When campuses erupted in protests over the Gaza war earlier this year, you had to hope lessons had been learned from the horror at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. Four students were killed and nine others injured that day when Ohio National Guard troops opened fire on unarmed campus protestors. Kent State: An American Tragedy offers a compelling chronology and a detailed analysis of the many mistakes made.

There have been several good books about May 4th, most published not long after the events took place (including James Michener’s What Happened at Kent State and Why), but this one provides invaluable long-term perspective.

Now that the students and the soldiers are in their golden years, some are more forthcoming than they were in the past. Indeed, the book’s remarkable prologue focuses on a now-elderly guardsman — one of eight indicted (but found not guilty) for shooting at the students — who decided the time had finally come to tell the story he’d kept inside for more than half a century.

Author Brian VanDeMark establishes the context for the calamity by considering the turmoil the country endured in the late 1960s: race riots, terrorist bombings by radical domestic groups, and the increasing frustrations of the Vietnam War. He’s careful to note that only a very small portion (never more than 1.4 percent) of Kent State’s 22,000 students were part of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and to portray the campus as “an ordinary university set in the rolling green hills of northeastern Ohio.” Before addressing the tragedy itself, he introduces each of its 13 victims.

May 4, 1970, was a Monday. The Friday before, President Richard M. Nixon had ordered U.S. forces into Cambodia, expanding the war in Southeast Asia. This angered opponents of the war and led to a tense weekend in small Kent, Ohio, including incidents of arson and broken windows.

It certainly didn’t help that Nixon referred to campus protestors as “bums” and that Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes declared them “the worst type of people that we harbor in America.”  Rhodes called in the National Guard to quell the uprising.

The guardsmen, coming directly from trying to keep the peace at a four-day Teamsters strike, were exhausted and, in some instances, fighting the flu. They had no experience with campus protests and were armed for combat with fixed bayonets on loaded rifles. The unit’s commander (himself a desk officer) left on Sunday night, designating an assistant who later denied being in the chain of command.

What had been anger about the Cambodia invasion quickly became rage over what the students saw as an invasion of their own campus. Word spread of a noon rally, and the crowd that gathered began pelting the guardsmen with rocks and other small projectiles. The commander ordered his troops to put on gas masks, which, unfortunately, meant many of them couldn’t see very well, adding to their fear.

The commander was supposed to warn protestors that the guard’s guns were loaded. He didn’t. A platoon sergeant fired a warning shot into the air — violating National Guard policy — and others may have taken that as a cue. Or, perhaps, they heard only the first word of his order to “fire in the air.”

Seconds later, a fusillade of more than 60 shots was followed by a stunned silence, then screams, confusion, and incredulity. The distance between the line of guardsmen and the students who were hit ranged from less than 100 feet to more than 600 feet.

The last third of the book looks at what’s happened since that dark day 54 years ago — emotional stories of how parents and other loved ones heard the terrible news, local and national reactions, investigations, three messy court cases (one criminal and two civil; no one was found guilty), how survivors coped, and how the guardsmen dealt with what they’d done.

For many years, Kent State tried to minimize the history; until 1991, the parking spaces where several students fell were still in everyday use. That year, the school honored a student petition to block off the spots with bollards and install markers bearing the victims’ names. Later, an Ohio Historical Marker was installed nearby, calling the shootings “unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.”

In 2009, the U.S. Department of the Interior added the site to the National Register of Historic Places. In 2012, a May 4th Visitors Center opened in a building right next to where the shootings took place. In 2020, on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, Ohio’s governor ordered flags flown at half-staff, and the university added markers where each wounded student fell.

If you visit Kent State today, it’s hard to miss one of the most visible remnants of the awful day: a bullet hole in a huge sculpture called Solar Totem #1, located midway between where the guardsmen and students faced off. The artwork is made of half-inch-thick steel panels. When its creator heard it had a .30-caliber bullet hole through it, he insisted it remain unrepaired so people wouldn’t forget what happened there.

This book is an equally sad, powerful, and important reminder.

Randy Cepuch is a member of the Independent’s board of directors. He was in high school in May 1970 and, not long after, was a college student in Ohio — in short, one of the very large group of people suggested in this book’s dedication: “To all those touched by the Kent State tragedy.”

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