC building.

robertelee.bsky.social•344 days ago

I remember when this happened.

jbminn.bsky.social•344 days ago

i have a vague contemporaneous memory of the kent state shooting, but none of the other police or nat'l guard shootings of students in that same period.

that one photo forced the public to confront what was happening in a way unlike other reporting.

jbminn.bsky.social•344 days ago

(this occurred over time, obviously. the photo *stuck around* and impacted public perception)

nwayne66.bsky.social•344 days ago

It was everywhere.

jbminn.bsky.social•344 days ago

indeed. that single photo told the story. it was undeniable.

CSNY's Ohio. the public was not gonna be told a glossed-over version of events.

this happened. look, listen.

nwayne66.bsky.social•344 days ago

It was a defining moment in our history.

devilmikey.bsky.social•344 days ago

Can't be that defining, we're about to do it again in about 5 minutes. I suspect the only lesson really learned is to be clear with the national guard not to shoot anyone this time, it's bad publicity. Sigh.

neurosismancer.gay•344 days ago

Jackson State, a historically black college, had the National Guard shoot up a whole dorm about a week after Kent State, and nobody ever discusses it

jbminn.bsky.social•344 days ago

racism plays its usual role

neurosismancer.gay•344 days ago

exactly

brianlyman.bsky.social•344 days ago

Honest question: Was there any shift in the weeks that followed as details emerged? I know Joe Alsop strongly condemned it and even Vince Lombardi registered his disgust.

brianralexander.bsky.social•344 days ago

Yes. Ohio native here. As details emerged even conservatives (most everybody) in my small town came to view the state national guard as being poorly led and acting unjustifiably.

darkloom52.bsky.social•344 days ago

Possibly the first time it occurred to me that this really wasn't my country

christopherharris.bsky.social•344 days ago

The morning after the massacre, I heard a racket and looked out a window facing the high school across the street in my tiny western NC town. It was a group of students waving signs, and dumb ass that I was, I assumed they were protesting the shootings. Nope. They were there to support the shooters.

theowlwagon.bsky.social•344 days ago

Later on in the day, I joined hundreds of my classmates at our small liberal arts college in rural MN, camping out overnight on the lawn in front of the student union. 4 guys burned their draft cards. At the time, I felt like the entire universe was on our side. Not so much, turns out. ☮️✌️🕊️

christopherharris.bsky.social•344 days ago

I have to tell you, the couple years I spent in grad school focusing on 20th century Italy aren’t making me exactly hopeful about the current goings on here in the Stati Uniti.

theowlwagon.bsky.social•344 days ago

Same here. I want to say "What's past is prologue" but I've never actually used that Shakespeare quote and I'm not completely sure about it's aptness here. It feels apt.

theowlwagon.bsky.social•344 days ago

!!!

lizsp.bsky.social•344 days ago

Historian at Kent State here. When I first started teaching here circa 2001 used to show intro Modern US History class a documentary Kent State: The Day the War Came Home. Always struck by quote from a KSU student on campus on May 4, 1970 whose dad told her more students should have been shot.

lizsp.bsky.social•344 days ago

Current first year students at KSU in their FYE class always go to the May 4 Visitors Center to learn about the events of 1970. Perhaps Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley (Stanford History B.A.) should visit along with anyone else who thinks calling out the national Guard is a good idea.

jasonskiles.bsky.social•344 days ago

Would they learn anything that would change their minds? I guess I figured that Cotton was endorsing the Kent State murders with his eyes wide open.

lizsp.bsky.social•344 days ago

I suspect you are sadly correct. Both Cotton and Hawkeye despite their elite educations seem indifferent to actually learning anything that doesn’t fit their ideological world view. But I still think they should go and reckon with the human consequences of their rhetoric.

aethyr.bsky.social•343 days ago

They were monsters before they went to university and now they think themselves as above everyone else. They didn't get an education, they got a degree.

parisdog.bsky.social•344 days ago

I have seen that somewhere but I can't remember where. my jaw dropped when I heard her say that. nice father.

lizsp.bsky.social•344 days ago

It’s a pretty good documentary and even though it came out in 2000 in time for the 30th anniversary of the shootings, it’s well worth finding and viewing.

paulmpax.bsky.social•344 days ago

meanwhile, some contemporary to 1970 America were like...

sarcoidsally.bsky.social•344 days ago

I was born in Ohio, had only graduated HS in '. '69, and remember well most people believed the students brought it on themselves. And that f*cker Rhodes swearing "he had no other choice". But then next election, he lost

monicamcj.bsky.social•344 days ago

I was too little, but learned that my dad, a teacher in Akron, was horrified and had a giant falling out with colleagues. He and a friend ate their lunches together in their classrooms for years rather than sit with those others. My father-in-law ashamedly admitted to approving of it at the time.

webrant.bsky.social•344 days ago

Cognitive authoritarianism was a helluva drug.

https://bsky.app/profile/kevinmkruse.bsky.social/post/3kquyzbbdpk2l

brianbartky.bsky.social•343 days ago

I was in sixth grade when it happened and every adult I knew except for my mom openly said that the only thing wrong was that more students should have been shot. I read that 58% supported the National Guard in @willbunch.bsky.social’s piece on Kent State and was surprised it wasn’t higher.

shellieh.bsky.social•344 days ago

We thought we were the good guys. Fake news

bisonfish.bsky.social•344 days ago

As I recall the Silent Majority didn’t think they had killed *enough* kids

nerdista.bsky.social•344 days ago

If only protestors were peaceful, folks would support them.

hammancheez.bsky.social•344 days ago

the longform article I read on Kent State was absolutely revelatory for me but simultaneously a 'well of course they loved it' reality check

nwayne66.bsky.social•344 days ago

Do you have a link or remember where you read it by any chance? I’d love to read it.

hammancheez.bsky.social•344 days ago

I found it!

nwayne66.bsky.social•344 days ago

You rock, thank you!

rockshrimp.bsky.social•343 days ago

Thank you this is amazing.

kst.bsky.social•344 days ago

I heard an interview with a National Guardsman who was on phone duty the next day. All the phone calls he took from "regular" people frothing at the mouth with rage & saying they should have killed more protestors not only sickened him, it radicalized him.

electriceden92.bsky.social•344 days ago

https://twitter.com/mattprigge/status/1299058513117958147

gjwalk.bsky.social•344 days ago

I was in eighth grade when Kent State happened. Hippies were somehow feared. Peace and love were too dangerous for the Silent Majority.

johngrahamiv.bsky.social•344 days ago

https://youtu.be/TRE9vMBBe10?si=gNqRlFGK5UcMGsHn

orcwizard.bsky.social•343 days ago

Yikes. And yet, some people want to give the Jan 6 violence a pass. Sickening.

scriptor.bsky.social•344 days ago

even in the 2000s I remember the history channel had a documentary that clearly tried to repaint the protestors as the aggressors

empressnorton.bsky.social•343 days ago

I was a child at the time of the Kent and Jackson State shootings, too young to remember the reaction. But in the 1980s, when there was an encampment at Stanford to call for divestment from South Africa, I both spent time at the encampment and recorded (still have in a file somewhere) ...

empressnorton.bsky.social•343 days ago

... everything I heard or read anyone in the Palo Alto area saying for _or against_ divestment from South Africa. No one came out in favor of apartheid, but there were definitely voices against divestment, and some of them were "Mandela is a commie" types of voices ...

empressnorton.bsky.social•343 days ago

... that even if apartheid was bad, some of the anti-divestment to apartheid folks weren't sure resistance to apartheid was better. Now I'm afraid to look at that old document, and part of me wants to toss it ...

empressnorton.bsky.social•343 days ago

I do, of course, also have dubious memories of some of the college left in my time. Every part of the political spectrum, at any time, has its fools. I would not have wanted the small "the Cultural Revolution was good actually" Maoist contingent to gain influence ....

empressnorton.bsky.social•343 days ago

... They weren't part of the anti-apartheid encampment, though.

empressnorton.bsky.social•343 days ago

One white South African student stopped by the encampment while I was there, and said that apartheid needed to end ASAP, but was American treatment of Native Americans any different. He's the only South African I remember, not a large SA student contingent at the time. /end

antonjpierce.bsky.social•344 days ago

I remember my grandfather thinking that the "dirty hippies" got what was coming to them. Not a memory of him that I relish.

passeriform.bsky.social•344 days ago

Things like this remind me not to complain _all_ the time about my parents, who were heartsick and blamed the National Guard and the governor.

normajane.bsky.social•344 days ago

In a demonstration of art improving life and etc., it was only Neil Young’a song Ohio that brought the shooting to my awareness.

normajane.bsky.social•344 days ago

Young’s*. (I was a child at the time)

firstamendmentgirl.bsky.social•344 days ago

A friend's dad said at dinner that night, "They should have killed more of them." It was only one bad take of many, but my friend says their relationship was never the same.

elizabethc.bsky.social•344 days ago

I was 11 and horrified that the govt would turn military force on its own people. I was a child of the 60s growing up with daily Vietnam War news (including body counts), civil rights clashes, and expanding women's rights. Social eruptions that shaped my liberal world view.

scottynola.bsky.social•344 days ago

Same. I was about nine when it happened and I was horrified. I had no idea what the prevailing "take" at the time was....

curiousaudio.bsky.social•344 days ago

don't go with the crowd, always blame who CSNY blamed

jameslonghurst.bsky.social•344 days ago

I have some stories to tell about teaching at a small college with a regional draw in rural Ohio in the 2000s. The children (grandchildren?) of the 58% are still there, and experience some cognitive dissonance.

nooneletgo.bsky.social•344 days ago

I'm not trying to make light of this, but thank goodness Neil Young was part of the 11 percent. When I have a chance to teach about the 1960's I tap into material from a seminar I attended called "Viet Nam and Rock." Ohio and What Are We Fightin' are the bookend the history that begins with (1/ )

nooneletgo.bsky.social•344 days ago

The Ballad of the Green Berets and a country song the name of which escapes me now (I haven't taught the unit in a while). (2/2)

jimhasfun.wnyrpg.com•344 days ago

Cartoonist @derfbackderf.bsky.social had right-wingers coming after him for his Kent State comic book in 2020, as I recall.

foreverambre.bsky.social•344 days ago

Growing up in Ohio in the 80s, I was told the NG murdered them in cold blood. During the last admin, I heard local ppl saying we needed another Kent State.

greysonkentxxx.bsky.social•344 days ago

How the hell is protesters being murdered in cold blood the protesters' fault?????

andrewparker.bsky.social•344 days ago

One of the universals in American psychology is that it’d be scary if bad things can just happen to people because that means they can happen to me, so they can’t just happen, so the victim must have brought it on themselves somehow.

semsu.bsky.social•344 days ago

The people worse off than me deserve to be worse off, the people who are doing better than me are cheaters.

sandimaccallum.bsky.social•344 days ago

The day after the Kent State shootings my parents were happy that I was accepted at Ohio State University and planned on going. They didn't want me going someplace where students were shot for protesting - and they were die-hard conservatives but didn't put the blame on the students

napoleon-the-pig.bsky.social•344 days ago

this is a very good overview as to what happened written by Akron Beacon Journal and Kent Record-Courier reporters for the 50th anniv. https://www.cincinnati.com/in-depth/news/2020/04/28/kent-state-shooting-50-years-later-may-4-1970-remembrance-controversy-pain/5168455002/

iamschrodinger.bsky.social•344 days ago

At least history vindicated the protestors. Too bad so many people can never see it at the time.

sjscentraltx.bsky.social•344 days ago

The truth was that the students were unarmed. More than one of the murdered students was killed simply because they were on their way across campus. They weren’t even protesters.
My high school had a mural on one wall depicting the iconic photo of a dead student on the ground and a woman kneeling.

sarcoidsally.bsky.social•344 days ago

One of them was just walking across the campus to the library

sjscentraltx.bsky.social•344 days ago

Here’s an article that commemorates the Kent State Massacre; it’s from 2020, on the 50th anniversary of the massacre.
Please read long enough to see that students were also shot & killed by police at Jackson State U in Mississippi shortly after.

sjscentraltx.bsky.social•344 days ago

And there’s “Ohio” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, released shortly after the Kent State Massacre. It calls out Nixon by name.
https://youtu.be/JCS-g3HwXdc?feature=shared

dadavies.bsky.social•343 days ago

Remember it all too well. I was one of 1000+ in streets of Athens (GA) the days after Kent State & Jax State. We all knew most of Nixon’s America (his beloved “silent majority”) hated us. Our gov at the time was Lester Maddox, not a fan of peace or peaceful protests. Gutted to see it happening again

illimij.bsky.social•344 days ago

Right about the time of the Hard Hat riot in NYC.

guprofbc.bsky.social•344 days ago

In 1970 my father-in-law was a not-very-invested-in-politics working-class immigrant's kid in Ohio head down training to be a doctor. Kent State seared him in a way that even now affects him -- he's by nature a conservative but he felt rage at the state's turn against students on their campus.

napoleon-the-pig.bsky.social•344 days ago

Just curious, where at in Ohio?

guprofbc.bsky.social•344 days ago

He grew up in Akron.

napoleon-the-pig.bsky.social•344 days ago

Youngstown area for me and I was 9 when the shooting took place. One of the 4, Sandy, was from one school district over from where I grew up (she was buried a mile from my home), and her father was an immigrant, born Jewish in Ger. but luckily getting out and ended up in Y-town pre-WW2.

feministkelly.bsky.social•344 days ago

My parents were sophomores at Kent in 1970. I interviewed them about their experience for the 50th anniversary, and they talked about that dynamic.

https://twobroadstalkingpolitics.com/blog/2020/5/04/episode-387

sugaree.bsky.social•344 days ago

Wow, the power of bubbles. Knew no one of any age who thought that then.

brianbartky.bsky.social•343 days ago

I find reading the experiences of others in this thread fascinating. I also lived in a bubble but my experience was the reverse of yours, unfortunately.
https://bsky.app/profile/brianbartky.bsky.social/post/3kqwhsuimi22x

katennp.bsky.social•344 days ago

I suspect this is why there is such focus on the poor daughter of Ilhan Omar being kicked out of Barnard...like it is some sort of retribution and valid

andreaisonline.bsky.social•344 days ago

Oof

rachacha.bsky.social•344 days ago

A Buffalo friend was one of those shot. He screened a documentary including astonishing interviews in which older Americans said that if it had been one of their own kids in the protest they would have wanted them shot. Seeing that helped me understand where in Actual Hell Trump's support came from.

kevinspencer.bsky.social•344 days ago

Any indication of when the tide of public opinion turned?

kevinmkruse.bsky.social•344 days ago

Not sure, but this overview might interest you:

https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/50-years-after-kent-state-americans-who-lived-it-see-it-differently?fbclid=IwAR1OHouCLzBqWPRiS_fPIKb8FB5cUJt604O-JKpE-Kz4UOO76xAyf3IiemU#

wendella.bsky.social•344 days ago

Shoulda been right after CSNY released "Ohio"...

jmcrowell.bsky.social•344 days ago

William Schroeder was simply walking to class after an ROTC test when he was shot in the back and killed. He was from Lorain, Eagle Scout at 13, and many of us growing up in that county bunked in the Schroeder Cabin at our local BSA Camp Firelands.

He was murdered by Gov. Rhodes and the Ohio NG.

ashhiggins.bsky.social•344 days ago

… wow. I. Uh. Wow.

hatta.bsky.social•344 days ago

📌

interestedparty.bsky.social•344 days ago

It was a turning point. Making college unaffordable quickly caught on with voters. It worked.

nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social•344 days ago

One example of the rumors that circulated after the killings at Kent State: "the victims were so ridden with syphilis that they would have been dead in 2 weeks anyway."

https://respectfulofotters.blogspot.com/2005/09/todays-social-psychology-lecture.html

napoleon-the-pig.bsky.social•344 days ago

I wonder if that included the ROTC student who wasn't even part of the protest?

nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social•344 days ago

Of course. Otherwise that would mean that the National Guard was shooting innocent kids for no good reason, and that was just an impossible thing to think.

henryhill1.bsky.social•344 days ago

Neil made this all clear to me at 11 years old.

tulletilsynet.bsky.social•344 days ago

Got to get down to it

bsakat.bsky.social•344 days ago

That song played a HUGE part in my childhood and the creation of my beliefs. CSNY was my dad's favorite band, and I can still hear that song rumbling up from the basement stereo.

kclimans.bsky.social•344 days ago

I first heard Ohio when I was a teenager. I didn’t really know the context at the time, I just enjoyed the song. The first time it really hit me was episode 8 of Ken Burns’ Vietnam War series. The chilling account of the Kent State shootings, then Ohio playing over the credits while I quietly wept.

lanelmorgan.bsky.social•344 days ago

I was part of a sit-in on the steps of Hoover Tower at Stanford when we learned about Kent State. One of us was an off-duty National Guardsman. Poor guy. We kept asking him if he would shoot us if ordered. All we got was arrested by campus police for (i think) trespassing.

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