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We have the May 4th Visitors Center on the Kent State University campus for lots of reasons,
in part because people have been coming here for decades, literally decades, trying to
read the site and they've never been able to do that.
Many people would come to Kent State almost in a pilgrimage and try to find out what happened
and so we have the trail markers outside that give you at least a glimpse of what happened
at 7 basic points throughout the historic site. And now people can come in here and
hear the rest of the story or at least the story up to this point in time.
We had what is called a quiet opening for the Visitor's Center for people coming back
for Homecoming and we really felt that May 4th is another time of Homecoming.
During the commemorations is when people from all over the country come back and pay their respect
and homage to the 4 students that were killed and so we thought that it was only appropriate
to have the dedication done during that commemoration.
On May 4th we're having several events that acknowledge the
dedication of the May 4th Visitors Center.
We're going have a panel that's being chaired by Gwen Ifill who's the PBS moderator and,
um, the panel is going to talk about the May 4th Visitors Center
and the Kent State shootings in history.
We feel that the voice of Gwen Ifill can help place the things that the scholar participants
on the panel say about the place of May 4th in American history and the place of the Visitors
Center, the opening of the Visitors Center as another kind of stage in what the university
is doing to embrace its legacy.
At 7:30 the very famous film director Oliver Stone is going to be doing a kind of Inside Actor's Studio.
Many of Oliver Stone's movies are about historical events and they are unique interpretations of those events.
He's done so many films that are in the period in which this Visitors Center is cast.
We know that he has an awareness of what happened on May 4th. He talks about it in his movie Nixon.
He talks about it in his producer and director notes for Heaven and Earth, the 3rd
movie in his set of Vietnam movies. It would be very meaningful to us as a community to
hear this amazing creative artist look at our event from the perspective
of the amazing body of work that he's done.
Many people think it's just been a couple years but Laura and I have really been after
this for almost 8 years and to see sketches of what this space, this very small space
was going to do and how it came out was just, um, thrilling.
I feel really good about the new group of people who are gonna be able to come during
the dedication and see it for the 1st time and I think they will feel satisfied as so
many people have told us so far that they are with the exhibit.