The FBI said this was an accident. Yeah, right.
A man who was shot in the wrist when National Guard troops killed four Kent State University students during an anti-war demonstration says he has found an audiotape that reveals someone gave a command to fire.
“All we want is the truth because we seek healing at Kent State for the student victims, as well as the triggermen who were ordered to fire. And healing can only result from the truth, and that’s all we want.”
Four Kent State students were killed and nine were wounded in the 1970 clash, which followed several days of Vietnam War protests. Four years later, eight guardsmen were acquitted of federal civil rights charges.
Just before the 13-second volley of gunfire, a voice on the tape is heard yelling, “Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!“
The FBI has had a copy of the tape since the shootings took place. They’re as concerned about justice as they ever have been when civil rights and murder are used in the same sentence.
#30 pretty much nails it. I was a pro-war freshman at a campus 20 miles away from Kent State. The dead rotc student never protested the war and actually planned a career in the military.
Blame Gov Rocky Rhodes who wanted to be seen as tough when running for re-election.
#28 – #13 – Content is a pretty strong word when judging my posts.
Comment by James Hill — 5/1/2007 @ 2:17 pm
1000 points to James for a rare moment of self-reflexive humor and self-awareness.
I am currently a student at Kent State University and my father was a sophomore at Kent and in the ROTC in 1970 (the year the shooting happened) I have heard numerous rumors, stories and opinions about the May 4th tragedy all my life.
One thing is for certain, it doesn’t matter if you think the National Guard was right in firing or if you think it was completely wrong to even consider shooting, what matters is that 4 students were killed that day and many others were injured… It was a tragedy, those students deserved to be remembered.
So for those of you who are calling them dirty hippie protesters or garbage or whatever, they are human beings and the funny thing is the students that were killed weren’t even protesting, they were innocent bystanders walking to class.
I agree completely with number 3… this new evidence doesn’t matter it happened a long time ago and its not going to change the fact that 4 people are dead.
I also agree with number 12, this was a very chaotic event, we will probably never know what happened because there are so many stories circulating. On one hand, you have the guards who felt that they were threatened so for some reason a shot was fired and from then on it was chaos and on the other hand you have students protesting for what they believe in and they have the right to do that without being harmed. This event will always be controversial!
And I’m not trying to take sides, but if there was a order to fire, weren’t the guards only following orders? Being at Kent State, I have watched videos and documentaries interviewing some of the guards that were there that day, and these guards said while the shootings were going on all that was going through their mind was “this is wrong, this is wrong,” and how they feel horrible to this day and they have no idea how something like this could have happened and how they have to live with this for the rest of their lives. They said it was complete chaos that day.
Whatever the truth is, it shouldn’t matter, it happened a long time ago and there are more important answers we need to be searching for, like answers for the Virginia Tech shooting.
All we can do is look back and remember what happened that day, and learn from people’s mistakes so something like this doesn’t happen again.
Since May 4th is coming up… I don’t know about you, but what I will be doing that day is remembering and attending the memorial service that is held each year, I’m sorry but instead of debating why or how this happened, try remembering the tragedy that day and how EVERYONE was affected by it.
29,
As a vet myself, I can easily believe a weekend warrior losing it and not giving proper orders in a combination of fear and incompetence.
Here’s a useful link:
http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/legalchronology.html
#34 – Now that’s a good post…
One of the most important results of that terrible day was that the entire country became painfully aware of how far our government had gone from hearing and representing the voice of the people. More than any other single event the massacre at Kent State forced the country to finally work to bring an end to an unjust war that had been started escalated and managed with immeasurable incompetence.
Gee, sound familiar? Once again we have failed to learn from history and therefore have repeated it.
I am of the Kent State generation and to hear some of the ill-informed statesments in this post tears at my heart and proves to me that the failure to teach the history of that era is in part the reason so many Americans have allowed an equalled un-just and ill-advised war in Iraq to happen and continue.
Yeah ending the draft just about shut down these student protests. I think that lesson was learned this time around. Hopefully they also learned the lesson of not withdrawing support, which led to the fall of South Vietnam.
The New York Times couldn’t hear the commands on the tape except for ‘point’
Through grainy static and the high-pitched calls of protesters, it was possible to faintly hear someone shout “Point!” Mr. Canfora said the full command is recorded on the tape, with multiple voices shouting “Right here!” “Get Set!” Point!” and “Fire!” Those words, however, were difficult to discern when he played the recording.
To support number 29, here is a part of an article published by the Washington Times….
“Larry Shafer, a former Guardsman who said he fired during the shootings and was among those charged, told the Kent-Ravenna Record-Courier newspaper on Tuesday that he was unaware of the tape and that “point” would not have been part of a proper command.
“I never heard any command to fire. That’s all I can say on that,” Shafer, a Ravenna city councilman and former fire chief, told the newspaper. “That’s not to say there may not have been, but with all the racket and noise, I don’t know how anyone could have heard anything that day.”
The FBI, which investigated whether an order had been given to fire, said at the time it could only speculate. One theory was that a Guardsman panicked or fired intentionally at a student and that others fired when they heard the shot.”