Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
One of our main tenents and belief
is that war is wrong. Not this war or that war. War!
All war is wrong.
Reporters will say to me why am I here?
Covering this? Will this ever be closure?
And what I will say to reporters and journalists
I don't want there to be closure.
I saw what happened,
I was a protester, but I think more important, I was an eyewitness.
I saw what they did. They stopped they turn and they start shooting into a crowd of unarmed students.
You know, one thing that I want be real clear about is:
We didn't come here on our own
We were asked to come here by law enforcement and by the mayor of the city of Kent
And that is how we wound up here
it then you get at least you put my energy conduct looking in on tobacco
today as you pick in the winter group of ppl
angers me Katie way a bit too shocking especially is needed as protesters
effecting us with my daughter's wedding pics for some point that's fine BB in
you felt while the party in a sense it damp
all but if you look on the still not convinced that she came she
History is obviously the Vietnam War
and what happened on April 30 is this: president Nixon went on television and
announced that we were invading Cambodia
he called it an "incursion"
and when the incursion... Of course that showed
to students, particularly, two things:
War is not ending, but it was in fact spreading.
They were committing genocide against the vietnamese, cambodian and laotian people.
Everybody was getting really tired of it
Just didn't make sense people were upset about it all over the country.
But when I came to college in fall of 67
I started to hear my professors and my fellow students start to question the war
in Vietnam. So I began to question it.
And then finally on May 4th the date of the shoots ocurred
everything started off pretty quiet, but then the
protesters started to accumulating on campus
and pretty soon it got to be pretty big
and we move troops up to that area
cause we didn't know what the crowd was going to do.
And the group gathered, maybe 300 anti-war students
long hair protesters and we were by the bell
and we were clapping your hands we were chanting anti-war slogans
our fists in the air.
And basically we were expressing our opposition to the war.
Well, the National Guard, at 12 noon, they fired tear gas
and they started chasing us they came marchin toward us
Then they moved back up the hill and when they did that
I could see the move and I've seen
A lot of people going toward them.
But I thought it was safe I thought they would not shoot
When they reached the top of the hill
It was like they turned lowered their rifles and started firing
I could hear the bullets hitting the ground around me
and I am thinking "oh my God why are they shooting at me"
And I jumped on the ground and I covered my head
and I lay there for a few seconds hearing the bullets hitting the ground
right around me and I was "man,are they taking target practice at me?"
They fired 67 gunshots mostly from a high-powered rifle called the M1
The M1 rifle can shoot from almost two miles
it can pierce through steal, it pierce through the trees, it pierce through cars
And next thing I know I got hit
and it felt like a bee sting and I did not know where I got hit
but it was on the back somewhere
Thirteen students were shot, four students were killed, nine were wounded
I was one of those wounded, a bullet entered in through the front of my wrist here
and came up through the side, so the bullet went through my arm
And there's four students killed and quite a few wounded
and that happened virtually in front of me
Sandy Scheuer and Bill Schroeder were killed, they were not protesters
they were bystanders, just watching
Something happened there with that other company, it was an accident
somehow that a misunderstanding or something, I don't really know
and that caused them to turn and shoot
I was working on a book that I am writing and I was very surprised to find a tape recording there
of the shooting incident, it had the sounds of the students protesting, the tear gassing
the guard chasing
then the guard coming up the hill and the shooting incident
The police were totally unprepared to handle
what's going on here in the university
And the civil rights law in this country allowed me to do what I was doing
Kent State University, The May 4th Task Force
they're attempting everything they can to keep it alive, you know?
The memorial, the memory and that kind of thing.
The symbolic power of May 4th, that doesn't go away