Kent State Shooting Essay

The Kent State shootings—also known as the May 4th Massacre—occurred at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. The incident involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4th, 1970. The guardsmen fired sixty-seven rounds over a period of thirteen seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.
Some of the students who were shot were protesting and others were just in the area on their way to class. At the end of April, President Nixon announced to the nation that the “Cambodian Incursion” had been launched by United States combat forces. This announcement triggered responsive activities at Kent State.
On May 1st, 500 students protested President Nixon’s

Luckily, a Kent State professor talked them out of it. He begged them!
Photographs of the dead students/protestors at Kent State were exhibited in newspapers and periodicals worldwide amplifying the sentiment against the United States’ invasion of Cambodia and the Vietnam War. The shootings led to 450 college campuses closing across the United States.
Shortly after the Kent State shootings, a banner was hung out of a window at New York University stating “They Can’t Kill Us All!” On May the 8th, eleven people were bayoneted at the University of New Mexico and shortly after that 100,000 people demonstrated in Washington, D.C.
The Urban Institute conducted a national study that concluded the Kent State shooting was the single greatest factor causing the only nationwide student strike in U.S. history. Then, over four million students protested and over 900 American colleges and universities closed during these strikes.
On June 13th, 1970, President Nixon established the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest. The Commission issued a report that concluded that the Ohio National Guard shootings on May 4th, 1970, were unjustified. (A tune by Buffalo Springfield entitled: “For What It’s Worth” became very popular at this