Four dead, 40 years ago

Mr. Patrick, late for class, dashed through the door, breathless. Our much respected history teacher and Vietnam veteran announced that four students had just been shot to death during an anti-war campus protest rally at Kent State University, 18 miles from our high school.

"Well, that's the way it is," I thought. "People in America get shot."

JFK, MLK, RFK, Malcolm X. And now unarmed students just a few years older than I. I'd been to my share of anti-war rallies. My picture appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal at least twice, which I hoped had landed me on a government list of dangerous radicals. We knew that peaceful assembly, although guaranteed by the First Amendment, carried a certain risk.

A few nights before the May 4 tragedy at Kent State, as my mother drove me to my flute lesson, we were stunned to find tanks blocking the road. "Can I go around?" Mom asked.

"Not unless you want to get shot," a National Guardsman answered. Guard troops had been called in to handle a Teamsters strike, which was later cited as one reason that the guardsmen ordered to Kent State were already on edge.

The shootings happened around lunchtime. By the time I arrived home on May 4, the reality had begun to sink in. The TV was on, Mom was crying, and we checked in with my older brother at another nearby campus to make sure he was OK.

Many, many people called in to local radio shows saying that more students should have been shot, or even all of them. These were old-fashioned talk shows, not ones with political agendas like we have today. It was shocking to hear how widespread the intolerance of protest had become. The war had already divided the country, but had shooting unarmed civilians become an acceptable way of handling dissent?

Documentaries later revealed that even parents of students in the crowd agreed that more should have been shot.

Nine students were wounded by gunfire that day, one paralyzed. A week later, two students at Jackson State College (now University) in Mississippi were shot and killed, and 12 others wounded.

Each year, the date brings back the grief. Everyone has seen the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the "14-year-old runaway" shouting for help, kneeling over "one of the dead." They both had names: Mary Vecchio and Jeffrey Miller, who died at age 20.

The 40th anniversary is simply an anniversary: another year gone by. The university is planning many events, including the dedication of a National Register of Historic Places plaque, and appearances by journalists who covered the story, as well as Mary Vecchio, who for years refused to participate, saying the shootings ruined her life.

I'm writing not just because it's the anniversary of Kent State and Jackson State. I'm afraid once more. The American landscape is again filled with hatred, in ways that remind me of Kent State, with a180-degree spin. Some doubt our president's birthplace, claim he is turning our nation into a socialist state or even call for his death. Death? Forty years ago, we called for Nixon's impeachment. Scary.

And now Arizona has a law permitting anyone "suspicious" to be stopped by authorities and forced to prove their citizenship. Really scary. Cooler heads are calling for meaningful immigration reform at the federal level, but let's be honest. Hatred toward non-whites still runs deep, well beyond Arizona.

What resonates most is the level of anger and increasing use of epithets such as "anti-American," "unpatriotic" and "traitor" by demonstrators who disagree with (name your policy here).

In the 1960s and '70s, a handful acted violently. For the most part, we sang folk songs calling for peace, wore flowers and shouted for the end of an unjust, undeclared war.

Today's radicals are much more extreme. Instead of wearing flowers, they're carrying guns.

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Leslie Martin is an editor and public relations consultant. She lives in Mendota Heights.

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