Kent State at 50 – Three Days Late

With Covid-19 being all the news all the time, other things get missed.  The 50th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State University on May 4 was one of them, at least for me.

I was a senior at Eastern Illinois University in 1970.  When President Nixon gave his speech on the Cambodian incursion on April 30, 1970, it seemed reasonable to me.  Protestors said he was expanding the war.  I figured that, since the North Vietnamese were already in Cambodia, attacking South Vietnam from bases there, you couldn’t say we were expanding the war into Cambodia.  The war came to Cambodia when the North Vietnamese moved in.

The protestors didn’t agree, and tragedy struck at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio.  Four student protestors were shot and killed by members of the Ohio National Guard.  Today Kent State is looked at as a matter of armed troops shooting, and killing, unarmed protestors.  It didn’t seem that simple at the time.  Something that is not often commented on is that some of those National Guard troops were as young as the protestors.  The protestors may have been scared; I am sure the National Guard troops were, too.  And tragedy struck.  Which made the protests even louder.

All over the United States, students demanded that colleges shut down, and many did.  At Eastern, some students demanded that the U.S. flag be lowered to half-staff to honor the students who had died.  Other EIU students opposed this idea, wanting to keep the U.S. flag up, to support the soldiers fighting in Vietnam. 

At Eastern, the president of the school, Quincy Doudna lowered the flag to half-staff “to deplore the hatred and conflict on college campuses and throughout the world today.”  But the flag was raised back to full staff the next day after President Doudna received a student recommendation for a referendum on the question.¹  And President Doudna said that everybody at the university should vote; not just students, but teachers and workers, too. 

I felt pretty strongly about the issue, and so I did what people did when they felt strongly about something on a college campus in 1970, at least in downstate Illinois:  I mimeographed² a whole bunch of posters, got approval to post them, and put them up all over campus.  Here is a copy:

The Eastern News reported the results: The overall vote was 2,994 to 1,299 against the proposal to fly the flag “at half-staff for the duration of the American armed involvement in Southeast Asia.”  Even the student vote was 2,250 to 1,185 against.¹  As I said, it was downstate Illinois, 1970.
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¹ “Flag stays at full-staff,” Eastern News, May 19, 1970.
² Actually, I used a “ditto” machine, which was different than a mimeograph.  See here.