Forty Years Ago: Four Dead In Ohio

Forty years ago, on May 4, 1970, soldiers from the Ohio National Guard fired their rifles into a crowd of students at Kent State University who had been protesting President Nixon's expansion of the Vietnam War into what had been neutral Cambodia on April 30.

When the shooting stopped, four students were dead and nine were wounded. Two of the killed students hadn't even been part of the protests, but had been walking between classes when the shooting started.

Neil Young was so shaken by this incident that he quickly wrote the song "Ohio", went into the studio with bandmates David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash to record it, and convinced Atlantic records to rush out the single, even though their hit "Teach Your Children" was still on the charts. Soon the story of this tragedy was blasting through radio speakers everywhere:

"This summer I hear the drummin', Four dead in Ohio...
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?"

Ten days later, police opened fire on student protesters at Jackson State College in Mississippi, killing two and injuring twelve. The Steve Miller Band addressed both incidents later that year in their "Jackson-Kent Blues":

"Four were shot down by the National Guard troops...
Shot some more in Jackson just to show the world what they can do...
Nothing any good is gonna come from a war"

The shooting and killing of college students by armed police and soldiers had so shaken up this country that even the normally apolitical Beach Boys found they could not stay silent. Singer Mike Love took the old Coasters song "Riot In Cell Block #9" and rewrote the lyrics to address these and other shootings, calling it "Student Demonstration Time":

America was stunned on May 4, 1970
When rally turned to riot up at Kent State University
They said the students scared the Guard
Though the troops were battle dressed
Four martyrs earned a new degree
The Bachelor of bullets
I know we're all fed up with useless wars and racial strife
But next time there's a riot, well, you best stay out of sight

On this anniversary, we need to remember the "four dead in Ohio" and the two dead in Mississippi, while we also mourn the thousands of deaths in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos that they were trying to prevent, as well as the deaths our government continues to cause today in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. As Pete Seeger sang in "Where Have All The Flowers Gone": "When will they ever learn?"

Kent State casualties, May 4, 1970:
Allison Krause, 19
Jeffrey Miller, 20
Sandra Scheuer, 20
William Schroeder, 19
Jackson State casualties, May 14, 1970:
Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, 21
James Earl Green, 17