“Is dissent a crime?”, asked Arthur Krause, the father of
19-year-old Allison Krause, one of the slain KSU students. “Is this such 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?”
Fifty-one years ago, four Kent State University students were
murdered, and nine others wounded by a tsunami of incompetent leadership
and bigoted politics. Back then, as today, the people of the USA were wrapped up
in a cultural straight jacket of disdain and intolerance for their own youth.
“KSU was in chaos on 4 May 1970, because Ohio Gov. James
Rhodes came to campus the day before. In a press conference he unleashed a
tirade against the students, calling them “worse than the brown shirts and the
communist element and also the nightriders and the vigilantes … They’re the
worst type of people that we harbor in America, he continued. I think that
we’re up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group
that has ever assembled in America.”
“Then he stated that he would get a court injunction banning
future protests and left the impression that something like martial law had
been declared. Then he departed the KSU campus.”
“Rhodes actually did neither. But, the Guardsmen and their
officers, the university administration and the student protesters did not know
that. Rhodes did accomplish inciting Guardsmen and the general public against
the students and muddling the "chain of command" so that no one
really knew who was in charge.”
“That night, Sunday, 3 May, students confronted Guardsmen
demanding that the Guard leave their campus. Several students taunted the Guard
and were bayoneted.”
“The previous Friday, 1 May, KSU students and students at
other universities, such as Yale, protested President Nixon’s invasion of
Cambodia and the expansion of the war in Vietnam.”
Please go here for the whole Kent State Massacre story:
When Demagogues & Incompetence Rule Innocents Die, DownriverUSA,
24 Feb 2017
https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2017/02/when-demagogues-incompetence-rule.html
Silently Sacrificing our Children, DownriverUSA, 19 Feb 2018
https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2018/02/silently-sacrificing-our-children.html
Closure, DownriverUSA, 3 May 2020
https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2020/05/closure.html
Here We Are Again - 50 Years Later, DownriverUSA, 29 May
2020
https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2020/05/here-we-are-again-50-years-later.html
Why the Kent State Massacre Matters Today
In the Trumpian era of “alternative facts” and demagoguery
we are ever slipping and sliding deeper and deeper into our own
Fascist-American quicksand where our leaders mislead, confuse issues and make
up “facts” to feed their narcissistic addiction and never-sated power and
wealth appetite.
Kent State continues to offer lessons for us today… lessons
we continue to disregard.
The KSU administration has still not accepted sculptor
George Segal’s, In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham and Isaac. A work
of art they commissioned.
Segal’s sculpture is a contemporary version of Abraham and
Isaac “in an allegory for the May 4, 1970, tragedy at Kent State University. A
poignant visualization of humankind's struggle between ideology and paternal
love, it mirrors the conflict that led to the death of four students at the
hands of the Ohio National Guard.”
In other words Segal is mirroring our willingness to
sacrifice our own children to our gods, whoever or whatever they are. I fear
many will continue the practice, still cheerfully following the whims of our past president.
After commissioning it in 1977, Kent State refused the
sculpture in 1977, saying that it “depicted violence”.
Violence, indeed. That, after all, is still what we are all about.
In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham and Isaac is now on display outside of the Princeton University
Chapel as part of the John B. Putnam Jr. Memorial Collection, funded by a
partial gift of the Mildred Andrews Fund.
Please go here for Paul Keane’s* illuminating and thoughtprovoking words about Segal’s Abraham and Isaac.
*Paul D. Keane, Teacher, M.A. (1972, Kent State University),
M.Div. (Divinity School, Yale University) and M.Ed. recently passed. He taught
English at Whitcomb High School and Hartford High School, Connecticut.
