February 27, 2014 • 38 mins
On May 4, 1970, four days of anti-war protests at Kent State University in Ohio culminated in the unthinkable when Ohio guardsmen opened fire on protesters, killing four students. How could this tragedy take place?
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles D. Bryant and there's Jerry. And it's
snowing outside, which means that Stuff you Should Know Snow edition,
(00:21):
Snow Edition. Yeah, I know when we're like, we gotta
record and get out of here because this is when
and snow kills us. I just mainly don't want to
be locked away from the snow. I want to be
able to like look out the window and see it.
I can now, but not as well as i'd like to.
For me, it's just a traffic thing. Like people are
probably leaving work right now. People have already left the
(00:42):
office here. Well maybe everyone will be gone by the
time I get out there. Okay, you'll just be the
lone guy trudging through the snow. That's right, Like if
you go Mortenson in the road. Yes, although he was
not alone and there wasn't any snow. It was just
nuclear ash, although there was snow. Because Charlie is theren
kills herself by going out into the snow. But that's
(01:05):
before everything really takes a downward. Spoiler alert retroact as
spoiler alert Chuck Yep. Are you familiar with Kent State? Yeah? Man,
I've been singing that Neil Young song all day. How
can you not? You cannot by having never heard it?
Like me, shut up? You know that song? Never heard it?
I never listened to Neil Young. You've never heard the
(01:28):
song Ohio? No? I know the Pretender song, but I
don't think that's about Kent State. I'm shocked, Okay, I mean,
you don't have to love you without like, how's it
go home? And for him? No, I'm not gonna Maybe
I have heard it ten Soldiers and Nixon, I've heard it.
I didn't know that was about Ohio for dead in Ohio? Yeah, okay,
(01:51):
And I had no idea, all right. I didn't know
what that song was about. I was just like, oh
Neil Young? Really? Yeah? Oh man, get ready to hear it.
I'm I'm used to it by now. Your bulletproof. Uh. Well,
so you're familiar with the Kent State shootings May four, Um,
four students were killed. I believe another eleven were injured, Yeah,
(02:17):
including one was paralyzed, like some pretty severe injuries. And uh,
this is a big deal. That would be a big
deal in and of itself. If it was just some
sort of campus shooting or something like that, like it
would be a very big deal these days. But what
made the Kent State shootings, for those of you who
aren't familiar with them, such an enormous deal was that
the shootings were carried out by National guardsmen. They were
(02:40):
Americans firing on Americans, UM, Americans on one side of
the equation, firing on protesters on the other side. Uh.
And it was one of the darkest points in American history,
modern or otherwise. Yeah, it was. I think what's so
upsetting is it was random. It wasn't you know that
guy's coming at me with a bottle or a brick,
(03:01):
shoot him. It was random shooting into a crowd, Right.
That's the kind of thing that would happen in countries
under like dictatorships, not here in America. But it did
happen here in America, and not just at Kent State.
There was another similar incident just ten days later. Um
that will talk about as well. It gets overlooked, but yeah,
(03:21):
it was a very dark moment in American history, and
it came out of the the tensions um over the
Vietnam War. Initially, but I think it was more than that.
It was also we should say that's the um kind
of obvious thing that led to it. But also there
was a real tension also between the establishment and the
(03:44):
anti establishment and um, the people in control and the
people who weren't in control, students, elders. There was just
a lot of tension between two sides, and the dividing line,
the obvious dividing line was the Vietnam War. Yeah, and
I think if you are not of that generation, you
may not know the full story. You might know that
(04:04):
four people were shot in a protest and that's about it.
Maybe even if you're from that generation, you may not
know the full story. But we're about to tell you. Okay,
let's take it back a little further than all right,
Vietnam country, which had when it's independence from France in
the fifties. Have you ever seen We Were Soldiers. Yes,
(04:26):
it's almost like a snuff film. It's one of the
most graphically violent movies I've ever seen in my life.
But it's about that transition from France leaving Vietnam and
America coming in. Yeah, go ahead, Well, just initially serving
as advisors and then becoming embroiled in the war. I
(04:47):
forgot all about that movie. Yeah, you know, and Apocalypse
Now there are some deleted scenes of the meeting up
with a French family in Vietnam and like having dinner.
Really yeah, and I remember when I heard about that,
I was like, why were they French? And then I
did a little more homework on it. Oh oh yeah,
if you eat Vietnamese food, like, it's very clearly like, yeah, influenced, well,
(05:09):
all most food is. But yeah. Um so anyway, Uh,
in the fifties day split between communists North and non
communist South Vietnam, and America didn't want communism spreading throughout Asia.
We had a policy of containment. Yeah, and so Richard Nixon, UM,
when he won the sixty election, UM, part of his
(05:32):
promise was something called Vietnamization. It's kind of an awkward word,
and that meant to transfer the combat duties from our
soldiers to the South Vietnamese. That sounds familiar, isn't it?
It does? But um, what what happened was at some
point he said, you know what in nineteen seventy, in April,
he said, I want to send our soldiers in the Cambodia,
(05:54):
and that caused sort of a firestorm because it was
a bit of a reversal of what he said he
was gonna do, and it, you know, really embroiled this
in the kind of the middle of things. Well, yeah,
he he escalated the war in Vietnam, which was already
a very um contentious issue and that it was a war,
but also its a war that Congress never openly declared war.
(06:14):
So that's why historically speaking, it's referred to as the
Vietnam conflict. Um. And so Nixon gets elected partially because
he's saying, I'm gonna get our boys out of there.
We're not gonna like let the communists when we're gonna
prop up the Vietnamese, but um, we're gonna get out
of there. Insteady escalates things by invading Cambodia, where the
(06:34):
Vietcong we're stationed, and that led to immediate protests. That
was April thirtieth, nineteen seventy, that he announced that we
had invaded Cambodia, and the next day is when the
first protest takes place at Kent State. Yeah, and Kent.
The article points out that it was not the most
likely place because it was a little more blue collar
than like say, Ohio State nearby the Ohio State University,
(06:59):
and um man, I'm sorry, that is so stupid. Sorry
os U alums and fans and students, but it is stupid,
and everyone outside of Ohio State thinks it's stupid. They
take a lot of pride in that. The I know,
which I think just kind of fans the flames of
um derision. You know, I can just start saying the
(07:21):
University of Georgia. That makes a little more sense, does it. Yeah,
what's the difference the Ohio State University the University of Georgia.
It's just it was the University of Ohio State that
would make more sense. Yeah, a little more to my ear,
I got my ear right there, see it. It's very nice,
(07:42):
thank you. Um At any rate, Uh, I can't say
it was a little more blue collar. And you wouldn't
think there would be like protesting, but there was protesting
it schools all over the country. There were and you
can read between the lines here, Kent State had a
lower hippie population than Ohio State. Can we just come
up right out and say it, right, But there were
protests there. Um, there was a protest on May one,
(08:03):
and it was a standard uh war protests three days
before the shootings, and it's kind of when things got
kicked off, right, but these kids were still pretty good.
They were at school holding a protest in the commons,
I believe um, which is the a k a. The
quad or like the big grassy area between in the
middle of campus um. And they said, you know what,
(08:24):
this went pretty well. Let's take the weekend off and
we'll meet back here one day and have another anti
war protests because we're really steamed about this. And everyone said, okay,
let's do that, and for tonight, let's go out and
hit the bars and Kent. Yeah, is what they did.
The first one they buried the constitution as a symbolic gesture,
and the second one they got drunk, right, not at
(08:46):
the protest but later that night, right, so that Friday
protests is when they buried the constitution. This is like
a real protest, not just walking around. There's like stuff
going on, and like you know, there's symbolic acts. It
was a real protest. Yeah. And if you com buy
the alcohol and protesting, things might get a little rowdy.
So bonfires broke out, they start throwing bottles at police cars,
(09:07):
breaking windows. That's where the little rowdy. I mean, that's
pretty that's a riot. When you said like bomb fires
in the streets and like throw bottles at at police cars,
that you have just basically said we've drawn a line
in the sand. Where are you gonna do, cops? That
is one way to look at it for sure. Uh.
The mayor, Leroy Satram said, this is an emergency situation people.
(09:32):
I need to call the governor James Rhodes. We need
some help. I'm going to close the bars, which you
know isn't gonna make anyone very happy, no, And it
had an exacerbating effect apparently, because that meant all the
people who weren't riding in the streets, who were busy
drinking in the bars, were now suddenly in the streets
too and joined the protests and the a k a.
(09:53):
The riots, right, that's right. And the police were called
in the use tear gas and said go back to
your dorm rooms, basically get back on campus. And that
was Friday. Now we move on to Saturday. Yeah, and
the mayors is obviously a little jumpie. He's hearing rumors
circulating that there's gonna be another. The scene from the
(10:14):
night before is going to happen all over again on Saturday.
So he calls the governor of Ohio and um, here
enters the person who, in my opinion, is single handedly
responsible for what happened at Kent State. So the National
Guard arrives. Um, there were about a thousand protesters. Um
that actually burned down an r OTC building on campus,
(10:36):
which is pretty bold move. And UM, they didn't find
out who did that exactly, but they did cut fire
hoses so they couldn't put out the fire and basically
burned it to the ground. Yeah, the protesters set it
on fire and then cut the fire hoses like they
wanted that building burned. And apparently, Um, that's when the
(10:57):
National Guard shows up a couple like an hour or
so later, right, Yeah, and they you know, broke everything
up obviously. And then Uh comes Sunday. You've got about
a thousand National guardsman and you've got Governor Rhodes arriving,
uh and holding a press conference and kind of flaming
the fire again by calling the protesters the worst type
(11:21):
of people that we harbor in America. Yeah, he compared
to the brown shirts. Mussolini's brown Shirts, UM, the communists, UM,
pretty much anybody he could think of that was that
would be disparaging. That's who publicly at this press conference
compared him to UM. And you mentioned that the on
Sunday morning, the UM National Guard was on campus kind
(11:44):
of keeping order and everything. But apparently like the relations
between the guardsmen and the students were pretty amicable, like
people were chatting friendly, like there was no tension. It
was just kind of like, hey, I'm nineteen. Hey, I'm nineteen,
I'm as student at Kent State, I'm in the National Guard.
Let's hang out. And it wasn't until the governor showed
(12:05):
up and held this press conference that things took a
very sudden turn for the worse. And it wasn't just
the brown shirts calling him the brown Shirts to the
worst element that America harbors, but also saying I may
also declare martial law. Yeah, and that I may. Message
never quite got through in those confusion as to whether
(12:28):
or not that actually happened, And basically the National Guard
believed that that had happened, and they took control of
the campus and said we're running the show now. And
that's just the National Guard, but the university officials to
the people running the university said, oh, well, martial laws declared,
and they knew that there was a protest scheduled for
the following day, Monday, So they printed a bunch of
(12:48):
flyers and pamphlets saying, Hey, your constitutional rights have been
suspended because the universities under martial law, so all assemblies banned,
so don't protest, and kind of fell on deaf ears.
I guess you could say, come Monday morning. Because the
students showed up the protest. Yeah, that definitely didn't work. Um.
By noon there was about three thousand people, about five
(13:11):
d actively protesting, another thousand just there to be supportive.
And um and because it's a college campus, about people
just checking it out, Yah, stopping on their way to
class or whatever, you like, what's going on. I would
have done the same thing probably, And we should say,
also are our buddy stuff they don't want you to know? Um.
(13:33):
Host and sometimes producer Matt Frederick his parents were students
at Kent Stay and they stay at home that day.
They did. They were like, there's some bad stuff that's
going to go down, and they were right. Uh. So
the article points out at was less an anti war
protest at this point, and more of a protest of
(13:53):
the draconian occupation of their campus martial law by the
army and UM which is not even real, which is
just a misunderstanding. Yeah, pretty much. So the General UM
Canterbury says, you know what this rally is over drive
me around in a jeep, give me that bullhorn. Let
me tell everyone to go home, because that'll work. Yeah,
(14:13):
I mean, let's go back to this where these tensions
came from in the first place. It's establishment versus anti establishment,
and establishment is the type to stand in a jeep
and be driven around with the bullhorn telling people to disperse.
I don't know if there's ever been a message relayed
via bullhorn that doesn't fall on deaf ears. Yeah, you know,
it has the opposite effect, unless, like I guess, in
(14:35):
like a female situations, if you're trying to like organize
people and stuff, that helps. But I always think of
bullhorns is stuff like this, the general riding around the
jeep yelling at people to go home, and people saying no,
you don understand why we're here in the first place.
So they started throwing rocks at the jeep not surprisingly,
and UM not well think, you know, tensions at this point.
(14:58):
This was day four. Yeah, I I think though, though
I'm not justifying, I'm just no, no, I know you're
not at all. But I think it's really easy to
to um to to kind of choose one side or
the other, especially once you know the outcome. But I
don't think it should be overlooked that, like people are
throwing rocks at this dude while he's driving around. The
people have burned down a building, people have rioted in
(15:18):
the streets of the town, the college town. I mean,
like these are real, huge events that scared the pants
off of the people who were running the town, the state,
the country, and and I mean to say that they
were unprovoked as historically inaccurate, Yeah, I totally agree, not justifying,
but I think a lot of people might think the
(15:40):
story is people got together to protest and the army
came in and shot him, right or yeah, and and
that it was either the protests of fault. They shouldn't
have been protest, they shouldn't have burned down that building,
or you know, it was entirely the National Guards fault.
And you whatever historical event you're looking at, it's never
just one side or or the other. There's It's always
(16:03):
great and you have blinders on. If you think otherwise,
you should write a history book called It's Always Great
Josh Clark's History of America. I'd buy that. Um, all right,
So where are we? They were throwing rocks at the General.
He at this point ordered his troops to load their weapons,
get the tear gas going. He said, they threw rocks
(16:25):
of me. You guys, load your weapons. That's basically what happened. Um,
not because his feelings were hurt. Yeah, although imagine they were.
I guess no matter who you are, I'm sure if
people throw rocks and you're like I I take that personally.
So the National Guard came in. They pushed them back
past the Commons, over a steep called Blanket Hill and
(16:49):
into the parking lot of Prentice Hall in a practice
football field. Then basically the guardsmen found themselves cornered by
a fence, retreated back up the hill. When they got
to the top, out of the seventy turned and began
firing their guns into the crowd. Yeah, so, well, not
(17:10):
all of them into the crowd, we should point out,
most into the air or the ground. Actually, although some
fired directly in the crowd. They all would have fired
directly in the crowd. That would have been a much
higher blood count or body counts. Oh yeah, I'm sure, um.
And I mean the protesters were about a football filled
away from them. Um. And the fact that they started
to walk up the hill and then turn and shot
(17:31):
made it not just an attack of Americans on Americans,
but a surprise attack of Americans on Americans. Yeah. I
would say the students were definitely did not expect bullet retaliation.
Took about thirteen seconds. Um. Four students were killed. Alison Krauss,
not the Allison Krause obviously, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Sure and
(17:54):
William Schroeder and uh, it's all tragic, but even more
magically shut and Schroeder, We're just walking to class. Yeah, protest.
They were in the wrong place at the wrong time,
and like I said, nine people were wounded. In one
dean collar was paralyzed. And yeah, so those shots they
(18:16):
shot into the air and into the ground, but also
into the crowd. And over about thirteen seconds, they fired
between sixty one and sixty seven shots. I think that
could be categorized as a hail of gunfire. Yeah, thirteen seconds,
sixties shots, But is that that's like a lot of
shots the second, you know, and just from twenty eight guns. Yeah,
And apparently there was a professor named Glenn Frank who
(18:39):
did a lot to quell the crowd and did talk
them into, uh, not escalating this thing any further. Right,
So this article really kind of glances over this guy's role.
And it wasn't just him, but he was the head
of the faculty marshals who whose job it was was
to basically keep an eye on the protests. They were
like the university's liaison between the university and the students
(19:02):
the protesters, and this guy and his crew basically single
handedly prevented like a massacre because they saw very quickly
that if they didn't insinuate themselves between the guardsmen and
the students, the students were gonna be like, Holy, holy God,
they just fired live ammunition on us, and they're standing
(19:27):
right there, let's get them. They would have attacked. The
consensus is the students would have attacked out of anger,
and that the guardsmen most definitely would have fired again
when being attacked. Um and these this this faculty member
and his team saw what was about to happen, and
slid in and was like wait. So they firstly spoke
(19:47):
to the guardsman and said stop firing, we have to
go talk to the students. Then they went and spoke
to the students for twenty minutes and got him to
calm down enough to to to stop provoking or did
not provoker, advanced on the guardsman in retaliation and saved
a lot of lives. Probably. I wonder if there's a
Glenn Frank statue on campus. There should be. Uh. So
(20:12):
they closed school not for the day or the weekend,
but for the rest of the semester, and UM a
lot of colleges did the same as far as shutting down. Well,
because a lot of students went on strike and like
they were forced to, the universities were forced to shut down. Uh.
In the following weekend, UM a hundred thousand people went
to d c UM to protest. Neil Young news to
(20:34):
Josh wrote a song about it. Uh So, chuck, um,
let's do a message break show. Okay, So the the
shootings just happened, that the crowd has been quelled, the
dead and Woon would have been taken away in ambulances
and now we reached the aftermath. That's immediate. And otherwise, Yeah, Um,
(20:58):
President Nixon wasn't super compassionate. He had earlier been overheard
calling them bombs. This wasn't in his press release, obviously,
but it definitely got out in the press. Did not
bode well for his reputation. And um, he said, when
the cent turns to violence, it invites tragedy. That was
the official line. That was the official line, which is
(21:20):
pretty cold. That's the president like, you get what you
what you pay for. Yeah much. His vice president, um
Agnes said it was predictable. Um, also not super compassionate
considering this. These were Americans that were shot and killed. Uh,
two of which were just walking to class. Uh. He
(21:41):
called them a bunch of scared kids with guns the
National guardsman. But that was very priced the speechwriter for Nixon. Yeah,
which is true. Yeah, but so basically the whole, the
whole kids is gray. You know. It is like they
probably were scared for sure, and uh, and yeah, I
think that's fair. I think also though it's it's one
sided too, like he's he's not saying and then also
(22:02):
the other side, we're a bunch of scared, angry kids
with rocks. Yeah, like the only way, and you can't
even remove the grade, but you'd have to find out
each person who shot and what their motive was, because
some were probably scared out of their mind and reacted.
There has been some people later on that said that
they some got together and decided to do this, some
(22:24):
of the guardsmen, right, so, when they had been pushing
the crowd back onto the UM practice football field, apparently
while they were loitering there. There have been allegations that
a couple of the guardsmen said, Hey, when we marched
back up the hill, we're gonna turn and fire. It's
never been proven, UM, but a few more than a
couple of historians have leveled that accusation. UM. There was
(22:48):
also immediate word that the guardsman said that they were
acting in self defense because they there was a sniper
on one of the rooftops and that they were being
fired on. They found out that they were audio recordings
of this, and UM that was quickly changed to well,
it was self defense because these people were throwing rocks
at us. There was the Presidential Commission, obviously, UM, and
(23:11):
they concluded it was quote unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable. And
then in uh, an FBI investigation found that the guardsman
fabricated their defense and that they were not in true danger.
That was FBI. So the Presidential Commission and the FBI
investigation both said, like, this shouldn't have happened, and like,
(23:32):
it's on the guardsman. But that wasn't the mood of
the nation for the most part. There was a gallop
pole that was conducted shortly after, and um, the majority
of Americans said that it was the protester's fault for protesting. Yeah,
I mean it went to trial too. It wasn't just like, oh, well,
this happened and it's super sad. Uh. And in federal
trial it was dismissed because of what was called a
(23:56):
weak case by the guardsman. And then the grand jury
in Ohio put the blame on the university officials and
the protesters and not the guardsman. And then there was
a civil trial in nineteen seventy nine settled out of
court where the victims and families got a collective sum
of six d and seventy dollars ah collective some meaning
(24:18):
I guess that was for all of them, right, yeah, yeah,
they all split that and no apology was apology was
ever issued. Um, they did issue a sign statement expressing regret.
Do you want to hear it? Yeah, so this is
the sign statement that that that was that came out
of the civil trial that the Ohio and National Guard
released to the families of the victims. In retrospect, the
(24:39):
tragedy of May fourth, nineteen seventies should not have occurred.
The students may have believed that they were right in
continuing their mass protests in response to the Cambodian invasion,
even though this protest followed the posting and reading by
the university of an order to ban rallies and in
order to disperse. These orders have since been determined by
the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to have been lawful.
(24:59):
So with the guardsmen on Blanket Hill, fearful and anxious
from prior events, may have believed their own, in their
own minds, that their lives were in danger. Hindsight suggests
that another method would have resolved the confrontation. Better ways
must be found to deal with such a confrontation. We
devoutly wish that a means had been found to avoid
the May fourth events culminating in the guard shootings and
(25:21):
the irreversible deaths and injuries. We deeply regret those events
and are profoundly saddened by the deaths of four students
and the wounding of nine others which resulted. We hope
that the agreement to end the litigation will help to
assuage the tragic memories regarding that sad day. I don't apology, no,
sort of like we regret hindsight being we might have
(25:43):
should have done something differently. Right saying we regret instead
of I'm sorry is that's a big flashing light. It's
a big death. Uh. And for many years they um,
the university itself wasn't quite sure how to handle moving
forward in memoriam and otherwise. UM. In the seventies, they
(26:05):
the officials at Kent State failed. They tried to, but
they tried to commemorate it just once every five years
instead of every year, and everybody who held the visuals like,
well then you have nothing to do with this. And
they kept showing up every year, right like what are
you gonna do with calling the National Garden remove us?
And they went Uh. In nineteen seventy nine, there were
(26:27):
hundreds of arrests because the university tried to bulldoze the
place where it happened, to build a gym that didn't happen. Uh.
And it took all the way up until to keep
cars from driving over the spots in the parking lot
where the students were killed. Right. And finally in the
mid two thousand's, UM, the university is finally reverse this
(26:51):
position and just kind of goes with the flow. And
in two thirteen they opened a visitors center that is
all about commemorating this of it as a historical event.
But also I get the impression from the the descriptions
of the visitors center a UM kind of the spiritual
aspect of it, the spiritual aspect of tragedy. And that
(27:12):
just last year UH. Now the university UM they say,
as a nation's leader in UH. Courses of non violence
and democracy and peace studies and conflict resolution classes were
all established, so they, you know, are trying to lead
the way forward and at least being a symbol of uh,
(27:33):
you know, peaceful protest. And people are still trying to
figure out what happened. There's still lots of debate. UM.
Oliver Stone unsurprisingly favors the theory that the government placed
a sniper um in these protests, and that there were
government plant agitators who pushed the protests over the line. Um.
(27:53):
And this idea is supported by the fact that there
were policies by governors and the president to crack down
on dissent on student anti war protests. So there definitely
was a policy that was like, if you want to
get thirty, we'll we'll, we'll send our goons to beat
you up. Um. But a lot of people think that
(28:15):
the presence of a snipers totally unsupported. UM. But then
a cassette emerged uh fairly recently that that's an actual
audio recording of that day that says, supposedly you can
hear um the phrases get, set, point, and fire, which
means that this wasn't a surprise, knee jerk shooting. That
(28:38):
there was an officer commanding the guardsman to shoot. Yeah.
And it also, um, you know what, with modern analysis,
they think that there may have been shots fired before
uh full I think seventy seconds before the guardsmen fired.
There's a kin State student named Terry Norman Um who
(28:58):
was a photographer on campus taking pictures, and he also
had a handgun, a loaded handgun and he denied that
he discharged it. But um, he has been accused of
triggering this by firing shots. And I think they found
evidence audio evidence that there were shots fired and they
think it maybe have been Terry Norman. Wow, that kicked
(29:22):
it all off. And can you imagine carrying that around? No?
I could not. And then chuck UM, this is a
lot of people say that that Kent State was the
beginning of the UM slide towards Watergate for Nixon. This
is like the beginning of the end for him. Um.
And then we should also talk about what happened at
(29:44):
Jackson State because race relations of this country are so
messed up that everybody talks about Kent State where four
white students died, and no one talks about Jackson State,
which happened ten days later and two black people died.
Black stude, Yeah, and could have been a lot worse,
like they basically riddled a dormitory with a hail of gunfire.
(30:07):
So ten days after Kent State, UM, at Jackson State
University UM in Mississippi, UH, they were also carrying out
anti war protests, but they were also UM protests based
on racism as well. UM and when these students were
doing a lot of the similar stuff, a lot of
the same stuff that was happening or had happened at
(30:29):
Kent State. They were um rioting. They had burned a
building on campus down and um. When firefighters came out
to put out the flames, they started to get worried
that these protesters were going to harm them, so they
called the cops. Well, the cops came out, tried to
disperse the crowd. The crowd didn't disperse, so they opened fire,
and like you said, they riddled the building that served
(30:52):
as the backdrop to this protest with bullets. Something like
four hundred and sixty rounds hit the building alone. There's
no telling how many one on the sides or anything
like that. Four hundred and sixty rounds. And he said
every window was broken on every floor with bullet fire
on a on a crowd of crowd of students um
(31:12):
and amazingly only two people died. Yeah. Philip Gibbs, he
was a pre law major and a father of an
eighteen monthly son and James Green. He was seventeen years
old and he was a high school student walking home
from his job at the grocery store right, which again,
the fact that he's not involved in anyway and still
(31:33):
died makes it so much worse. Yeah. And this one,
also I don't think we pointed out started out because
of misinformation. There was um a rumor that the mayor,
mayor Charles Evers and his wife had been shot and killed,
assassinated basically it was not true. A relative of Mega Evers, right, Yeah,
he was his brother, and so that's kind of what
sparked everything. In addition to like the anti war protests,
(31:57):
and uh, it was very much about black and white.
Well yeah, I mean like they're there. Yeah, so, um,
this is a historically black college. The cops had just
opened fire on a bunch of students. Twelve people were
hit by injured by gunfire, two were killed, and the
ambulances weren't called until the police picked up all of
(32:18):
their showcasings and left, and then the National Guard came in. Yeah,
and then after that the police denied they even took part. Um,
I'm not sure how that panned out. How can you
deny that you shot up a building? So it was
Mississippi in and and historically black college and you probably
(32:40):
never heard of Jackson State for until we started researching this,
I didn't. I hadn't heard of it either, and there
was only one source we used that made reference to it.
That's how I heard about it. So that's great. It's
just fantastic. That's what happened against state in Jackson State,
in Jackson State, Um, you got anything else? I got
(33:01):
nothing else. Just gotta be a better ending of this
than this. I mean, these things happen, but there there
has to have been some lesson learned. I think. So
it hasn't happened since Yeah, that's true. I wonder at
least on a campus. Yeah, we should do one on
the Battle for Seattle. Did they didn't fire live rounds
at that though? Did they? I'm pretty sure they didn't,
(33:24):
but that Yeah, we should do one on that as well. Yeah,
my friend John was there agitating. Is he a black shirt? Now?
He had these funny protest lines about that references Simpsons.
I can't remember her black block. That's where they got
the pictures. Um, well, I have to interview him then.
I don't know that it would yield much information. Fine,
I think he was just cooping around. Um all right, Well,
(33:47):
if you want to learn more about Kent State, you
can type in uh that name into the search part
how stuff works dot com, And we also encourage you
to go look up Jackson State as well. Um, and
let's see it's I said, search bar you it's time
for listener me all right, yes, sir, I'm gonna call this.
A prison guard wrote in, Hey guys, Um, For the
(34:11):
most part, I found the episode on capital Punishment pretty
even handed and interesting. However, I couldn't help but notice
a bit of venom in your voices whenever you mentioned
prison guards, especially in instance of an inmate taking his
own life with a razor blade while he's being off
observed on deathwatch. The implication was that the guard on
duty negligently gave the inmate a razor in order to
(34:31):
encourage him to take his own life. I don't think
we implied that, did we. Um. No, it wasn't implied.
It was more just like, what kind of thing? Like
why why did that happen? As a former prison guard
that worked on death row, I have to tell you, um,
that couldn't be further from the truth. It's a civil
right for inmates to have access to razor blades for
(34:52):
hygienic purposes. I was required to allow an inmate on
death row to keep the disposable razor for thirty minutes,
despite the fact that he had nearly killed another inmate
and murdered a prison official with a razor blade while
serving his sentence. I'd imagine an inmate even on deathwatch
would have similar rights, but I can't confirm through experience.
(35:13):
UM guards that worked on death row weren't allowed to
serve on death watch. This is because it was feared
that we'd form an emotional bond to the inmates set
for execution it might cause a scene. So yes, prison
guards have feelings and can have empathy for others. Pop
culture and nearly always portrays guards as heavy as and villains,
and even smart portrayals of prison life like Orange is
(35:33):
the New Black, as every prison official character as a
comic book mustache twirling villain or a mouth breathing idiot.
It's a hard job and should be respected as much
as other high risk civil servant careers. UM a little
disappointed you guys continue this trend, but I'm used to it,
so don't sweat it. So that is from Craig, and
(35:55):
he let us off easy, even though he feels like
we insulted his jaw. Well, thanks, Craig. I think he
did exactly what we were kind of searching for right then.
We were just um ah, disgustedly confused, We're disgustedly ignorant
one of the two. Yeah. I will say that he
is probably right on the money. As far as movie portrayals,
(36:17):
it's pretty one note if you're a prison guard in
a movie in general, unless it's The Green Mile and
that movie has problems of its own or Oz. I
never watched Oz? What that was the first? That? OZ
is the show that kicked off all of the shows
you love and binge watch now. The idea of binge
(36:37):
watching a show began with a show like OZ, because
there was nothing like it ever created before it was.
It all started with Oz, The Wire, the Shield, Um,
House of Cards, Orange is a New Black Everything, every
breaking bad, all of them can thank us. You can
thank Oz. You should go watch Oz Man, Thank you Oz.
(37:01):
It's good, great man. This one is. This is something
I feel drained a little bit, yeah, emotionally exhausted. I'm
still not happy with the ending. I feel like we
could have ended a lot better, but um, I'll have
to think on it all right. Uh. If you want
to get in touch with me and Chuck, you can
tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
can hang out on our Facebook page Facebook dot com
(37:24):
slash Stuff you Should Know UM, you can send us
an email the Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and
you can check us out at our website Stuff you
Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Because it how Stuff works dot com,
(37:50):
This episode of Stuff you Should Know is brought to
you by Linda dot Com. Linda dot com offers thousands
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(38:11):
K
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles D. Bryant and there's Jerry. And it's
snowing outside, which means that Stuff you Should Know Snow edition,
(00:21):
Snow Edition. Yeah, I know when we're like, we gotta
record and get out of here because this is when
and snow kills us. I just mainly don't want to
be locked away from the snow. I want to be
able to like look out the window and see it.
I can now, but not as well as i'd like to.
For me, it's just a traffic thing. Like people are
probably leaving work right now. People have already left the
(00:42):
office here. Well maybe everyone will be gone by the
time I get out there. Okay, you'll just be the
lone guy trudging through the snow. That's right, Like if
you go Mortenson in the road. Yes, although he was
not alone and there wasn't any snow. It was just
nuclear ash, although there was snow. Because Charlie is theren
kills herself by going out into the snow. But that's
(01:05):
before everything really takes a downward. Spoiler alert retroact as
spoiler alert Chuck Yep. Are you familiar with Kent State? Yeah? Man,
I've been singing that Neil Young song all day. How
can you not? You cannot by having never heard it?
Like me, shut up? You know that song? Never heard it?
I never listened to Neil Young. You've never heard the
(01:28):
song Ohio? No? I know the Pretender song, but I
don't think that's about Kent State. I'm shocked, Okay, I mean,
you don't have to love you without like, how's it
go home? And for him? No, I'm not gonna Maybe
I have heard it ten Soldiers and Nixon, I've heard it.
I didn't know that was about Ohio for dead in Ohio? Yeah, okay,
(01:51):
And I had no idea, all right. I didn't know
what that song was about. I was just like, oh
Neil Young? Really? Yeah? Oh man, get ready to hear it.
I'm I'm used to it by now. Your bulletproof. Uh. Well,
so you're familiar with the Kent State shootings May four, Um,
four students were killed. I believe another eleven were injured, Yeah,
(02:17):
including one was paralyzed, like some pretty severe injuries. And uh,
this is a big deal. That would be a big
deal in and of itself. If it was just some
sort of campus shooting or something like that, like it
would be a very big deal these days. But what
made the Kent State shootings, for those of you who
aren't familiar with them, such an enormous deal was that
the shootings were carried out by National guardsmen. They were
(02:40):
Americans firing on Americans, UM, Americans on one side of
the equation, firing on protesters on the other side. Uh.
And it was one of the darkest points in American history,
modern or otherwise. Yeah, it was. I think what's so
upsetting is it was random. It wasn't you know that
guy's coming at me with a bottle or a brick,
(03:01):
shoot him. It was random shooting into a crowd, Right.
That's the kind of thing that would happen in countries
under like dictatorships, not here in America. But it did
happen here in America, and not just at Kent State.
There was another similar incident just ten days later. Um
that will talk about as well. It gets overlooked, but yeah,
(03:21):
it was a very dark moment in American history, and
it came out of the the tensions um over the
Vietnam War. Initially, but I think it was more than that.
It was also we should say that's the um kind
of obvious thing that led to it. But also there
was a real tension also between the establishment and the
(03:44):
anti establishment and um, the people in control and the
people who weren't in control, students, elders. There was just
a lot of tension between two sides, and the dividing line,
the obvious dividing line was the Vietnam War. Yeah, and
I think if you are not of that generation, you
may not know the full story. You might know that
(04:04):
four people were shot in a protest and that's about it.
Maybe even if you're from that generation, you may not
know the full story. But we're about to tell you. Okay,
let's take it back a little further than all right,
Vietnam country, which had when it's independence from France in
the fifties. Have you ever seen We Were Soldiers. Yes,
(04:26):
it's almost like a snuff film. It's one of the
most graphically violent movies I've ever seen in my life.
But it's about that transition from France leaving Vietnam and
America coming in. Yeah, go ahead, Well, just initially serving
as advisors and then becoming embroiled in the war. I
(04:47):
forgot all about that movie. Yeah, you know, and Apocalypse
Now there are some deleted scenes of the meeting up
with a French family in Vietnam and like having dinner.
Really yeah, and I remember when I heard about that,
I was like, why were they French? And then I
did a little more homework on it. Oh oh yeah,
if you eat Vietnamese food, like, it's very clearly like, yeah, influenced, well,
(05:09):
all most food is. But yeah. Um so anyway, Uh,
in the fifties day split between communists North and non
communist South Vietnam, and America didn't want communism spreading throughout Asia.
We had a policy of containment. Yeah, and so Richard Nixon, UM,
when he won the sixty election, UM, part of his
(05:32):
promise was something called Vietnamization. It's kind of an awkward word,
and that meant to transfer the combat duties from our
soldiers to the South Vietnamese. That sounds familiar, isn't it?
It does? But um, what what happened was at some
point he said, you know what in nineteen seventy, in April,
he said, I want to send our soldiers in the Cambodia,
(05:54):
and that caused sort of a firestorm because it was
a bit of a reversal of what he said he
was gonna do, and it, you know, really embroiled this
in the kind of the middle of things. Well, yeah,
he he escalated the war in Vietnam, which was already
a very um contentious issue and that it was a war,
but also its a war that Congress never openly declared war.
(06:14):
So that's why historically speaking, it's referred to as the
Vietnam conflict. Um. And so Nixon gets elected partially because
he's saying, I'm gonna get our boys out of there.
We're not gonna like let the communists when we're gonna
prop up the Vietnamese, but um, we're gonna get out
of there. Insteady escalates things by invading Cambodia, where the
(06:34):
Vietcong we're stationed, and that led to immediate protests. That
was April thirtieth, nineteen seventy, that he announced that we
had invaded Cambodia, and the next day is when the
first protest takes place at Kent State. Yeah, and Kent.
The article points out that it was not the most
likely place because it was a little more blue collar
than like say, Ohio State nearby the Ohio State University,
(06:59):
and um man, I'm sorry, that is so stupid. Sorry
os U alums and fans and students, but it is stupid,
and everyone outside of Ohio State thinks it's stupid. They
take a lot of pride in that. The I know,
which I think just kind of fans the flames of
um derision. You know, I can just start saying the
(07:21):
University of Georgia. That makes a little more sense, does it. Yeah,
what's the difference the Ohio State University the University of Georgia.
It's just it was the University of Ohio State that
would make more sense. Yeah, a little more to my ear,
I got my ear right there, see it. It's very nice,
(07:42):
thank you. Um At any rate, Uh, I can't say
it was a little more blue collar. And you wouldn't
think there would be like protesting, but there was protesting
it schools all over the country. There were and you
can read between the lines here, Kent State had a
lower hippie population than Ohio State. Can we just come
up right out and say it, right, But there were
protests there. Um, there was a protest on May one,
(08:03):
and it was a standard uh war protests three days
before the shootings, and it's kind of when things got
kicked off, right, but these kids were still pretty good.
They were at school holding a protest in the commons,
I believe um, which is the a k a. The
quad or like the big grassy area between in the
middle of campus um. And they said, you know what,
(08:24):
this went pretty well. Let's take the weekend off and
we'll meet back here one day and have another anti
war protests because we're really steamed about this. And everyone said, okay,
let's do that, and for tonight, let's go out and
hit the bars and Kent. Yeah, is what they did.
The first one they buried the constitution as a symbolic gesture,
and the second one they got drunk, right, not at
(08:46):
the protest but later that night, right, so that Friday
protests is when they buried the constitution. This is like
a real protest, not just walking around. There's like stuff
going on, and like you know, there's symbolic acts. It
was a real protest. Yeah. And if you com buy
the alcohol and protesting, things might get a little rowdy.
So bonfires broke out, they start throwing bottles at police cars,
(09:07):
breaking windows. That's where the little rowdy. I mean, that's
pretty that's a riot. When you said like bomb fires
in the streets and like throw bottles at at police cars,
that you have just basically said we've drawn a line
in the sand. Where are you gonna do, cops? That
is one way to look at it for sure. Uh.
The mayor, Leroy Satram said, this is an emergency situation people.
(09:32):
I need to call the governor James Rhodes. We need
some help. I'm going to close the bars, which you
know isn't gonna make anyone very happy, no, And it
had an exacerbating effect apparently, because that meant all the
people who weren't riding in the streets, who were busy
drinking in the bars, were now suddenly in the streets
too and joined the protests and the a k a.
(09:53):
The riots, right, that's right. And the police were called
in the use tear gas and said go back to
your dorm rooms, basically get back on campus. And that
was Friday. Now we move on to Saturday. Yeah, and
the mayors is obviously a little jumpie. He's hearing rumors
circulating that there's gonna be another. The scene from the
(10:14):
night before is going to happen all over again on Saturday.
So he calls the governor of Ohio and um, here
enters the person who, in my opinion, is single handedly
responsible for what happened at Kent State. So the National
Guard arrives. Um, there were about a thousand protesters. Um
that actually burned down an r OTC building on campus,
(10:36):
which is pretty bold move. And UM, they didn't find
out who did that exactly, but they did cut fire
hoses so they couldn't put out the fire and basically
burned it to the ground. Yeah, the protesters set it
on fire and then cut the fire hoses like they
wanted that building burned. And apparently, Um, that's when the
(10:57):
National Guard shows up a couple like an hour or
so later, right, Yeah, and they you know, broke everything
up obviously. And then Uh comes Sunday. You've got about
a thousand National guardsman and you've got Governor Rhodes arriving,
uh and holding a press conference and kind of flaming
the fire again by calling the protesters the worst type
(11:21):
of people that we harbor in America. Yeah, he compared
to the brown shirts. Mussolini's brown Shirts, UM, the communists, UM,
pretty much anybody he could think of that was that
would be disparaging. That's who publicly at this press conference
compared him to UM. And you mentioned that the on
Sunday morning, the UM National Guard was on campus kind
(11:44):
of keeping order and everything. But apparently like the relations
between the guardsmen and the students were pretty amicable, like
people were chatting friendly, like there was no tension. It
was just kind of like, hey, I'm nineteen. Hey, I'm nineteen,
I'm as student at Kent State, I'm in the National Guard.
Let's hang out. And it wasn't until the governor showed
(12:05):
up and held this press conference that things took a
very sudden turn for the worse. And it wasn't just
the brown shirts calling him the brown Shirts to the
worst element that America harbors, but also saying I may
also declare martial law. Yeah, and that I may. Message
never quite got through in those confusion as to whether
(12:28):
or not that actually happened, And basically the National Guard
believed that that had happened, and they took control of
the campus and said we're running the show now. And
that's just the National Guard, but the university officials to
the people running the university said, oh, well, martial laws declared,
and they knew that there was a protest scheduled for
the following day, Monday, So they printed a bunch of
(12:48):
flyers and pamphlets saying, Hey, your constitutional rights have been
suspended because the universities under martial law, so all assemblies banned,
so don't protest, and kind of fell on deaf ears.
I guess you could say, come Monday morning. Because the
students showed up the protest. Yeah, that definitely didn't work. Um.
By noon there was about three thousand people, about five
(13:11):
d actively protesting, another thousand just there to be supportive.
And um and because it's a college campus, about people
just checking it out, Yah, stopping on their way to
class or whatever, you like, what's going on. I would
have done the same thing probably, And we should say,
also are our buddy stuff they don't want you to know? Um.
(13:33):
Host and sometimes producer Matt Frederick his parents were students
at Kent Stay and they stay at home that day.
They did. They were like, there's some bad stuff that's
going to go down, and they were right. Uh. So
the article points out at was less an anti war
protest at this point, and more of a protest of
(13:53):
the draconian occupation of their campus martial law by the
army and UM which is not even real, which is
just a misunderstanding. Yeah, pretty much. So the General UM
Canterbury says, you know what this rally is over drive
me around in a jeep, give me that bullhorn. Let
me tell everyone to go home, because that'll work. Yeah,
(14:13):
I mean, let's go back to this where these tensions
came from in the first place. It's establishment versus anti establishment,
and establishment is the type to stand in a jeep
and be driven around with the bullhorn telling people to disperse.
I don't know if there's ever been a message relayed
via bullhorn that doesn't fall on deaf ears. Yeah, you know,
it has the opposite effect, unless, like I guess, in
(14:35):
like a female situations, if you're trying to like organize
people and stuff, that helps. But I always think of
bullhorns is stuff like this, the general riding around the
jeep yelling at people to go home, and people saying no,
you don understand why we're here in the first place.
So they started throwing rocks at the jeep not surprisingly,
and UM not well think, you know, tensions at this point.
(14:58):
This was day four. Yeah, I I think though, though
I'm not justifying, I'm just no, no, I know you're
not at all. But I think it's really easy to
to um to to kind of choose one side or
the other, especially once you know the outcome. But I
don't think it should be overlooked that, like people are
throwing rocks at this dude while he's driving around. The
people have burned down a building, people have rioted in
(15:18):
the streets of the town, the college town. I mean,
like these are real, huge events that scared the pants
off of the people who were running the town, the state,
the country, and and I mean to say that they
were unprovoked as historically inaccurate, Yeah, I totally agree, not justifying,
but I think a lot of people might think the
(15:40):
story is people got together to protest and the army
came in and shot him, right or yeah, and and
that it was either the protests of fault. They shouldn't
have been protest, they shouldn't have burned down that building,
or you know, it was entirely the National Guards fault.
And you whatever historical event you're looking at, it's never
just one side or or the other. There's It's always
(16:03):
great and you have blinders on. If you think otherwise,
you should write a history book called It's Always Great
Josh Clark's History of America. I'd buy that. Um, all right,
So where are we? They were throwing rocks at the General.
He at this point ordered his troops to load their weapons,
get the tear gas going. He said, they threw rocks
(16:25):
of me. You guys, load your weapons. That's basically what happened. Um,
not because his feelings were hurt. Yeah, although imagine they were.
I guess no matter who you are, I'm sure if
people throw rocks and you're like I I take that personally.
So the National Guard came in. They pushed them back
past the Commons, over a steep called Blanket Hill and
(16:49):
into the parking lot of Prentice Hall in a practice
football field. Then basically the guardsmen found themselves cornered by
a fence, retreated back up the hill. When they got
to the top, out of the seventy turned and began
firing their guns into the crowd. Yeah, so, well, not
(17:10):
all of them into the crowd, we should point out,
most into the air or the ground. Actually, although some
fired directly in the crowd. They all would have fired
directly in the crowd. That would have been a much
higher blood count or body counts. Oh yeah, I'm sure, um.
And I mean the protesters were about a football filled
away from them. Um. And the fact that they started
to walk up the hill and then turn and shot
(17:31):
made it not just an attack of Americans on Americans,
but a surprise attack of Americans on Americans. Yeah. I
would say the students were definitely did not expect bullet retaliation.
Took about thirteen seconds. Um. Four students were killed. Alison Krauss,
not the Allison Krause obviously, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Sure and
(17:54):
William Schroeder and uh, it's all tragic, but even more
magically shut and Schroeder, We're just walking to class. Yeah, protest.
They were in the wrong place at the wrong time,
and like I said, nine people were wounded. In one
dean collar was paralyzed. And yeah, so those shots they
(18:16):
shot into the air and into the ground, but also
into the crowd. And over about thirteen seconds, they fired
between sixty one and sixty seven shots. I think that
could be categorized as a hail of gunfire. Yeah, thirteen seconds,
sixties shots, But is that that's like a lot of
shots the second, you know, and just from twenty eight guns. Yeah,
And apparently there was a professor named Glenn Frank who
(18:39):
did a lot to quell the crowd and did talk
them into, uh, not escalating this thing any further. Right,
So this article really kind of glances over this guy's role.
And it wasn't just him, but he was the head
of the faculty marshals who whose job it was was
to basically keep an eye on the protests. They were
like the university's liaison between the university and the students
(19:02):
the protesters, and this guy and his crew basically single
handedly prevented like a massacre because they saw very quickly
that if they didn't insinuate themselves between the guardsmen and
the students, the students were gonna be like, Holy, holy God,
they just fired live ammunition on us, and they're standing
(19:27):
right there, let's get them. They would have attacked. The
consensus is the students would have attacked out of anger,
and that the guardsmen most definitely would have fired again
when being attacked. Um and these this this faculty member
and his team saw what was about to happen, and
slid in and was like wait. So they firstly spoke
(19:47):
to the guardsman and said stop firing, we have to
go talk to the students. Then they went and spoke
to the students for twenty minutes and got him to
calm down enough to to to stop provoking or did
not provoker, advanced on the guardsman in retaliation and saved
a lot of lives. Probably. I wonder if there's a
Glenn Frank statue on campus. There should be. Uh. So
(20:12):
they closed school not for the day or the weekend,
but for the rest of the semester, and UM a
lot of colleges did the same as far as shutting down. Well,
because a lot of students went on strike and like
they were forced to, the universities were forced to shut down. Uh.
In the following weekend, UM a hundred thousand people went
to d c UM to protest. Neil Young news to
(20:34):
Josh wrote a song about it. Uh So, chuck, um,
let's do a message break show. Okay, So the the
shootings just happened, that the crowd has been quelled, the
dead and Woon would have been taken away in ambulances
and now we reached the aftermath. That's immediate. And otherwise, Yeah, Um,
(20:58):
President Nixon wasn't super compassionate. He had earlier been overheard
calling them bombs. This wasn't in his press release, obviously,
but it definitely got out in the press. Did not
bode well for his reputation. And um, he said, when
the cent turns to violence, it invites tragedy. That was
the official line. That was the official line, which is
(21:20):
pretty cold. That's the president like, you get what you
what you pay for. Yeah much. His vice president, um
Agnes said it was predictable. Um, also not super compassionate
considering this. These were Americans that were shot and killed. Uh,
two of which were just walking to class. Uh. He
(21:41):
called them a bunch of scared kids with guns the
National guardsman. But that was very priced the speechwriter for Nixon. Yeah,
which is true. Yeah, but so basically the whole, the
whole kids is gray. You know. It is like they
probably were scared for sure, and uh, and yeah, I
think that's fair. I think also though it's it's one
sided too, like he's he's not saying and then also
(22:02):
the other side, we're a bunch of scared, angry kids
with rocks. Yeah, like the only way, and you can't
even remove the grade, but you'd have to find out
each person who shot and what their motive was, because
some were probably scared out of their mind and reacted.
There has been some people later on that said that
they some got together and decided to do this, some
(22:24):
of the guardsmen, right, so, when they had been pushing
the crowd back onto the UM practice football field, apparently
while they were loitering there. There have been allegations that
a couple of the guardsmen said, Hey, when we marched
back up the hill, we're gonna turn and fire. It's
never been proven, UM, but a few more than a
couple of historians have leveled that accusation. UM. There was
(22:48):
also immediate word that the guardsman said that they were
acting in self defense because they there was a sniper
on one of the rooftops and that they were being
fired on. They found out that they were audio recordings
of this, and UM that was quickly changed to well,
it was self defense because these people were throwing rocks
at us. There was the Presidential Commission, obviously, UM, and
(23:11):
they concluded it was quote unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable. And
then in uh, an FBI investigation found that the guardsman
fabricated their defense and that they were not in true danger.
That was FBI. So the Presidential Commission and the FBI
investigation both said, like, this shouldn't have happened, and like,
(23:32):
it's on the guardsman. But that wasn't the mood of
the nation for the most part. There was a gallop
pole that was conducted shortly after, and um, the majority
of Americans said that it was the protester's fault for protesting. Yeah,
I mean it went to trial too. It wasn't just like, oh, well,
this happened and it's super sad. Uh. And in federal
trial it was dismissed because of what was called a
(23:56):
weak case by the guardsman. And then the grand jury
in Ohio put the blame on the university officials and
the protesters and not the guardsman. And then there was
a civil trial in nineteen seventy nine settled out of
court where the victims and families got a collective sum
of six d and seventy dollars ah collective some meaning
(24:18):
I guess that was for all of them, right, yeah, yeah,
they all split that and no apology was apology was
ever issued. Um, they did issue a sign statement expressing regret.
Do you want to hear it? Yeah, so this is
the sign statement that that that was that came out
of the civil trial that the Ohio and National Guard
released to the families of the victims. In retrospect, the
(24:39):
tragedy of May fourth, nineteen seventies should not have occurred.
The students may have believed that they were right in
continuing their mass protests in response to the Cambodian invasion,
even though this protest followed the posting and reading by
the university of an order to ban rallies and in
order to disperse. These orders have since been determined by
the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to have been lawful.
(24:59):
So with the guardsmen on Blanket Hill, fearful and anxious
from prior events, may have believed their own, in their
own minds, that their lives were in danger. Hindsight suggests
that another method would have resolved the confrontation. Better ways
must be found to deal with such a confrontation. We
devoutly wish that a means had been found to avoid
the May fourth events culminating in the guard shootings and
(25:21):
the irreversible deaths and injuries. We deeply regret those events
and are profoundly saddened by the deaths of four students
and the wounding of nine others which resulted. We hope
that the agreement to end the litigation will help to
assuage the tragic memories regarding that sad day. I don't apology, no,
sort of like we regret hindsight being we might have
(25:43):
should have done something differently. Right saying we regret instead
of I'm sorry is that's a big flashing light. It's
a big death. Uh. And for many years they um,
the university itself wasn't quite sure how to handle moving
forward in memoriam and otherwise. UM. In the seventies, they
(26:05):
the officials at Kent State failed. They tried to, but
they tried to commemorate it just once every five years
instead of every year, and everybody who held the visuals like,
well then you have nothing to do with this. And
they kept showing up every year, right like what are
you gonna do with calling the National Garden remove us?
And they went Uh. In nineteen seventy nine, there were
(26:27):
hundreds of arrests because the university tried to bulldoze the
place where it happened, to build a gym that didn't happen. Uh.
And it took all the way up until to keep
cars from driving over the spots in the parking lot
where the students were killed. Right. And finally in the
mid two thousand's, UM, the university is finally reverse this
(26:51):
position and just kind of goes with the flow. And
in two thirteen they opened a visitors center that is
all about commemorating this of it as a historical event.
But also I get the impression from the the descriptions
of the visitors center a UM kind of the spiritual
aspect of it, the spiritual aspect of tragedy. And that
(27:12):
just last year UH. Now the university UM they say,
as a nation's leader in UH. Courses of non violence
and democracy and peace studies and conflict resolution classes were
all established, so they, you know, are trying to lead
the way forward and at least being a symbol of uh,
(27:33):
you know, peaceful protest. And people are still trying to
figure out what happened. There's still lots of debate. UM.
Oliver Stone unsurprisingly favors the theory that the government placed
a sniper um in these protests, and that there were
government plant agitators who pushed the protests over the line. Um.
(27:53):
And this idea is supported by the fact that there
were policies by governors and the president to crack down
on dissent on student anti war protests. So there definitely
was a policy that was like, if you want to
get thirty, we'll we'll, we'll send our goons to beat
you up. Um. But a lot of people think that
(28:15):
the presence of a snipers totally unsupported. UM. But then
a cassette emerged uh fairly recently that that's an actual
audio recording of that day that says, supposedly you can
hear um the phrases get, set, point, and fire, which
means that this wasn't a surprise, knee jerk shooting. That
(28:38):
there was an officer commanding the guardsman to shoot. Yeah.
And it also, um, you know what, with modern analysis,
they think that there may have been shots fired before
uh full I think seventy seconds before the guardsmen fired.
There's a kin State student named Terry Norman Um who
(28:58):
was a photographer on campus taking pictures, and he also
had a handgun, a loaded handgun and he denied that
he discharged it. But um, he has been accused of
triggering this by firing shots. And I think they found
evidence audio evidence that there were shots fired and they
think it maybe have been Terry Norman. Wow, that kicked
(29:22):
it all off. And can you imagine carrying that around? No?
I could not. And then chuck UM, this is a
lot of people say that that Kent State was the
beginning of the UM slide towards Watergate for Nixon. This
is like the beginning of the end for him. Um.
And then we should also talk about what happened at
(29:44):
Jackson State because race relations of this country are so
messed up that everybody talks about Kent State where four
white students died, and no one talks about Jackson State,
which happened ten days later and two black people died.
Black stude, Yeah, and could have been a lot worse,
like they basically riddled a dormitory with a hail of gunfire.
(30:07):
So ten days after Kent State, UM, at Jackson State
University UM in Mississippi, UH, they were also carrying out
anti war protests, but they were also UM protests based
on racism as well. UM and when these students were
doing a lot of the similar stuff, a lot of
the same stuff that was happening or had happened at
(30:29):
Kent State. They were um rioting. They had burned a
building on campus down and um. When firefighters came out
to put out the flames, they started to get worried
that these protesters were going to harm them, so they
called the cops. Well, the cops came out, tried to
disperse the crowd. The crowd didn't disperse, so they opened fire,
and like you said, they riddled the building that served
(30:52):
as the backdrop to this protest with bullets. Something like
four hundred and sixty rounds hit the building alone. There's
no telling how many one on the sides or anything
like that. Four hundred and sixty rounds. And he said
every window was broken on every floor with bullet fire
on a on a crowd of crowd of students um
(31:12):
and amazingly only two people died. Yeah. Philip Gibbs, he
was a pre law major and a father of an
eighteen monthly son and James Green. He was seventeen years
old and he was a high school student walking home
from his job at the grocery store right, which again,
the fact that he's not involved in anyway and still
(31:33):
died makes it so much worse. Yeah. And this one,
also I don't think we pointed out started out because
of misinformation. There was um a rumor that the mayor,
mayor Charles Evers and his wife had been shot and killed,
assassinated basically it was not true. A relative of Mega Evers, right, Yeah,
he was his brother, and so that's kind of what
sparked everything. In addition to like the anti war protests,
(31:57):
and uh, it was very much about black and white.
Well yeah, I mean like they're there. Yeah, so, um,
this is a historically black college. The cops had just
opened fire on a bunch of students. Twelve people were
hit by injured by gunfire, two were killed, and the
ambulances weren't called until the police picked up all of
(32:18):
their showcasings and left, and then the National Guard came in. Yeah,
and then after that the police denied they even took part. Um,
I'm not sure how that panned out. How can you
deny that you shot up a building? So it was
Mississippi in and and historically black college and you probably
(32:40):
never heard of Jackson State for until we started researching this,
I didn't. I hadn't heard of it either, and there
was only one source we used that made reference to it.
That's how I heard about it. So that's great. It's
just fantastic. That's what happened against state in Jackson State,
in Jackson State, Um, you got anything else? I got
(33:01):
nothing else. Just gotta be a better ending of this
than this. I mean, these things happen, but there there
has to have been some lesson learned. I think. So
it hasn't happened since Yeah, that's true. I wonder at
least on a campus. Yeah, we should do one on
the Battle for Seattle. Did they didn't fire live rounds
at that though? Did they? I'm pretty sure they didn't,
(33:24):
but that Yeah, we should do one on that as well. Yeah,
my friend John was there agitating. Is he a black shirt? Now?
He had these funny protest lines about that references Simpsons.
I can't remember her black block. That's where they got
the pictures. Um, well, I have to interview him then.
I don't know that it would yield much information. Fine,
I think he was just cooping around. Um all right, Well,
(33:47):
if you want to learn more about Kent State, you
can type in uh that name into the search part
how stuff works dot com, And we also encourage you
to go look up Jackson State as well. Um, and
let's see it's I said, search bar you it's time
for listener me all right, yes, sir, I'm gonna call this.
A prison guard wrote in, Hey guys, Um, For the
(34:11):
most part, I found the episode on capital Punishment pretty
even handed and interesting. However, I couldn't help but notice
a bit of venom in your voices whenever you mentioned
prison guards, especially in instance of an inmate taking his
own life with a razor blade while he's being off
observed on deathwatch. The implication was that the guard on
duty negligently gave the inmate a razor in order to
(34:31):
encourage him to take his own life. I don't think
we implied that, did we. Um. No, it wasn't implied.
It was more just like, what kind of thing? Like
why why did that happen? As a former prison guard
that worked on death row, I have to tell you, um,
that couldn't be further from the truth. It's a civil
right for inmates to have access to razor blades for
(34:52):
hygienic purposes. I was required to allow an inmate on
death row to keep the disposable razor for thirty minutes,
despite the fact that he had nearly killed another inmate
and murdered a prison official with a razor blade while
serving his sentence. I'd imagine an inmate even on deathwatch
would have similar rights, but I can't confirm through experience.
(35:13):
UM guards that worked on death row weren't allowed to
serve on death watch. This is because it was feared
that we'd form an emotional bond to the inmates set
for execution it might cause a scene. So yes, prison
guards have feelings and can have empathy for others. Pop
culture and nearly always portrays guards as heavy as and villains,
and even smart portrayals of prison life like Orange is
(35:33):
the New Black, as every prison official character as a
comic book mustache twirling villain or a mouth breathing idiot.
It's a hard job and should be respected as much
as other high risk civil servant careers. UM a little
disappointed you guys continue this trend, but I'm used to it,
so don't sweat it. So that is from Craig, and
(35:55):
he let us off easy, even though he feels like
we insulted his jaw. Well, thanks, Craig. I think he
did exactly what we were kind of searching for right then.
We were just um ah, disgustedly confused, We're disgustedly ignorant
one of the two. Yeah. I will say that he
is probably right on the money. As far as movie portrayals,
(36:17):
it's pretty one note if you're a prison guard in
a movie in general, unless it's The Green Mile and
that movie has problems of its own or Oz. I
never watched Oz? What that was the first? That? OZ
is the show that kicked off all of the shows
you love and binge watch now. The idea of binge
(36:37):
watching a show began with a show like OZ, because
there was nothing like it ever created before it was.
It all started with Oz, The Wire, the Shield, Um,
House of Cards, Orange is a New Black Everything, every
breaking bad, all of them can thank us. You can
thank Oz. You should go watch Oz Man, Thank you Oz.
(37:01):
It's good, great man. This one is. This is something
I feel drained a little bit, yeah, emotionally exhausted. I'm
still not happy with the ending. I feel like we
could have ended a lot better, but um, I'll have
to think on it all right. Uh. If you want
to get in touch with me and Chuck, you can
tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
can hang out on our Facebook page Facebook dot com
(37:24):
slash Stuff you Should Know UM, you can send us
an email the Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and
you can check us out at our website Stuff you
Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Because it how Stuff works dot com,
(37:50):
This episode of Stuff you Should Know is brought to
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(38:11):
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