Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's me Josh and for this week's s
Speaker 1: Y s K Select, I've chosen this episode on the
Speaker 1: history of the Kent State Massacre, somewhat unknown, surprisingly and
Speaker 1: definitely largely misunderstood moment in American history and kind of
Speaker 1: a bummer, so prepare, but it's a good one. Enjoy, Enjoy.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
Speaker 1: there's Jerry. And it's snowing outside, which means it's Stuff
Speaker 1: You Should Know Snow Edition. Snow Edition. Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: when we're like, we gotta record and get out of
Speaker 1: here because this is Atlanta and snow kills us. I
Speaker 1: just mainly don't want to be locked away from the snow.
Speaker 1: I want to be able to like look out the
Speaker 1: window and see it. I can now, but not as
Speaker 1: well as I'd like to me. It's just a traffic thing.
Speaker 1: Like people are probably leaving work right now. People have
Speaker 1: already left the office here. Well, maybe everyone will be
Speaker 1: gone by the time I get out there. Okay, you'll
Speaker 1: just be the lone guy trudging through the snow. That's right,
Speaker 1: like Vigo 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's there and
Speaker 1: kills herself by going out into the snow. But that's
Speaker 1: before everything really takes a downward. Spoiler alert retroactive spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: 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've 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
Speaker 1: mean you don't have and Young without Like, how's it
Speaker 1: go humed for him? No, I'm not gonna Maybe I
Speaker 1: have heard it ten Soldiers and Nixon Okay, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard it. I didn't know that was about Ohio
Speaker 1: four Dead in Ohio yeah, okay. And I had no idea,
Speaker 1: all right. I didn't know what that song was about.
Speaker 1: I was just like, oh, Neil young really Yeah, oh man,
Speaker 1: get ready to hear it. I'm sure alright, I'm used
Speaker 1: to it by now, your bulletproof. Uh. Well, so you're
Speaker 1: familiar with the Kent State shootings May four, Um, four
Speaker 1: 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 we'll 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. Yeah, and um, the people in control and
Speaker 1: the people who weren't in control, students, elders, there's 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 UM,
Speaker 1: I think if you are not of that generation, you
Speaker 1: may not know the full story. Um. You might know
Speaker 1: that four people were shot in a protest, and that's
Speaker 1: about it. Maybe even if you're from that generation, you
Speaker 1: may not know the full story. But we're about to
Speaker 1: tell you. Okay, let's take it back a little further
Speaker 1: than all right, Vietnam country which had when it's independence
Speaker 1: from France and the fifties. Have you ever seen We
Speaker 1: Were Soldiers. Yes, it's almost like a snuff film. It's
Speaker 1: one of the most graphically violent movies I've ever seen
Speaker 1: in my life. But it's about that transition from France
Speaker 1: leaving Vietnam and America coming in. Yeah, go ahead. Well
Speaker 1: it's just initially serving as advisors and then becoming embroiled
Speaker 1: in the war. I forgot all about that movie, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and Apocalypse Now there are some deleted scenes
Speaker 1: of the meeting up with a French family in Vietnam
Speaker 1: and like having dinner. Really yeah, and I remember when
Speaker 1: I heard about that, I was like, what why were
Speaker 1: they French? And then I did a little more homework
Speaker 1: on it. Oh oh yeah, if you eat Vietnamese food,
Speaker 1: like it's very clearly like, yeah, French influenced, well, all
Speaker 1: most food is. But yeah sure, um so anyway, uh,
Speaker 1: in the fifties they 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,
Speaker 1: um when he won the sixty eight election. Um. Part
Speaker 1: of his promise was something called Vietnamization. It's kind of
Speaker 1: an awkward word, and that meant to transfer the combat
Speaker 1: duties from our soldiers to the South Vietnamese. That sounds familiar,
Speaker 1: isn't it? It does? But um, what what happened was
Speaker 1: at some point he said, you know what in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy in April, he said, I want to send our
Speaker 1: soldiers in the Cambodia. And that caused sort of a
Speaker 1: firestorm because it was a bit of a reversal of
Speaker 1: what he said he was gonna do, and it, you know,
Speaker 1: really embroiled us 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 as 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. Yeah,
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. Instead, he escalates things by invading Cambodia, where
Speaker 1: the Vietcong we're stationed, and that led to immediate protests.
Speaker 1: That was April thirtieth, nineteen seventy, that he announced that
Speaker 1: we had invaded Cambodia, and the next day is when
Speaker 1: the first protest takes place at Kent State. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: Kent the The article points out that it was not
Speaker 1: the most likely place because it was a little more
Speaker 1: blue collar than like say, Ohio State nearby, the Ohio
Speaker 1: State University and um man, I'm sorry that is so stupid.
Speaker 1: Sorry os U alums and fans and students, but it
Speaker 1: is stupid, and everyone outside of Ohio State thinks it's stupid.
Speaker 1: They 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. Yeah, you know, I can just start saying
Speaker 1: the University of Georgia. That makes a little more sense,
Speaker 1: does it. Yeah, what's the difference the Ohio State University
Speaker 1: the University of Georgia. It's just it was the University
Speaker 1: of Ohio State that would make more sense. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: litt more to my ear, I got you my ear right,
Speaker 1: there you see it. That's very nice, thank you. Um.
Speaker 1: At any rate, uh, I can't say it was a
Speaker 1: little more blue collar and you wouldn't think there would
Speaker 1: be like protesting, but there was protesting at schools all
Speaker 1: over the country. There were and you can read between
Speaker 1: the lines here. Kent State had a lower hippie population
Speaker 1: than Ohio State. Can we just come up right out
Speaker 1: and say it, right, But there were protests there. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a protest on May one, and it was a
Speaker 1: standard uh war protests three days before the shootings, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of when things got kicked off, right, But
Speaker 1: these kids were still pretty good. They were at school
Speaker 1: holding a protest in the commons, I believe, um, which
Speaker 1: was the a k a. The quad or like the
Speaker 1: big grassy area between in the middle of campus. Um.
Speaker 1: And they said, you know what, this went pretty well.
Speaker 1: Let's take the weekend off and we'll meet back here
Speaker 1: one day and have another anti war protest because we're
Speaker 1: really steamed about this. And everyone said, okay, let's do that,
Speaker 1: and for tonight, let's go out and hit the bars
Speaker 1: and it. Yeah, this is what they did. The first one.
Speaker 1: They buried the constitution as a symbolic gesture. And the
Speaker 1: second one they got drunk, right, not at the protest
Speaker 1: but later that night. Right, so that Friday protests is
Speaker 1: when they buried the constitution. Yes, this is like a
Speaker 1: real protest, not just walking around. There's like stuff going
Speaker 1: on and like you know, there's symbolic acts. It was
Speaker 1: a real protest. Yeah. And if you combine alcohol and protesting,
Speaker 1: things might get a little rowdy. So bonfires broke out,
Speaker 1: they start throwing bottles at police cars, breaking windows. It's
Speaker 1: more the little rowdy. I mean, that's pretty that's a riot.
Speaker 1: When you said like bomb fires in the streets and
Speaker 1: like throw bottles at at police cars, that you have
Speaker 1: just basically said we've drawn a line in the sand.
Speaker 1: Where are you gonna do, cops? That is one way
Speaker 1: to look at it, for sure. Uh. The mayor, Leroy
Speaker 1: Satram said, this is an emergency situation people. I need
Speaker 1: to call the governor James Rhodes. We need some help.
Speaker 1: I'm going to close the bar, which you know isn't
Speaker 1: gonna make anyone very happy. No, And it had an
Speaker 1: exacerbating effect apparently because that meant all the people who
Speaker 1: weren't riding in the streets who were busy drinking in
Speaker 1: the bars were now suddenly in the streets too and
Speaker 1: joined the protests and the a k A. The riots, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: that's right. And the police were called in. They used
Speaker 1: tear gas and said go back to your dorm rooms,
Speaker 1: basically get back on campus. And that was Friday. Now
Speaker 1: we move on to Saturday. Yeah, and the Mayor's is
Speaker 1: obviously a little jumpy. He's hearing rumors circulating that there's
Speaker 1: gonna be another the scene from the night before is
Speaker 1: going to happen all over again on Saturday. So he
Speaker 1: calls the governor of Ohio and UM, here enters the
Speaker 1: person who, in my opinion, is single handedly responsible for
Speaker 1: what happened at Kent State. So the National Guard arrives. Um,
Speaker 1: there were about a thousand protesters. Um that actually burned
Speaker 1: down an r OTC building on campus, which is pretty
Speaker 1: bold move. And UM, they didn't find out who did
Speaker 1: that exactly, but they did cut fire hoses so they
Speaker 1: couldn't put out the fire and basically burned it to
Speaker 1: the ground. Yeah, the protesters set it on fire and
Speaker 1: then cut the fire hoses like they wanted that building burned.
Speaker 1: And apparently, UM, that's when the National Guard shows up
Speaker 1: a couple like an hour or so later, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they, you know, broke everything up obviously. And then
Speaker 1: Uh comes Sunday. You've got about a thousand National guardsman
Speaker 1: and you've got Governor Rhodes arriving, uh and holding a
Speaker 1: press conference and kind of flaming the fire again by
Speaker 1: calling the protesters the worst type of people that we
Speaker 1: harbor in America. Yeah, he compared to the brown Shirts,
Speaker 1: Mussolini's brown Shirts, UM, the communists, UM, pretty much anybody
Speaker 1: he could think of that was that would be disparaging.
Speaker 1: That's who publicly at this press conference compared him to UM.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned that the on Sunday morning, the UM
Speaker 1: National Guard was on campus kind of keeping order and everything.
Speaker 1: But apparently like the relations between the guardsmen and the
Speaker 1: students were pretty amicable, Like people were chatting friendly, Like
Speaker 1: there was no tension. It was just kind of like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm nineteen, Hey i'm nineteen, I'm a student at Kent State,
Speaker 1: I'm in the National Guard. Let's hang out. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't until the governor showed up and held this press
Speaker 1: conference that things took a very sudden turn for the worse,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't just the brown shirts calling him the
Speaker 1: brown Shirts of the worst element that America harbor, but
Speaker 1: also saying I may also declare martial law. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that I may message never quite got through in those
Speaker 1: confusion as to whether or not that actually happened. And basically,
Speaker 1: the National Guard believed that that had happened, and they
Speaker 1: took control of the campus and said we're running the
Speaker 1: show now. And that's just the National Guard. But the
Speaker 1: university officials to the people running the university said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: martial laws declared. And they knew that there was a
Speaker 1: protest scheduled for the following day, Monday, so they printed
Speaker 1: a bunch of flyers and pamphlets saying, hey, your constitutional
Speaker 1: rights have been suspended because the universities under martial law,
Speaker 1: so all assemblies banned, so don't protest, And that kind
Speaker 1: of fell on deaf ears. I guess you could say,
Speaker 1: come Monday morning, because the students showed up to protest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that definitely didn't work. Um, by noon, there was about
Speaker 1: three thousand people, about five hundred actively protesting, another thousand
Speaker 1: just there to be supportive. And um, and it cuts
Speaker 1: it's a college campus. About people just checking it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: stopping on their way to class or whatever, you like,
Speaker 1: what's going on. I would have done the same thing probably,
Speaker 1: And we should say also are our buddy stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know? UM host and sometimes producer
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick his parents were students at Kent stay and
Speaker 1: they stay at home that day. They were like, there's
Speaker 1: some bad stuff that's going to go down, and they
Speaker 1: were right. Uh So, the article points out at was
Speaker 1: less an anti war protest at this point and more
Speaker 1: of a protest of the draconian occupation of their campus
Speaker 1: martial law by the army and UM which is not
Speaker 1: even real, which is just a misunderstanding. Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1: So the general UM Canterbury says, you know what this
Speaker 1: rally is over drive me around in a jeep, give
Speaker 1: me that bullhorn, let me tell everyone to go home,
Speaker 1: because that'll work. Yeah, I mean, let's go back to
Speaker 1: this where these tensions came from. In the first it's
Speaker 1: establishment versus anti establishment, and establishment is the type to
Speaker 1: stand in a jeep and be driven around with the
Speaker 1: bullhorn telling people to disperse. I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: ever been a message relayed via bullhorn that doesn't fall
Speaker 1: on deaf ears. Yeah, you know, it has the opposite effect, unless,
Speaker 1: like I guess, in like a female situations, if you're
Speaker 1: trying to like organize people and stuff, that helps. But
Speaker 1: I always think of bullhorns is stuff like this, the
Speaker 1: general riding around the jeep yelling at people to go home,
Speaker 1: and people saying, no, you don understand why we're here
Speaker 1: in the first place. So they started throwing rocks at
Speaker 1: the jeep, not surprisingly and um not well think you
Speaker 1: know tensions at this point this was day four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I think though, though I'm not justifying, I'm just no, no,
Speaker 1: I know you're not at all. But I think it's
Speaker 1: really easy to to um to to kind of choose
Speaker 1: one side or the other, especially once you know the outcome.
Speaker 1: But I don't think it should be overlooked that, like
Speaker 1: people are throwing rocks at this dude while he's driving
Speaker 1: around in the jeep. People have burned down a building
Speaker 1: full of rioted in the streets of the town, the
Speaker 1: college town. I mean, like these are real huge events
Speaker 1: that scared the pants off of the people who were
Speaker 1: running the town, the state, the country. And I mean
Speaker 1: to say that they were unprovoked as historically inaccurate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally agree with not justifying. But I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people might think the story is people got
Speaker 1: together to protest and the army came in and shot him, right,
Speaker 1: or yeah, and and it was either the protests of fault.
Speaker 1: They shouldn't have been protest, they shouldn't have burned down
Speaker 1: that building, or you know, it was entirely the National
Speaker 1: Guards fault. And you whatever historical event you're looking at,
Speaker 1: it's never just one side or the other. Usually there's
Speaker 1: all it's always great, and you have blinders on. If
Speaker 1: you think otherwise, you should write a history book called
Speaker 1: It's Always Great Josh Clark's History of America. I'd buy that,
Speaker 1: thanks man. Um. Alright, so where are we? They were
Speaker 1: throwing rocks at the General. He at this point ordered
Speaker 1: his troops to load their weapons, get the tear gas going.
Speaker 1: He said, they threw rocks, and you guys, load your weapons.
Speaker 1: That's basically what happened. Um, not because his feelings were hurt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although imagine they were. I guess no matter who you are,
Speaker 1: I'm sure if people throw rocks and you're like I
Speaker 1: I take that personally. So the National Guard came in.
Speaker 1: They pushed them back past the Commons, over a steep
Speaker 1: called Blanket Hill and into the parking lot of Prentice
Speaker 1: Hall in a practice football field. Then basically the guardsmen
Speaker 1: found themselves cornered by a fence, retreated back up the hill.
Speaker 1: When they got to the top, out of the seventy
Speaker 1: turned and began firing their guns into the crowd. Yeah. So, well,
Speaker 1: not 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 count. Oh yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And I mean the the protesters were about a football
Speaker 1: field away from them, um. And the fact that they
Speaker 1: started to walk up the hill and then turn and
Speaker 1: shot 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: tragically Sure and Schroeder were just walking to class. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they weren't even part of this protest. They were in
Speaker 1: the wrong place at the wrong time, and like I said,
Speaker 1: nine people were wounded in one Dean collar was paralyzed.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so those shots they shot into the air
Speaker 1: and into the ground, but also into the crowd, and
Speaker 1: over about thirteen seconds, they fired between sixty one and
Speaker 1: sixty seven shots. I think that could be categorized as
Speaker 1: a hail of gunfire. Yeah, thirteen seconds, sixties shots, But
Speaker 1: is that that's like a lot of shots a second,
Speaker 1: you know, and just from twenty eight guns. And apparently
Speaker 1: there was a professor named Glenn Frank who did a
Speaker 1: lot to quell the crowd and did talk them into, uh,
Speaker 1: not escalating this thing any further. Right, So this article
Speaker 1: really kind of glances over this guy's role. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just him, but he was the head of the
Speaker 1: faculty marshals, who whose job it was was to basically
Speaker 1: keep an eye on the protests. They were like the
Speaker 1: university's liaison between the university and the students the protesters,
Speaker 1: and this guy and his crew basically single handedly prevented
Speaker 1: like a massacre because they saw very quickly that if
Speaker 1: they didn't insinuate themselves, but between the guardsmen and the students,
Speaker 1: the students were gonna be like, Holy, Holy God, they
Speaker 1: just fired live ammunition on us, and they're standing right there,
Speaker 1: let's get them. They would have attacked. The consensus is
Speaker 1: the students would have attacked out of anger, and that
Speaker 1: the guardsmen most definitely would have fired again when being attacked.
Speaker 1: UM and these this this faculty member and his team
Speaker 1: saw what was about to happen and slid in and
Speaker 1: was like wait. So they first they spoke to the
Speaker 1: guardsman and said, stop firing, we have to go talk
Speaker 1: to the students. Then they went and spoke to the
Speaker 1: students for twenty minutes and got him to calm down
Speaker 1: enough to to to stop provoking or did not provoker,
Speaker 1: advance on the guardsman in retaliation, and saved a lot
Speaker 1: of lives. Probably. I wonder if there's a Glenn Frank
Speaker 1: statue on campus, there should be agree. Uh. So they
Speaker 1: closed school not for the day or the weekend, but
Speaker 1: for the rest of the semester, and UM a lot
Speaker 1: of colleges did the same. As far as shutting down, well,
Speaker 1: because a lot of students went on strike. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like they were forced to the universities were forced to
Speaker 1: shut down. Uh. In the following weekend, UM a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people went to d c UM to protest. Neil
Speaker 1: Young News to Josh wrote a song about it. M Okay,
Speaker 1: so the the shooting has just happened, that the crowd
Speaker 1: has been quelled, the dead and Moon would have been
Speaker 1: taken away an ambulances and now we've reached the aftermath
Speaker 1: that's immediate and otherwise. Yeah, Um, President Nixon wasn't super compassionate.
Speaker 1: He had earlier been overheard calling them bums. This wasn't
Speaker 1: in his press release, obviously, but it definitely got out
Speaker 1: in the press. Did not bode well for his reputation.
Speaker 1: And um, he said, when dissent turns to violence, it
Speaker 1: invites tragedy. That was the official line. That was the
Speaker 1: official line, which is pretty cold. That's the president like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you get what you what you pay for. Yeah, very much.
Speaker 1: His vice president, um Agnew said it was predictable. UM
Speaker 1: also not super compassionate, considering this these were Americans were
Speaker 1: shot and killed Uh, two of which were just walking
Speaker 1: to class. Uh. He called them a bunch of scared
Speaker 1: kids with guns. The National guardsman. That was very priced
Speaker 1: the speechwriter for Nixon. Yeah, which is true. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: so basically the whole the whole kids, it's gray, you know.
Speaker 1: It is like they probably were scared for sure, and
Speaker 1: uh and yeah, I think that's fair. I think also
Speaker 1: though it's it's one sided too, like he's he's not
Speaker 1: saying and then also the other side, we're a bunch
Speaker 1: of scared, angry kids with rocks. Yeah, like the only
Speaker 1: way and you can't even remove the gray, but you'd
Speaker 1: have to find out each person who shot and what
Speaker 1: their motive was, because some were probably scared out of
Speaker 1: their mind and reacted. There has been some people later
Speaker 1: on that said that they some got together and decided
Speaker 1: to do this, some of the guardsmen, right, so, when
Speaker 1: they had been pushing the crowd back onto the UM
Speaker 1: practice football field, apparently while they were loitering there. There
Speaker 1: have been allegations that a couple of the guardsmen said, Hey,
Speaker 1: when we marched back up the hill, we're going to
Speaker 1: turn and fire. It's never been proven, um, but a
Speaker 1: few more than a couple of historians have leveled that accusation. Um.
Speaker 1: There was also immediate word that the guardsman said that
Speaker 1: they were acting in self defense because they there was
Speaker 1: a sniper on one of the rooftops and that they
Speaker 1: were being fired on. They found out that there were
Speaker 1: audio recordings of this, and UM, that was quickly changed
Speaker 1: to well, it was self defense because these people we're
Speaker 1: throwing rocks at us. There was a presidential commission obviously, UM,
Speaker 1: and they concluded it was quote unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.
Speaker 1: And then in UH, an FBI investigation found that the
Speaker 1: guardsman fabricated their defense and that they were not in
Speaker 1: true danger. Right. That was FBI. So the presidential commission
Speaker 1: and the FBI investigation both said, like, this shouldn't have happened,
Speaker 1: and like it's on the guardsman. But that wasn't the
Speaker 1: mood of the nation for the most part. There was
Speaker 1: a gallop pole that was conducted shortly after, and UM,
Speaker 1: the majority of Americans said that it was the protester's
Speaker 1: fault for protesting. Yeah, I mean it went to trial too.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just like, oh, well this happened and it's
Speaker 1: super sad. Uh. And in federal trial, it was dismissed
Speaker 1: because of what was called a weak case by the guardsman,
Speaker 1: and then the grand jury in Ohio put the blame
Speaker 1: on the university officials and the protesters and not the guardsman.
Speaker 1: And then there was a civil trial in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine settled out of court where the victims and families
Speaker 1: got a collective sum of six d seventy dollars ah
Speaker 1: collective some meaning 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 the that was that came out
Speaker 1: of the civil trial that the Ohio National Guard released
Speaker 1: to the families of the victims. In retrospect, the tragedy
Speaker 1: of May fourth, nineteen seventies should not have occurred. The
Speaker 1: students may have believed that they were right in continuing
Speaker 1: their mass protests in response to the Cambodian invasion, even
Speaker 1: though this protest followed the posting and reading by the
Speaker 1: university of an order to ban rallies and in order
Speaker 1: to disperse These orders have since been determined by the
Speaker 1: Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to have been lawful. Some
Speaker 1: of the guardsmen on Blanket Hill, fearful and anxious from
Speaker 1: prior events, may have believed their own, in their own minds,
Speaker 1: that their lives were in danger. Hindsight suggests that another
Speaker 1: method would have resolved the confrontation. Better ways must be
Speaker 1: found to deal with such a confrontation. We devoutly wish
Speaker 1: that a means had been found to avoid the May
Speaker 1: fourth events culminating in the guard shootings and the irreversible
Speaker 1: deaths and injuries. We deeply regret those events and are
Speaker 1: profoundly saddened by the deaths of four students and the
Speaker 1: wounding of nine others which resulted. We hope that the
Speaker 1: agreement to end the litigation will help to asswadge the
Speaker 1: 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: shaid 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? Calling the National Guard and remove us?
Speaker 1: And they went. Uh. In nineteen seventy nine, there were
Speaker 1: hundreds of arrest 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 then finally in
Speaker 1: the mid two thousand's, UM, the university is finally reverse
Speaker 1: this position and just kind of goes with the flow.
Speaker 1: And in two thirteen they opened a visitors center that
Speaker 1: is all about commemorating this event 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 is
Speaker 1: that 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, right. And people are still trying
Speaker 1: to 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 dirty, 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 a Kin State student named Terry Norman UM
Speaker 1: who was a photographer on campus taking pictures, and he
Speaker 1: also had a handgun, a loaded handgun, and he denied
Speaker 1: that he discharged it. But um, he has been accused
Speaker 1: of triggering this by firing shots. And I think they
Speaker 1: found evidence, audio evidence that there were shots fired, and
Speaker 1: they think it maybe have been Terry Norman. Wow, that
Speaker 1: kicked 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 students. Yeah, and could have been a lot worse.
Speaker 1: Like they basically riddled a dormitory with a hail of
Speaker 1: gun fire. So ten days after Kent State UM, at
Speaker 1: Jackson State University UM in Mississippi, UH, they were also
Speaker 1: carrying out anti war protests, but they were also UM
Speaker 1: protests based on racism as well. UM. And when these
Speaker 1: students were doing a lot of the similar stuff, a
Speaker 1: lot of the same stuff that was happening or had
Speaker 1: happened at Kent State, they were UM riding. They had
Speaker 1: burned a building on campus down and UM. When firefighters
Speaker 1: came out to put out the flames, they started to
Speaker 1: get worried that these protesters were going to harm them,
Speaker 1: so they called the cops. Well, the cops came out,
Speaker 1: tried to disperse the crowd. The crowd didn't disperse, so
Speaker 1: they opened fire, and like you said, they riddled the
Speaker 1: building that served as the backdrop to this protest with bullets.
Speaker 1: Something like four hundred and sixty rounds hit the building, alone.
Speaker 1: There's no telling how manyone on the sides or anything
Speaker 1: like that. The four hundred and sixty rounds, they said
Speaker 1: every window was akin on every floor with bullet fire
Speaker 1: on the 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. Which again, the
Speaker 1: fact that he's not involved in anyway and still died
Speaker 1: makes it so much worse. Yeah. And this one, also,
Speaker 1: I don't think we pointed out started out because of misinformation.
Speaker 1: There was um a rumor that the mayor, Mayor Charles
Speaker 1: Evers and his wife had been shot and killed, assassinated
Speaker 1: 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 there there. Yeah, so um,
Speaker 1: this is a historically black call edge. The cops had
Speaker 1: just opened fire on a bunch of students. Twelve people
Speaker 1: were hit by injured by gunfire. Two were killed, and
Speaker 1: the ambulances weren't called until the police picked up all
Speaker 1: of their showcasings and left, and then the National Guard
Speaker 1: came in. Yeah, and then after that the police denied
Speaker 1: they even took part. Um. I'm not sure how that
Speaker 1: panned out. How can you deny that he shot up
Speaker 1: a building? So it was Mississippi in and historically black college.
Speaker 1: And you probably never heard of Jackson State for NT
Speaker 1: until we started researching this. I didn't. I hadn't heard
Speaker 1: of it either, and there was only one source we
Speaker 1: used that made reference to it. That's how I heard
Speaker 1: about it. So that's great. It's just fantastic. That's what
Speaker 1: happened against state in Jackson State, in Jackson State. Um,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I got nothing else. Just gotta
Speaker 1: be a better ending of this than this. I mean,
Speaker 1: these things happened, but there there has to have been
Speaker 1: some lesson learned. I think. So it hasn't happened since. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. I wonder at least on a campus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should do one on the Battle for Seattle. Did
Speaker 1: they didn't fire live rounds at that though, did they
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure they didn't, but that, Yeah, we should
Speaker 1: do one on that as well. Yeah, my friend John
Speaker 1: was there agitating is he a black shirt? Now? He
Speaker 1: had these funny protest lines about that references Simpsons. I
Speaker 1: can't remember her black block, that's where they got the pictures. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: well I have to interview him then. I don't know
Speaker 1: that it would yield much information. Fine, I think he
Speaker 1: was just cooping around. Um, all right, Well, if you
Speaker 1: want to learn more about Kent State, you can type
Speaker 1: in uh that name into the search bar how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And we also encourage you to go
Speaker 1: look up Jackson State as well. Um. And let's see,
Speaker 1: since I said search bar you it's time for listener mail, right, Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: gonna call this. Prison guard wrote in, Hey guys, Um,
Speaker 1: For the most part, I found the episode on capital
Speaker 1: Punishment pretty even handed and interesting. However, I couldn't help
Speaker 1: but notice a bit of venom in your voices whenever
Speaker 1: you mentioned prison guards, especially in instance of an inmate
Speaker 1: taking his own life with a razor blade while he
Speaker 1: was being off observed on deathwatch. The implication was that
Speaker 1: the guard on duty negligently gave the inmate a razor
Speaker 1: in order to encourage him to take his own life.
Speaker 1: I don't think we implied that, did we. Um, No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't implied. It was more just like what kind
Speaker 1: of thing? Like why why did that happen? As a
Speaker 1: former prison guard that worked on death row, I have
Speaker 1: to tell you, UM, that couldn't be further from the truth.
Speaker 1: It's a civil right for inmates to have access to
Speaker 1: razor blades for hygienic purposes. I was required to allow
Speaker 1: an inmate on death row to keep the disposable razor
Speaker 1: for thirty minutes, despite the fact that he had nearly
Speaker 1: killed another inmate and murdered a prison official with a
Speaker 1: razor blade while serving his senates. I'd imagine an inmate,
Speaker 1: even on deathwatch, would have similar rights, but I can't
Speaker 1: confirm through experience. UM. Guards that worked on death row
Speaker 1: weren't allowed to serve on death watch. This is because
Speaker 1: it was feared that we'd form an emotional bond to
Speaker 1: the inmates set for execution. I might cause a scene.
Speaker 1: So yes, prison guards have feelings and can have empathy
Speaker 1: for others. Pop culture and nearly always portrays guards as
Speaker 1: heavy as and villains and even smart portrayals of prison
Speaker 1: life like Orange is the New Black, as every prison
Speaker 1: official character as a comic book mustache twirling villain or
Speaker 1: a mouth breathing idiot. It's a hard job and should
Speaker 1: be respected as much as other high risk civil servant careers. Um.
Speaker 1: A little disappointed you guys continue this trend, but I'm
Speaker 1: used to it, so don't sweat it. So that is
Speaker 1: from Craig, and he let us off easy, even though
Speaker 1: he feels like we insulted his job. Well thanks, Craig.
Speaker 1: I think he did exactly what we were kind of
Speaker 1: searching for right then. We were just um ah, disgustedly confused.
Speaker 1: We're disgustedly ignorant one of the two. Yeah. I will
Speaker 1: say that he is probably right on the money. As
Speaker 1: far as movie portrayals, it's pretty one note if you're
Speaker 1: a prison guard in a movie in general, unless it's
Speaker 1: The Green Mile and that movie has problems of its
Speaker 1: own or OZ. I never watched Oz. What that was
Speaker 1: the first? That Odds is the show that kicked off
Speaker 1: all of the shows you love and binge watched. Now,
Speaker 1: the idea of binge watching a show began with a
Speaker 1: show like Oz because there was nothing like it ever
Speaker 1: created before. It was. It all started with Oz, the Wire,
Speaker 1: the shield, Um, House of Cards. Orange is a new
Speaker 1: black Everything, every breaking bad, all of them. Can thank Oz.
Speaker 1: You can thank Oz. You should go watch oz Man.
Speaker 1: Thank you Oz. It's good, great man. This one was.
Speaker 1: This is something I feel drained a little bit. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: emotionally exhausted. I'm still not happy with the ending. I
Speaker 1: feel like we could have ended a lot better. But um,
Speaker 1: I'll have to think on it all right. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with me and Chuck,
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You 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 to Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com and has always joined us at our home on
Speaker 1: the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you
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