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ALAN JOHNSON, Columbus Dispatch, February 24, 2010
Nearly 40 years after a volley of 60 shots fired by Ohio National Guardsmen killed four students during a campus protest at Kent State University, the site has been named to the prestigious National Register of Historic Places.
The May 4, 1970, campus shootings site was added to the National Register even though it did not meet the criteria that events being recognized had to have happened at least 50 years ago.
“It was something those students deserved,” said Mark Seeman, a Kent State anthropology professor who helped write the 150-page application. “Now, this place will be recognized by the government of the U.S. as a place where history important to this nation took place.”
Jerry M. Lewis, 73, a Kent professor emeritus who was there in 1970, said what took place that day “was a very crucial event, not only of the Vietnam era, but the student-activism experience.”
The 17.24-acre site near E. Main and S. Lincoln streets, incorporating the Commons, Blanket Hill and the Southern Terrace, was nominated in December by the Ohio Historic Site Preservation Advisory Board.
Among the site’s endorsers: Gov. Ted Strickland. One of his predecessors, Gov. James A. Rhodes, ordered the Ohio National Guard troops to Kent State to quell student protests that he feared were getting out of hand.
On that day in 1970, “Kent State University was placed in an international spotlight after a student protest against the Vietnam War and the presence of the Ohio National Guard on campus ended in tragedy when the Guard shot and killed four and wounded nine Kent State students,” the Ohio Historical Society said.
That set off “the largest student strike in U.S. history, increased recruitment for the movement against the Vietnam War and affected public opinion about the war, created a legal precedent established by the trials subsequent to the shootings and for the symbolic status the event has attained as a result of a government confronting protesting citizens with unreasonable deadly force,” the society said.
Reacting to the shootings, President Richard M. Nixon said they “should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy.”
Hi Laurel — I just found your website and wanted to say hi. I worked with Peter Davies for years on the search for truth re: Kent and, in so doing, met your wonderful father on several occasions. He always inspired me although his ability to cut through the bull and reach the stark reality beyond was sometimes slightly shattering to my naive optimism. Of course, as the years passed, I usually discovered he was right. He was a wonderful man and please accept my condolences, very late, on his death.
Several years ago, I wrote a series on the shootings for the DailyKos website. You might be interested in them. Unfortunately, the links to all the photos have since become obsolete but I suspect you can visualize most of the photos in your mind. They start here http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/26/205304/-Prelude-to-Kent-State:Nixon-Invades-Cambodia and each of them has links to the full set.
Is there any chance that you and/or your mom will be going to Kent for the 40th anniversary? I made my first trip back there a few years ago, after walking off campus back in 1977 with your dad after we knew they were going to let the gym construction go forward. I’m going to go back for the 40th anniversary. Will be meeting Jeff Miller’s mother, brother and nephew there as well as Sandy Scheuer’s roommate. I’ll be seeing Peter a little before that and suspect he might have something he wants me to take to leave for Allison.
Anyway, I really just wanted to say hello and to let you know that there are so many of us out here who have never forgotten May 4th or your beautiful sister or the courageous fight that your dad waged in the aftermath of her killing.
Be well.
I was a young college student with the tragedy at Kent State happened. It was an Ugly incident in the middle of an Ugly senseless war, that took the life of a childhood friend.
We realized that we lived with a Government that held the very Lives on its Citizens with little value.
Shooting Unarmed protesters during the Day on a College Campus demonstrated that disdain with Painful clarity.
One death was of a young ROTC student. This is the result of poor crowd control, guns, and a mindless foreign policy that cost the US almost 60,000 lives and 120 Billion dollars.
And perhaps a million Vietnamese lives!
We must not forget and always carefully pick our leaders.
Comments from those who dismiss or excuse these events are Shameful and Immoral. MN