Just last week, we marked the 40th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State University that resulted in the death of four students. Now, there’s new evidence that sheds light on the events of that day:
The Ohio National Guardsmen who fired on students and antiwar protesters at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 were given an order to prepare to shoot, according to a new analysis of a 40-year-old audio tape of the event.
“Guard!” says a male voice on the recording, which two forensic audio experts enhanced and evaluated at the request of The Plain Dealer. Several seconds pass. Then, “All right, prepare to fire!”
“Get down!” someone shouts urgently, presumably in the crowd. Finally, “Guard! . . . ” followed two seconds later by a long, booming volley of gunshots. The entire spoken sequence lasts 17 seconds.
The previously undetected command could begin to explain the central mystery of the Kent State tragedy – why 28 Guardsmen pivoted in unison atop Blanket Hill, raised their rifles and pistols and fired 67 times, killing four students and wounding nine others in an act that galvanized sentiment against the Vietnam War.
The order indicates that the gunshots were not spontaneous, or in response to sniper fire, as some have suggested over the years.
“I think this is a major development,” said Alan Canfora, one of the wounded, who located a copy of the tape in a library archive in 2007 and has urged that it be professionally reviewed. “There’s been a grave injustice for 40 years because we lacked sufficient evidence to prove what we’ve known all along – that the Ohio National Guard was commanded to kill at Kent State on May 4, 1970.”
“How do you spell bombshell?” said Barry Levine, whose girlfriend Allison Krause was mortally wounded as he tried to pull her behind cover. “That is obviously very significant. The photographic evidence and eyewitness accounts of what took place seemed to suggest everything happened in those last seconds in a coordinated way. This would be the icing on the cake, so to speak.”
This would certainly seem to change the narrative of the Kent State shootings. Instead of being a spontaneous response by troops who were, admittedly, not much older than the students involved, it turns into something far more deliberate, and for which the commanders of the troops bear a great deal of the responsibility for giving an order to fire on an American college campus. Instead of merely being a tragedy and a mistake, it looks like to me like an outrage and about as close to being an act of cold-blooded murder as you can get.
H/T: Joe Gandelman
For the best eye witness accounts of the Kent State shootings by various Kent students and national guardsmen who shot students, check out the Emmy Award winning documentary, “Kent State, The Day the War Cam Home.” It was just released on DVD for the 40th anniversary. In its review of the program, The Hollywood Reporter stated, “This extraordinary hour long doc is so good, so well constructed, that it can’t help but leave viewers feeling as if they themselves were on the bloody scene of the Kent State carnage…” for more go to kentstatedvd.com
“Grave Justice”
Thousands of US servicemen were getting killed for no good reason.
Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, on both sides, were getting killed for no good reason.
My sympathies go out to the victims, friends and family of those Kent State students and bystanders who lost their lives that day. If I was one of them, or one of their loved ones, I would also have felt it the greatest injustice in the world.
But let’s not forget what happened as a result of their deaths. Thousands, or millions, lived, because those brave protesters took the “other” front line and changed the world, when the bullets flew, whether those bullets were “ordered” or not.
I think it’s good to know whether or not the shootings were a “mistake”, or intended by someone, somewhere in the chain of command. BUT, either way… would they take them back if they knew what we now know, that, in fact, taking them back would have made the Vietnam War last longer and result in more deaths in the final equation?
A “martyr” is one who would give his or her own life for a cause. Unfortunately, this has come to mean one who would take other lives, along with his or her own, for a cause.
If only “martyr” could instead mean sacrifice in a more positive way… giving ones live that others may live, WITHOUT intentional collateral damage.
If “martyr” can still have such a positive connotation in our modern world, the Kent State victims were it. By their deaths they saved lives. A few? Hundreds? Thousands?? Millions???
Okay, if you were friend or family of one of the Kent State victims, you undoubtedly have the right to know as much as you can.
But, injustice is rife. I bet that if some foolish command came down from on high to shoot protestors at an Iraq war march, or a Globalisation march, the movement in question would, possibly, go on to achieve more of it aims…
Would I volunteer to die for such a cause, or would I even look down from the afterlife and approve of the trade-off? Would you? Would anyone? Perhaps not, but let us not forget what the world gained when those at Kent State lost their lives.
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Jesus H. Christ she has a fence post stuck in her head!!!