On May 4, 1970, a disorganized and nonviolent antiwar protest turned violent and deadly when the Ohio National Guard inexplicably opened fire on students at Kent State University — indelibly polarizing the United States populace to an extreme arguably unabated since.
Guardsmen opened fire on the assembled crowd, unleashing between 61 and 67 bullets in 13 seconds — which left four people dead and nine wounded. Now, 46 years after the unjustified bloodbath, critical questions remain unanswered about both details of the incident, as well as circumstances that culminated in the shooting of unarmed protesters.
Perhaps the only inarguable detail of the Kent State massacre, often referred to simply as “Kent State,” is the fundamental, polarizing shift in popular perception.
The younger generation epiphanically concluded that the constitutional right to speak against a government amounted to a hollow promise — and that same government harbored no qualms in deploying violence to quash such dissent. But that same generation of young people, generally under 30 years old, also witnessed their parents’ and the older generation’s acceptance of — and, often, prideful approval of — that exact violence by the National Guard.
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