Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles D. Bryant and there's Jerry. And it's
Speaker 1: snowing outside, which means that Stuff you Should Know Snow edition,
Speaker 1: Snow Edition. Yeah, I know when we're like, we gotta
Speaker 1: record and get out of here because this is when
Speaker 1: and snow kills us. I just mainly don't want to
Speaker 1: be locked away from the snow. I want to be
Speaker 1: able to like look out the window and see it.
Speaker 1: I can now, but not as well as i'd like to.
Speaker 1: For me, it's just a traffic thing. Like people are
Speaker 1: probably leaving work right now. People have already left the
Speaker 1: office here. Well maybe everyone will be gone by the
Speaker 1: time I get out there. Okay, you'll just be the
Speaker 1: lone guy trudging through the snow. That's right, Like if
Speaker 1: you go Mortenson in the road. Yes, although he was
Speaker 1: not alone and there wasn't any snow. It was just
Speaker 1: nuclear ash, although there was snow. Because Charlie is theren
Speaker 1: kills herself by going out into the snow. But that's
Speaker 1: before everything really takes a downward. Spoiler alert retroact as
Speaker 1: spoiler alert Chuck Yep. Are you familiar with Kent State? Yeah? Man,
Speaker 1: I've been singing that Neil Young song all day. How
Speaker 1: can you not? You cannot by having never heard it?
Speaker 1: Like me, shut up? You know that song? Never heard it?
Speaker 1: I never listened to Neil Young. You've never heard the
Speaker 1: song Ohio? No? I know the Pretender song, but I
Speaker 1: don't think that's about Kent State. I'm shocked, Okay, I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't have to love you without like, how's it
Speaker 1: go home? And for him? No, I'm not gonna Maybe
Speaker 1: I have heard it ten Soldiers and Nixon, I've heard it.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that was about Ohio for dead in Ohio? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: And I had no idea, all right. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what that song was about. I was just like, oh
Speaker 1: Neil Young? Really? Yeah? Oh man, get ready to hear it.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm used to it by now. Your bulletproof. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: so you're familiar with the Kent State shootings May four, Um,
Speaker 1: four students were killed. I believe another eleven were injured, Yeah,
Speaker 1: including one was paralyzed, like some pretty severe injuries. And uh,
Speaker 1: this is a big deal. That would be a big
Speaker 1: deal in and of itself. If it was just some
Speaker 1: sort of campus shooting or something like that, like it
Speaker 1: would be a very big deal these days. But what
Speaker 1: made the Kent State shootings, for those of you who
Speaker 1: aren't familiar with them, such an enormous deal was that
Speaker 1: the shootings were carried out by National guardsmen. They were
Speaker 1: Americans firing on Americans, UM, Americans on one side of
Speaker 1: the equation, firing on protesters on the other side. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it was one of the darkest points in American history,
Speaker 1: modern or otherwise. Yeah, it was. I think what's so
Speaker 1: upsetting is it was random. It wasn't you know that
Speaker 1: guy's coming at me with a bottle or a brick,
Speaker 1: shoot him. It was random shooting into a crowd, Right.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of thing that would happen in countries
Speaker 1: under like dictatorships, not here in America. But it did
Speaker 1: happen here in America, and not just at Kent State.
Speaker 1: There was another similar incident just ten days later. Um
Speaker 1: that will talk about as well. It gets overlooked, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a very dark moment in American history, and
Speaker 1: it came out of the the tensions um over the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War. Initially, but I think it was more than that.
Speaker 1: It was also we should say that's the um kind
Speaker 1: of obvious thing that led to it. But also there
Speaker 1: was a real tension also between the establishment and the
Speaker 1: anti establishment and um, the people in control and the
Speaker 1: people who weren't in control, students, elders. There was just
Speaker 1: a lot of tension between two sides, and the dividing line,
Speaker 1: the obvious dividing line was the Vietnam War. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think if you are not of that generation, you
Speaker 1: may not know the full story. You might know that
Speaker 1: four people were shot in a protest and that's about it.
Speaker 1: Maybe even if you're from that generation, you may not
Speaker 1: know the full story. But we're about to tell you. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's take it back a little further than all right,
Speaker 1: Vietnam country, which had when it's independence from France in
Speaker 1: the fifties. Have you ever seen We Were Soldiers. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's almost like a snuff film. It's one of the
Speaker 1: most graphically violent movies I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1: But it's about that transition from France leaving Vietnam and
Speaker 1: America coming in. Yeah, go ahead, Well, just initially serving
Speaker 1: as advisors and then becoming embroiled in the war. I
Speaker 1: forgot all about that movie. Yeah, you know, and Apocalypse
Speaker 1: Now there are some deleted scenes of the meeting up
Speaker 1: with a French family in Vietnam and like having dinner.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, and I remember when I heard about that,
Speaker 1: I was like, why were they French? And then I
Speaker 1: did a little more homework on it. Oh oh yeah,
Speaker 1: if you eat Vietnamese food, like, it's very clearly like, yeah, influenced, well,
Speaker 1: all most food is. But yeah. Um so anyway, Uh,
Speaker 1: in the fifties day split between communists North and non
Speaker 1: communist South Vietnam, and America didn't want communism spreading throughout Asia.
Speaker 1: We had a policy of containment. Yeah, and so Richard Nixon, UM,
Speaker 1: when he won the sixty election, UM, part of his
Speaker 1: promise was something called Vietnamization. It's kind of an awkward word,
Speaker 1: and that meant to transfer the combat duties from our
Speaker 1: soldiers to the South Vietnamese. That sounds familiar, isn't it?
Speaker 1: It does? But um, what what happened was at some
Speaker 1: point he said, you know what in nineteen seventy, in April,
Speaker 1: he said, I want to send our soldiers in the Cambodia,
Speaker 1: and that caused sort of a firestorm because it was
Speaker 1: a bit of a reversal of what he said he
Speaker 1: was gonna do, and it, you know, really embroiled this
Speaker 1: in the kind of the middle of things. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: he he escalated the war in Vietnam, which was already
Speaker 1: a very um contentious issue and that it was a war,
Speaker 1: but also its a war that Congress never openly declared war.
Speaker 1: So that's why historically speaking, it's referred to as the
Speaker 1: Vietnam conflict. Um. And so Nixon gets elected partially because
Speaker 1: he's saying, I'm gonna get our boys out of there.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna like let the communists when we're gonna
Speaker 1: prop up the Vietnamese, but um, we're gonna get out
Speaker 1: of there. Insteady escalates things by invading Cambodia, where the
Speaker 1: Vietcong we're stationed, and that led to immediate protests. That
Speaker 1: was April thirtieth, nineteen seventy, that he announced that we
Speaker 1: had invaded Cambodia, and the next day is when the
Speaker 1: first protest takes place at Kent State. Yeah, and Kent.
Speaker 1: The article points out that it was not the most
Speaker 1: likely place because it was a little more blue collar
Speaker 1: than like say, Ohio State nearby the Ohio State University,
Speaker 1: and um man, I'm sorry, that is so stupid. Sorry
Speaker 1: os U alums and fans and students, but it is stupid,
Speaker 1: and everyone outside of Ohio State thinks it's stupid. They
Speaker 1: take a lot of pride in that. The I know,
Speaker 1: which I think just kind of fans the flames of
Speaker 1: um derision. You know, I can just start saying the
Speaker 1: University of Georgia. That makes a little more sense, does it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the difference the Ohio State University the University of Georgia.
Speaker 1: It's just it was the University of Ohio State that
Speaker 1: would make more sense. Yeah, a little more to my ear,
Speaker 1: I got my ear right there, see it. It's very nice,
Speaker 1: thank you. Um At any rate, Uh, I can't say
Speaker 1: it was a little more blue collar. And you wouldn't
Speaker 1: think there would be like protesting, but there was protesting
Speaker 1: it schools all over the country. There were and you
Speaker 1: can read between the lines here, Kent State had a
Speaker 1: lower hippie population than Ohio State. Can we just come
Speaker 1: up right out and say it, right, But there were
Speaker 1: protests there. Um, there was a protest on May one,
Speaker 1: and it was a standard uh war protests three days
Speaker 1: before the shootings, and it's kind of when things got
Speaker 1: kicked off, right, but these kids were still pretty good.
Speaker 1: They were at school holding a protest in the commons,
Speaker 1: I believe um, which is the a k a. The
Speaker 1: quad or like the big grassy area between in the
Speaker 1: middle of campus um. And they said, you know what,
Speaker 1: this went pretty well. Let's take the weekend off and
Speaker 1: we'll meet back here one day and have another anti
Speaker 1: war protests because we're really steamed about this. And everyone said, okay,
Speaker 1: let's do that, and for tonight, let's go out and
Speaker 1: hit the bars and Kent. Yeah, is what they did.
Speaker 1: The first one they buried the constitution as a symbolic gesture,
Speaker 1: and the second one they got drunk, right, not at
Speaker 1: the protest but later that night, right, so that Friday
Speaker 1: protests is when they buried the constitution. This is like
Speaker 1: a real protest, not just walking around. There's like stuff
Speaker 1: going on, and like you know, there's symbolic acts. It
Speaker 1: was a real protest. Yeah. And if you com buy
Speaker 1: the alcohol and protesting, things might get a little rowdy.
Speaker 1: So bonfires broke out, they start throwing bottles at police cars,
Speaker 1: breaking windows. That's where the little rowdy. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: pretty that's a riot. When you said like bomb fires
Speaker 1: in the streets and like throw bottles at at police cars,
Speaker 1: that you have just basically said we've drawn a line
Speaker 1: in the sand. Where are you gonna do, cops? That
Speaker 1: is one way to look at it for sure. Uh.
Speaker 1: The mayor, Leroy Satram said, this is an emergency situation people.
Speaker 1: I need to call the governor James Rhodes. We need
Speaker 1: some help. I'm going to close the bars, which you
Speaker 1: know isn't gonna make anyone very happy, no, And it
Speaker 1: had an exacerbating effect apparently, because that meant all the
Speaker 1: people who weren't riding in the streets, who were busy
Speaker 1: drinking in the bars, were now suddenly in the streets
Speaker 1: too and joined the protests and the a k a.
Speaker 1: The riots, right, that's right. And the police were called
Speaker 1: in the use tear gas and said go back to
Speaker 1: your dorm rooms, basically get back on campus. And that
Speaker 1: was Friday. Now we move on to Saturday. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the mayors is obviously a little jumpie. He's hearing rumors
Speaker 1: circulating that there's gonna be another. The scene from the
Speaker 1: night before is going to happen all over again on Saturday.
Speaker 1: So he calls the governor of Ohio and um, here
Speaker 1: enters the person who, in my opinion, is single handedly
Speaker 1: responsible for what happened at Kent State. So the National
Speaker 1: Guard arrives. Um, there were about a thousand protesters. Um
Speaker 1: that actually burned down an r OTC building on campus,
Speaker 1: which is pretty bold move. And UM, they didn't find
Speaker 1: out who did that exactly, but they did cut fire
Speaker 1: hoses so they couldn't put out the fire and basically
Speaker 1: burned it to the ground. Yeah, the protesters set it
Speaker 1: on fire and then cut the fire hoses like they
Speaker 1: wanted that building burned. And apparently, Um, that's when the
Speaker 1: National Guard shows up a couple like an hour or
Speaker 1: so later, right, Yeah, and they you know, broke everything
Speaker 1: up obviously. And then Uh comes Sunday. You've got about
Speaker 1: a thousand National guardsman and you've got Governor Rhodes arriving,
Speaker 1: uh and holding a press conference and kind of flaming
Speaker 1: the fire again by calling the protesters the worst type
Speaker 1: of people that we harbor in America. Yeah, he compared
Speaker 1: to the brown shirts. Mussolini's brown Shirts, UM, the communists, UM,
Speaker 1: pretty much anybody he could think of that was that
Speaker 1: would be disparaging. That's who publicly at this press conference
Speaker 1: compared him to UM. And you mentioned that the on
Speaker 1: Sunday morning, the UM National Guard was on campus kind
Speaker 1: of keeping order and everything. But apparently like the relations
Speaker 1: between the guardsmen and the students were pretty amicable, like
Speaker 1: people were chatting friendly, like there was no tension. It
Speaker 1: was just kind of like, hey, I'm nineteen. Hey, I'm nineteen,
Speaker 1: I'm as student at Kent State, I'm in the National Guard.
Speaker 1: Let's hang out. And it wasn't until the governor showed
Speaker 1: up and held this press conference that things took a
Speaker 1: very sudden turn for the worse. And it wasn't just
Speaker 1: the brown shirts calling him the brown Shirts to the
Speaker 1: worst element that America harbors, but also saying I may
Speaker 1: also declare martial law. Yeah, and that I may. Message
Speaker 1: never quite got through in those confusion as to whether
Speaker 1: or not that actually happened, And basically the National Guard
Speaker 1: believed that that had happened, and they took control of
Speaker 1: the campus and said we're running the show now. And
Speaker 1: that's just the National Guard, but the university officials to
Speaker 1: the people running the university said, oh, well, martial laws declared,
Speaker 1: and they knew that there was a protest scheduled for
Speaker 1: the following day, Monday, So they printed a bunch of
Speaker 1: flyers and pamphlets saying, Hey, your constitutional rights have been
Speaker 1: suspended because the universities under martial law, so all assemblies banned,
Speaker 1: so don't protest, and kind of fell on deaf ears.
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, come Monday morning. Because the
Speaker 1: students showed up the protest. Yeah, that definitely didn't work. Um.
Speaker 1: By noon there was about three thousand people, about five
Speaker 1: d actively protesting, another thousand just there to be supportive.
Speaker 1: And um and because it's a college campus, about people
Speaker 1: just checking it out, Yah, stopping on their way to
Speaker 1: class or whatever, you like, what's going on. I would
Speaker 1: have done the same thing probably, And we should say,
Speaker 1: also are our buddy stuff they don't want you to know? Um.
Speaker 1: Host and sometimes producer Matt Frederick his parents were students
Speaker 1: at Kent Stay and they stay at home that day.
Speaker 1: They did. They were like, there's some bad stuff that's
Speaker 1: going to go down, and they were right. Uh. So
Speaker 1: the article points out at was less an anti war
Speaker 1: protest at this point, and more of a protest of
Speaker 1: the draconian occupation of their campus martial law by the
Speaker 1: army and UM which is not even real, which is
Speaker 1: just a misunderstanding. Yeah, pretty much. So the General UM
Speaker 1: Canterbury says, you know what this rally is over drive
Speaker 1: me around in a jeep, give me that bullhorn. Let
Speaker 1: me tell everyone to go home, because that'll work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, let's go back to this where these tensions
Speaker 1: came from in the first place. It's establishment versus anti establishment,
Speaker 1: and establishment is the type to stand in a jeep
Speaker 1: and be driven around with the bullhorn telling people to disperse.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's ever been a message relayed
Speaker 1: via bullhorn that doesn't fall on deaf ears. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it has the opposite effect, unless, like I guess, in
Speaker 1: like a female situations, if you're trying to like organize
Speaker 1: people and stuff, that helps. But I always think of
Speaker 1: bullhorns is stuff like this, the general riding around the
Speaker 1: jeep yelling at people to go home, and people saying no,
Speaker 1: you don understand why we're here in the first place.
Speaker 1: So they started throwing rocks at the jeep not surprisingly,
Speaker 1: and UM not well think, you know, tensions at this point.
Speaker 1: This was day four. Yeah, I I think though, though
Speaker 1: I'm not justifying, I'm just no, no, I know you're
Speaker 1: not at all. But I think it's really easy to
Speaker 1: to um to to kind of choose one side or
Speaker 1: the other, especially once you know the outcome. But I
Speaker 1: don't think it should be overlooked that, like people are
Speaker 1: throwing rocks at this dude while he's driving around. The
Speaker 1: people have burned down a building, people have rioted in
Speaker 1: the streets of the town, the college town. I mean,
Speaker 1: like these are real, huge events that scared the pants
Speaker 1: off of the people who were running the town, the state,
Speaker 1: the country, and and I mean to say that they
Speaker 1: were unprovoked as historically inaccurate, Yeah, I totally agree, not justifying,
Speaker 1: but I think a lot of people might think the
Speaker 1: story is people got together to protest and the army
Speaker 1: came in and shot him, right or yeah, and and
Speaker 1: that it was either the protests of fault. They shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been protest, they shouldn't have burned down that building,
Speaker 1: or you know, it was entirely the National Guards fault.
Speaker 1: And you whatever historical event you're looking at, it's never
Speaker 1: just one side or or the other. There's It's always
Speaker 1: great and you have blinders on. If you think otherwise,
Speaker 1: you should write a history book called It's Always Great
Speaker 1: Josh Clark's History of America. I'd buy that. Um, all right,
Speaker 1: So where are we? They were throwing rocks at the General.
Speaker 1: He at this point ordered his troops to load their weapons,
Speaker 1: get the tear gas going. He said, they threw rocks
Speaker 1: of me. You guys, load your weapons. That's basically what happened. Um,
Speaker 1: not because his feelings were hurt. Yeah, although imagine they were.
Speaker 1: I guess no matter who you are, I'm sure if
Speaker 1: people throw rocks and you're like I I take that personally.
Speaker 1: So the National Guard came in. They pushed them back
Speaker 1: past the Commons, over a steep called Blanket Hill and
Speaker 1: into the parking lot of Prentice Hall in a practice
Speaker 1: football field. Then basically the guardsmen found themselves cornered by
Speaker 1: a fence, retreated back up the hill. When they got
Speaker 1: to the top, out of the seventy turned and began
Speaker 1: firing their guns into the crowd. Yeah, so, well, not
Speaker 1: all of them into the crowd, we should point out,
Speaker 1: most into the air or the ground. Actually, although some
Speaker 1: fired directly in the crowd. They all would have fired
Speaker 1: directly in the crowd. That would have been a much
Speaker 1: higher blood count or body counts. Oh yeah, I'm sure, um.
Speaker 1: And I mean the protesters were about a football filled
Speaker 1: away from them. Um. And the fact that they started
Speaker 1: to walk up the hill and then turn and shot
Speaker 1: made it not just an attack of Americans on Americans,
Speaker 1: but a surprise attack of Americans on Americans. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would say the students were definitely did not expect bullet retaliation.
Speaker 1: Took about thirteen seconds. Um. Four students were killed. Alison Krauss,
Speaker 1: not the Allison Krause obviously, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Sure and
Speaker 1: William Schroeder and uh, it's all tragic, but even more
Speaker 1: magically shut and Schroeder, We're just walking to class. Yeah, protest.
Speaker 1: They were in the wrong place at the wrong time,
Speaker 1: and like I said, nine people were wounded. In one
Speaker 1: dean collar was paralyzed. And yeah, so those shots they
Speaker 1: shot into the air and into the ground, but also
Speaker 1: into the crowd. And over about thirteen seconds, they fired
Speaker 1: between sixty one and sixty seven shots. I think that
Speaker 1: could be categorized as a hail of gunfire. Yeah, thirteen seconds,
Speaker 1: sixties shots, But is that that's like a lot of
Speaker 1: shots the second, you know, and just from twenty eight guns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And apparently there was a professor named Glenn Frank who
Speaker 1: did a lot to quell the crowd and did talk
Speaker 1: them into, uh, not escalating this thing any further. Right,
Speaker 1: So this article really kind of glances over this guy's role.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just him, but he was the head
Speaker 1: of the faculty marshals who whose job it was was
Speaker 1: to basically keep an eye on the protests. They were
Speaker 1: like the university's liaison between the university and the students
Speaker 1: the protesters, and this guy and his crew basically single
Speaker 1: handedly prevented like a massacre because they saw very quickly
Speaker 1: that if they didn't insinuate themselves between the guardsmen and
Speaker 1: the students, the students were gonna be like, Holy, holy God,
Speaker 1: they just fired live ammunition on us, and they're standing
Speaker 1: right there, let's get them. They would have attacked. The
Speaker 1: consensus is the students would have attacked out of anger,
Speaker 1: and that the guardsmen most definitely would have fired again
Speaker 1: when being attacked. Um and these this this faculty member
Speaker 1: and his team saw what was about to happen, and
Speaker 1: slid in and was like wait. So they firstly spoke
Speaker 1: to the guardsman and said stop firing, we have to
Speaker 1: go talk to the students. Then they went and spoke
Speaker 1: to the students for twenty minutes and got him to
Speaker 1: calm down enough to to to stop provoking or did
Speaker 1: not provoker, advanced on the guardsman in retaliation and saved
Speaker 1: a lot of lives. Probably. I wonder if there's a
Speaker 1: Glenn Frank statue on campus. There should be. Uh. So
Speaker 1: they closed school not for the day or the weekend,
Speaker 1: but for the rest of the semester, and UM a
Speaker 1: lot of colleges did the same as far as shutting down. Well,
Speaker 1: because a lot of students went on strike and like
Speaker 1: they were forced to, the universities were forced to shut down. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the following weekend, UM a hundred thousand people went
Speaker 1: to d c UM to protest. Neil Young news to
Speaker 1: Josh wrote a song about it. Uh So, chuck, um,
Speaker 1: let's do a message break show. Okay, So the the
Speaker 1: shootings just happened, that the crowd has been quelled, the
Speaker 1: dead and Woon would have been taken away in ambulances
Speaker 1: and now we reached the aftermath. That's immediate. And otherwise, Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: President Nixon wasn't super compassionate. He had earlier been overheard
Speaker 1: calling them bombs. This wasn't in his press release, obviously,
Speaker 1: but it definitely got out in the press. Did not
Speaker 1: bode well for his reputation. And um, he said, when
Speaker 1: the cent turns to violence, it invites tragedy. That was
Speaker 1: the official line. That was the official line, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cold. That's the president like, you get what you
Speaker 1: what you pay for. Yeah much. His vice president, um
Speaker 1: Agnes said it was predictable. Um, also not super compassionate
Speaker 1: considering this. These were Americans that were shot and killed. Uh,
Speaker 1: two of which were just walking to class. Uh. He
Speaker 1: called them a bunch of scared kids with guns the
Speaker 1: National guardsman. But that was very priced the speechwriter for Nixon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is true. Yeah, but so basically the whole, the
Speaker 1: whole kids is gray. You know. It is like they
Speaker 1: probably were scared for sure, and uh, and yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's fair. I think also though it's it's one
Speaker 1: sided too, like he's he's not saying and then also
Speaker 1: the other side, we're a bunch of scared, angry kids
Speaker 1: with rocks. Yeah, like the only way, and you can't
Speaker 1: even remove the grade, but you'd have to find out
Speaker 1: each person who shot and what their motive was, because
Speaker 1: some were probably scared out of their mind and reacted.
Speaker 1: There has been some people later on that said that
Speaker 1: they some got together and decided to do this, some
Speaker 1: of the guardsmen, right, so, when they had been pushing
Speaker 1: the crowd back onto the UM practice football field, apparently
Speaker 1: while they were loitering there. There have been allegations that
Speaker 1: a couple of the guardsmen said, Hey, when we marched
Speaker 1: back up the hill, we're gonna turn and fire. It's
Speaker 1: never been proven, UM, but a few more than a
Speaker 1: couple of historians have leveled that accusation. UM. There was
Speaker 1: also immediate word that the guardsman said that they were
Speaker 1: acting in self defense because they there was a sniper
Speaker 1: on one of the rooftops and that they were being
Speaker 1: fired on. They found out that they were audio recordings
Speaker 1: of this, and UM that was quickly changed to well,
Speaker 1: it was self defense because these people were throwing rocks
Speaker 1: at us. There was the Presidential Commission, obviously, UM, and
Speaker 1: they concluded it was quote unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable. And
Speaker 1: then in uh, an FBI investigation found that the guardsman
Speaker 1: fabricated their defense and that they were not in true danger.
Speaker 1: That was FBI. So the Presidential Commission and the FBI
Speaker 1: investigation both said, like, this shouldn't have happened, and like,
Speaker 1: it's on the guardsman. But that wasn't the mood of
Speaker 1: the nation for the most part. There was a gallop
Speaker 1: pole that was conducted shortly after, and um, the majority
Speaker 1: of Americans said that it was the protester's fault for protesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it went to trial too. It wasn't just like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this happened and it's super sad. Uh. And in federal
Speaker 1: trial it was dismissed because of what was called a
Speaker 1: weak case by the guardsman. And then the grand jury
Speaker 1: in Ohio put the blame on the university officials and
Speaker 1: the protesters and not the guardsman. And then there was
Speaker 1: a civil trial in nineteen seventy nine settled out of
Speaker 1: court where the victims and families got a collective sum
Speaker 1: of six d and seventy dollars ah collective some meaning
Speaker 1: I guess that was for all of them, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they all split that and no apology was apology was
Speaker 1: ever issued. Um, they did issue a sign statement expressing regret.
Speaker 1: Do you want to hear it? Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: the sign statement that that that was that came out
Speaker 1: of the civil trial that the Ohio and National Guard
Speaker 1: released to the families of the victims. In retrospect, the
Speaker 1: tragedy of May fourth, nineteen seventies should not have occurred.
Speaker 1: The students may have believed that they were right in
Speaker 1: continuing their mass protests in response to the Cambodian invasion,
Speaker 1: even though this protest followed the posting and reading by
Speaker 1: the university of an order to ban rallies and in
Speaker 1: order to disperse. These orders have since been determined by
Speaker 1: the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to have been lawful.
Speaker 1: So with the guardsmen on Blanket Hill, fearful and anxious
Speaker 1: from prior events, may have believed their own, in their
Speaker 1: own minds, that their lives were in danger. Hindsight suggests
Speaker 1: that another method would have resolved the confrontation. Better ways
Speaker 1: must be found to deal with such a confrontation. We
Speaker 1: devoutly wish that a means had been found to avoid
Speaker 1: the May fourth events culminating in the guard shootings and
Speaker 1: the irreversible deaths and injuries. We deeply regret those events
Speaker 1: and are profoundly saddened by the deaths of four students
Speaker 1: and the wounding of nine others which resulted. We hope
Speaker 1: that the agreement to end the litigation will help to
Speaker 1: assuage the tragic memories regarding that sad day. I don't apology, no,
Speaker 1: sort of like we regret hindsight being we might have
Speaker 1: should have done something differently. Right saying we regret instead
Speaker 1: of I'm sorry is that's a big flashing light. It's
Speaker 1: a big death. Uh. And for many years they um,
Speaker 1: the university itself wasn't quite sure how to handle moving
Speaker 1: forward in memoriam and otherwise. UM. In the seventies, they
Speaker 1: the officials at Kent State failed. They tried to, but
Speaker 1: they tried to commemorate it just once every five years
Speaker 1: instead of every year, and everybody who held the visuals like,
Speaker 1: well then you have nothing to do with this. And
Speaker 1: they kept showing up every year, right like what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do with calling the National Garden remove us?
Speaker 1: And they went Uh. In nineteen seventy nine, there were
Speaker 1: hundreds of arrests because the university tried to bulldoze the
Speaker 1: place where it happened, to build a gym that didn't happen. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it took all the way up until to keep
Speaker 1: cars from driving over the spots in the parking lot
Speaker 1: where the students were killed. Right. And finally in the
Speaker 1: mid two thousand's, UM, the university is finally reverse this
Speaker 1: position and just kind of goes with the flow. And
Speaker 1: in two thirteen they opened a visitors center that is
Speaker 1: all about commemorating this of it as a historical event.
Speaker 1: But also I get the impression from the the descriptions
Speaker 1: of the visitors center a UM kind of the spiritual
Speaker 1: aspect of it, the spiritual aspect of tragedy. And that
Speaker 1: just last year UH. Now the university UM they say,
Speaker 1: as a nation's leader in UH. Courses of non violence
Speaker 1: and democracy and peace studies and conflict resolution classes were
Speaker 1: all established, so they, you know, are trying to lead
Speaker 1: the way forward and at least being a symbol of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, peaceful protest. And people are still trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what happened. There's still lots of debate. UM.
Speaker 1: Oliver Stone unsurprisingly favors the theory that the government placed
Speaker 1: a sniper um in these protests, and that there were
Speaker 1: government plant agitators who pushed the protests over the line. Um.
Speaker 1: And this idea is supported by the fact that there
Speaker 1: were policies by governors and the president to crack down
Speaker 1: on dissent on student anti war protests. So there definitely
Speaker 1: was a policy that was like, if you want to
Speaker 1: get thirty, we'll we'll, we'll send our goons to beat
Speaker 1: you up. Um. But a lot of people think that
Speaker 1: the presence of a snipers totally unsupported. UM. But then
Speaker 1: a cassette emerged uh fairly recently that that's an actual
Speaker 1: audio recording of that day that says, supposedly you can
Speaker 1: hear um the phrases get, set, point, and fire, which
Speaker 1: means that this wasn't a surprise, knee jerk shooting. That
Speaker 1: there was an officer commanding the guardsman to shoot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it also, um, you know what, with modern analysis,
Speaker 1: they think that there may have been shots fired before
Speaker 1: uh full I think seventy seconds before the guardsmen fired.
Speaker 1: There's a kin State student named Terry Norman Um who
Speaker 1: was a photographer on campus taking pictures, and he also
Speaker 1: had a handgun, a loaded handgun and he denied that
Speaker 1: he discharged it. But um, he has been accused of
Speaker 1: triggering this by firing shots. And I think they found
Speaker 1: evidence audio evidence that there were shots fired and they
Speaker 1: think it maybe have been Terry Norman. Wow, that kicked
Speaker 1: it all off. And can you imagine carrying that around? No?
Speaker 1: I could not. And then chuck UM, this is a
Speaker 1: lot of people say that that Kent State was the
Speaker 1: beginning of the UM slide towards Watergate for Nixon. This
Speaker 1: is like the beginning of the end for him. Um.
Speaker 1: And then we should also talk about what happened at
Speaker 1: Jackson State because race relations of this country are so
Speaker 1: messed up that everybody talks about Kent State where four
Speaker 1: white students died, and no one talks about Jackson State,
Speaker 1: which happened ten days later and two black people died.
Speaker 1: Black stude, Yeah, and could have been a lot worse,
Speaker 1: like they basically riddled a dormitory with a hail of gunfire.
Speaker 1: So ten days after Kent State, UM, at Jackson State
Speaker 1: University UM in Mississippi, UH, they were also carrying out
Speaker 1: anti war protests, but they were also UM protests based
Speaker 1: on racism as well. UM and when these students were
Speaker 1: doing a lot of the similar stuff, a lot of
Speaker 1: the same stuff that was happening or had happened at
Speaker 1: Kent State. They were um rioting. They had burned a
Speaker 1: building on campus down and um. When firefighters came out
Speaker 1: to put out the flames, they started to get worried
Speaker 1: that these protesters were going to harm them, so they
Speaker 1: called the cops. Well, the cops came out, tried to
Speaker 1: disperse the crowd. The crowd didn't disperse, so they opened fire,
Speaker 1: and like you said, they riddled the building that served
Speaker 1: as the backdrop to this protest with bullets. Something like
Speaker 1: four hundred and sixty rounds hit the building alone. There's
Speaker 1: no telling how many one on the sides or anything
Speaker 1: like that. Four hundred and sixty rounds. And he said
Speaker 1: every window was broken on every floor with bullet fire
Speaker 1: on a on a crowd of crowd of students um
Speaker 1: and amazingly only two people died. Yeah. Philip Gibbs, he
Speaker 1: was a pre law major and a father of an
Speaker 1: eighteen monthly son and James Green. He was seventeen years
Speaker 1: old and he was a high school student walking home
Speaker 1: from his job at the grocery store right, which again,
Speaker 1: the fact that he's not involved in anyway and still
Speaker 1: died makes it so much worse. Yeah. And this one,
Speaker 1: also I don't think we pointed out started out because
Speaker 1: of misinformation. There was um a rumor that the mayor,
Speaker 1: mayor Charles Evers and his wife had been shot and killed,
Speaker 1: assassinated basically it was not true. A relative of Mega Evers, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was his brother, and so that's kind of what
Speaker 1: sparked everything. In addition to like the anti war protests,
Speaker 1: and uh, it was very much about black and white.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean like they're there. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: this is a historically black college. The cops had just
Speaker 1: opened fire on a bunch of students. Twelve people were
Speaker 1: hit by injured by gunfire, two were killed, and the
Speaker 1: ambulances weren't called until the police picked up all of
Speaker 1: their showcasings and left, and then the National Guard came in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then after that the police denied they even took part. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how that panned out. How can you
Speaker 1: deny that you shot up a building? So it was
Speaker 1: Mississippi in and and historically black college and you probably
Speaker 1: never heard of Jackson State for until we started researching this,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I hadn't heard of it either, and there
Speaker 1: was only one source we used that made reference to it.
Speaker 1: That's how I heard about it. So that's great. It's
Speaker 1: just fantastic. That's what happened against state in Jackson State,
Speaker 1: in Jackson State, Um, you got anything else? I got
Speaker 1: nothing else. Just gotta be a better ending of this
Speaker 1: than this. I mean, these things happen, but there there
Speaker 1: has to have been some lesson learned. I think. So
Speaker 1: it hasn't happened since Yeah, that's true. I wonder at
Speaker 1: least on a campus. Yeah, we should do one on
Speaker 1: the Battle for Seattle. Did they didn't fire live rounds
Speaker 1: at that though? Did they? I'm pretty sure they didn't,
Speaker 1: but that Yeah, we should do one on that as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my friend John was there agitating. Is he a black shirt? Now?
Speaker 1: He had these funny protest lines about that references Simpsons.
Speaker 1: I can't remember her black block. That's where they got
Speaker 1: the pictures. Um, well, I have to interview him then.
Speaker 1: I don't know that it would yield much information. Fine,
Speaker 1: I think he was just cooping around. Um all right, Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about Kent State, you
Speaker 1: can type in uh that name into the search part
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, And we also encourage you
Speaker 1: to go look up Jackson State as well. Um, and
Speaker 1: let's see it's I said, search bar you it's time
Speaker 1: for listener me all right, yes, sir, I'm gonna call this.
Speaker 1: A prison guard wrote in, Hey guys, Um, For the
Speaker 1: most part, I found the episode on capital Punishment pretty
Speaker 1: even handed and interesting. However, I couldn't help but notice
Speaker 1: a bit of venom in your voices whenever you mentioned
Speaker 1: prison guards, especially in instance of an inmate taking his
Speaker 1: own life with a razor blade while he's being off
Speaker 1: observed on deathwatch. The implication was that the guard on
Speaker 1: duty negligently gave the inmate a razor in order to
Speaker 1: encourage him to take his own life. I don't think
Speaker 1: we implied that, did we. Um. No, it wasn't implied.
Speaker 1: It was more just like, what kind of thing? Like
Speaker 1: why why did that happen? As a former prison guard
Speaker 1: that worked on death row, I have to tell you, um,
Speaker 1: that couldn't be further from the truth. It's a civil
Speaker 1: right for inmates to have access to razor blades for
Speaker 1: hygienic purposes. I was required to allow an inmate on
Speaker 1: death row to keep the disposable razor for thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that he had nearly killed another inmate
Speaker 1: and murdered a prison official with a razor blade while
Speaker 1: serving his sentence. I'd imagine an inmate even on deathwatch
Speaker 1: would have similar rights, but I can't confirm through experience.
Speaker 1: UM guards that worked on death row weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: serve on death watch. This is because it was feared
Speaker 1: that we'd form an emotional bond to the inmates set
Speaker 1: for execution it might cause a scene. So yes, prison
Speaker 1: guards have feelings and can have empathy for others. Pop
Speaker 1: culture and nearly always portrays guards as heavy as and villains,
Speaker 1: and even smart portrayals of prison life like Orange is
Speaker 1: the New Black, as every prison official character as a
Speaker 1: comic book mustache twirling villain or a mouth breathing idiot.
Speaker 1: It's a hard job and should be respected as much
Speaker 1: as other high risk civil servant careers. UM a little
Speaker 1: disappointed you guys continue this trend, but I'm used to it,
Speaker 1: so don't sweat it. So that is from Craig, and
Speaker 1: he let us off easy, even though he feels like
Speaker 1: we insulted his jaw. Well, thanks, Craig. I think he
Speaker 1: did exactly what we were kind of searching for right then.
Speaker 1: We were just um ah, disgustedly confused, We're disgustedly ignorant
Speaker 1: one of the two. Yeah. I will say that he
Speaker 1: is probably right on the money. As far as movie portrayals,
Speaker 1: it's pretty one note if you're a prison guard in
Speaker 1: a movie in general, unless it's The Green Mile and
Speaker 1: that movie has problems of its own or Oz. I
Speaker 1: never watched Oz? What that was the first? That? OZ
Speaker 1: is the show that kicked off all of the shows
Speaker 1: you love and binge watch now. The idea of binge
Speaker 1: watching a show began with a show like OZ, because
Speaker 1: there was nothing like it ever created before it was.
Speaker 1: It all started with Oz, The Wire, the Shield, Um,
Speaker 1: House of Cards, Orange is a New Black Everything, every
Speaker 1: breaking bad, all of them can thank us. You can
Speaker 1: thank Oz. You should go watch Oz Man, Thank you Oz.
Speaker 1: It's good, great man. This one is. This is something
Speaker 1: I feel drained a little bit, yeah, emotionally exhausted. I'm
Speaker 1: still not happy with the ending. I feel like we
Speaker 1: could have ended a lot better, but um, I'll have
Speaker 1: to think on it all right. Uh. If you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with me and Chuck, you can
Speaker 1: tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
Speaker 1: can hang out on our Facebook page Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash Stuff you Should Know UM, you can send us
Speaker 1: an email the Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and
Speaker 1: you can check us out at our website Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
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