Kent State: Martyrdom That Shook the Country

IT took half a century to transform Kent State from an obscure teachers college into the second largest university in Ohio, with 21,000 students and an impressive array of modern buildings on its main campus. But it took less than ten terrifying seconds last week to convert the traditionally conformist campus into a bloodstained symbol of the rising student rebellion against the Nixon Administration and the war in Southeast Asia. When National Guardsmen fired indiscriminately into a crowd of unarmed civilians, killing four students, the bullets wounded the nation.

Paradoxically, the turn toward violence at Kent State was not inspired by the war or politics. The first rocks thrown in anger were hurled through the muggy Friday night of May 1 by beery students who could not resist the urge to dance on a Kent street. Hundreds of students were drinking at the bull-and-beer spots that flourish in most college towns. Spirits were light. A crowd swarmed into the warm night, blocking busy North Water Street, responding to the rock beat.

"Get Out" One irate motorist gunned his car's engine as if to drive through the dancers. Some students climbed atop the car, jumped on it, then led a chant: "One-two-three-four, we don't want your war!" A drunk on a balcony hurled a bottle into the street--and suddenly the mood turned ugly. Students smashed the car's windows, set fires in trash cans, began to bash storefronts. Police were called. Kent Mayor LeRoy Satrom had ordered a curfew, but few students were aware of it. Police stormed into bars after midnight, turning up the lights, shouting "Get out!" Some 2,000 more students, many of whom had been watching the Knicks-Lakers basketball game on TV, were forced into the street. Police and sheriff's deputies pushed the youths back toward the campus, then fired tear gas to disperse them.

Saturday began quietly. Black student leaders, who had been demanding the admission next year of 5,000 more blacks to Kent State (it now has about 600), and leaders of the mounting antiwar sentiment on campus talked of joining forces. They got administrative approval to hold a rally that evening on the ten-acre Commons at the center of the campus. There, despite the presence of faculty members and student marshals, militant war protesters managed to take complete charge of a crowd of about 800, many still smarting from the conflict of the night before. They disrupted a dance in one university hall, then attacked the one-story Army ROTC building facing the Commons. They smashed windows and threw lighted railroad flares inside. The building caught fire. When firemen arrived, students threw rocks at them and cut their hoses with machetes until police interceded with tear gas. Without bothering to consult Kent State authorities, Mayor Satrom -asked for help from the National Guard. Governor James Rhodes, still engaged in his tough--and ultimately unsuccessful--campaign for the Senate nomination, quickly ordered Guardsmen transferred from points of tension in a Teamster strike elsewhere in Ohio.

Within an hour, about 500 Guardsmen, already weary from three nights of duty, arrived with fully loaded M-1 semiautomatic rifles, pistols and tear gas. They were in time to help police block the students from charging into the downtown area. Students reacted by dousing trees with gasoline, then setting them afire. Order was restored before midnight. On Sunday, Governor Rhodes arrived in Kent. He made no attempt to seek the advice of Kent State President Robert I. White and told newsmen that campus troublemakers were "worse than Brown Shirts and Communists and vigilantes--they're the worst type of people that we harbor in America." He refused to close the campus, as Portage County Prosecutor Ronald Kane pleaded; instead, he declared a state of emergency and banned all demonstrations on the campus. Late that night, about 500 students defied the order and staged a sitdown on one of Kent's busiest intersections. Guardsmen, their number now grown to 900, moved into the face of a rock barrage to arrest 150 students.

"Our Campus" '

On Monday, the campus seemed to calm down. In the bright sunshine, tired young Guardsmen flirted with leggy coeds under the tall oaks and maples. Classes continued throughout the morning. But the ban against mass assemblies was still in effect, and some students decided to test it again. "We just couldn't believe they could tell us to leave," said one. "This is our campus." At high noon, youngsters began ringing the school's Victory Bell, normally used to celebrate a football triumph but rarely heard of late. About 1,000 students, some nervous but many joking, gathered on the Commons. Another 2,000 ringed the walks and buildings to watch.

From their staging area near the burned-out ROTC building, officers in two Jeeps rolled across the grass to address the students with bullhorns: "Evacuate the Commons area. You have no right to assemble." Back came shouts of "Pigs off campus! We don't want your war." Students raised middle fingers. The Jeeps pulled back. Two skirmish lines of Guardsmen, wearing helmets and gas masks, stepped away from the staging area and began firing tear-gas canisters at the crowd. The Guardsmen moved about 100 yards toward the assembly and fired gas again. A few students picked up canisters and threw them back, but they fell short of the troops. The mists of stinging gas split the crowd. Some students fled toward Johnson Hall, a men's dormitory, and were blocked by the L-shaped building. Others ran between Johnson and nearby Taylor Hall.

Leaderless

A formation of fewer than 100 Guardsmen--a mixed group including men from the 107th Armored Cavalry Regiment based in neighboring Ravenna, and others from a Wooster company of the 145th Infantry Regiment--pursued fleeing students between the two buildings. The troopers soon found themselves facing a fence and flanked by rock-throwing students, who rarely got close enough to hit anyone. Occasionally one managed to toss a gas canister back near the troops, while delighted spectators, watching from the hilltop, windows of buildings and the roof of another men's dorm, cheered. Many demonstrators were laughing.

Then the outnumbered and partially encircled contingent of Guardsmen ran out of tear gas. Suddenly they seemed frightened. They began retreating up the hill toward Taylor Hall, most of them walking backward to keep their eyes on the threatening students below. The crowd on the hilltop consisted almost entirely of onlookers rather than rock throwers. The tight circle of retreating Guardsmen contained officers and noncoms from both regiments, but no single designated leader. With them in civilian clothes was Brigadier General Robert Canterbury, the ranking officer on the campus, who said later: "I was there--but I was not in command of any unit." Some of the troops held their rifles pointed skyward. Several times a few of them turned, pointed their M1s threateningly at the crowd, and continued their retreat.

When the compact formation reached the top of the hill, some Guardsmen knelt quickly and aimed at the students who were hurling rocks from below. A handful of demonstrators kept moving toward the troops. Other Guardsmen stood behind the kneeling troops, pointing their rifles down the hill. A few aimed over the students' heads. Several witnesses later claimed that an officer brought his baton down in a sweeping signal. Said Jim Minard, a sophomore from Warren, Ohio: "I was harassing this officer. I threw a stone at him, and he pointed a .45-caliber pistol at me. He was brandishing a swagger stick. He turned away.

He was holding his baton in the air, and the moment he dropped it, they fired."

Within seconds, a sickening staccato of rifle fire signaled the transformation of a once-placid campus into the site of an historic American tragedy.

Like a Firing Squad

"They are shooting blanks --they are shooting blanks," thought Kent State Journalism Professor Charles Brill, who nevertheless crouched behind a pillar. "Then I heard a chipping sound and a ping, and I thought, 'My God, this is for real.' " An Army veteran who saw action in Korea, Brill was certain that the Guardsmen had not fired randomly out of individual panic. "They were organized," he said. "It was not scattered. They all waited and they all pointed their rifles at the same time. It looked like a firing squad." The shooting stopped--as if on signal. Minutes later, the Guardsmen assumed parade-rest positions, apparently to signal the crowd that the fusillade would not be resumed unless the Guardsmen were threatened again. "I felt like I'd just had an order to clean up a latrine," recalled one Guardsman in the firing unit. "You do what you're told to do."

The campus was suddenly still. Horrified students flung themselves to the ground, ran for cover behind buildings and parked cars, or just stood stunned. Then screams broke out. "My God, they're killing us!" one girl cried. They were. A river of blood ran from the head of one boy, saturating his school books. One youth held a cloth against the abdomen of another, futilely trying to check the bleeding. Guardsmen made no move to help the victims. The troops were still both frightened and threatening. After ambulances had taken away the dead and wounded, more students gathered. Geology Professor Glenn Frank, an exMarine, ran up to talk to officers. He came back sobbing. "If we don't get out of here right now," he reported, "the Guard is going to clear us out any way they can--they mean any way."

In that brief volley, four young people --none of whom was a protest leader or even a radical--were killed. Ten students were wounded, three seriously. One of them, Dean Kahler of Canton, Ohio, is paralyzed below his waist by a spinal wound.

The Fatalities

WILLIAM K. SCHROEDER, 19, a psychology major from Lorain, Ohio, was the second-ranking student in Kent State's Army ROTC unit. A friend recalled that he was "angry and upset" that the ROTC building had been burned down. A former Eagle Scout, high school basketball and track standout, he was the image of the clean-cut, academically conscientious Middle American boy.

He apparently was only a spectator at the Monday rally. Even so, he illustrates the fact that youth's sentiment is shifting too rapidly to permit any student to be neatly tabbed. "My son was very opposed to the Viet Nam War," said William Schroeder's mother, "and his feelings against the war were growing."

SANDRA LEE SCHEUER, 20, a junior from Youngstown, Ohio, was walking to a class in speech therapy (her major) when she was caught in the Guardsmen's fire. A bubbly girl and an honor student, Sandy seemed too gregarious and full of laughter to take much interest in politics or protest. Although she sympathized with the peace movement, she did not join her college friends when they went to work for Senator Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign. "Sandy lived for what everyone else lived for--to find someone to love and someone who loved her," said her best friend, Eileen Feldman.

JEFFREY GLENN MILLER, 20, a transfer student from Michigan State, where he found fraternity life a lot of "adolescent nonsense," was no militant activist either. But he did call his mother in Plainview, N.Y., to say that he felt he had to join the demonstrations. He wore his hair long, liked bellbottoms, love beads and rock music. A psychology major, he was, according to acquaintances, "a great believer in love." "I know it sounds like a mother," said Mrs. Elaine Miller, "but Jeff didn't want to go to war, not because he'd be hurt, but because he might have to hurt someone else."

ALLISON KRAUSE, 19, a quiet, almond-eyed beauty, was more of a listener than a talker; she never preached about her deeply held views. She opposed the war, and with her boy friend, Barry Levine, was among the spectators caught in the rifle fire. An honor student interested in the history of art, she believed in protest but not in violence. She had placed a flower in a Guardsman's rifle at Kent State and said softly: "Flowers are better than bullets." "Is dissent a crime?" asked Allison Krause's father. "Is this a reason for killing her? Have we come to such a state in this country that a young girl has to be shot because she disagrees deeply with the actions of her Government?"

Flimsy Excuse

Multiple investigations at federal and state levels are under way to determine why anyone was killed at Kent State. Far worse disorders have been controlled at other campuses without fatalities. Many of the students had obviously committed lawless acts during that long weekend. Apparently they thought that they could do so with impunity.

General Canterbury and his superior, Ohio Adjutant General Sylvester Del Corso, at first sought refuge in a flimsy excuse for uncontrolled gunfire. They said that their men had been fired upon by a sniper. By the end of the week, even Del Corso conceded that there was no evidence of any such attack.

A more plausible explanation was fear that bordered on panic. "Each man made the judgment on his own that his life was in danger," said Canterbury. "I felt that I could have been killed out there." A number of the men believed that the crowd was going to engulf them, perhaps take away their loaded weapons and turn the M1s on the troopers. Some had been hurt by thrown objects--but none seriously enough to require hospitalization. Though the units had served in riot situations before, most of the lower-ranking enlisted men had no war experience. The Guardsmen at Kent had apparently not paid much attention to whatever training they had been given. "Some in my platoon," said one of the troopers, "have never handled a rifle and hardly know how to load it." Some of the younger men had enlisted in the Guard to avoid regular military service and the hazards of Viet Nam. Said the wife of one Guardsman: "My husband is no murderer. He was afraid. He was sure that they were going to be overrun by those kids. He was under orders--that's why he did it. He said so."

Whose orders? At week's end there was still no answer. Canterbury insisted that "no one gave an order." That statement strains credibility. By Canterbury's own count, 16 or 17 men fired 35 rounds. They started at virtually the same moment and stopped at the same moment. Many civilian spectators at the scene and some officials seeking to reconstruct the event are convinced that an order was given. And someone made the initial mistake of ordering live ammunition distributed to all the men and permitting them to load their rifles--a procedure that is contrary to regular Army practice in civil disturbances. Once weapons are loaded, says one Pentagon officer, "you have effectively lost control of that unit. You have given them the license to fire." The Ohio Guard officers contend that loaded weapons have a deterrent value. No doubt. But no one informed the demonstrators that the troops had live ammunition. Nor were any warning shots fired. Those facts, together with the totally inadequate tactical leadership of the group that felt it was entrapped, raise serious doubts about the Guards' professionalism--and about the wisdom of the decision to employ them.

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