79 haunting photos from the Kent State University shootings you've likely never seen before

[Ohiogal]

From today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer.

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/05/79-haunting-photos-from-the-kent-state-university-shootings-youve-likely-never-seen-before.html

One of the photographers, Chuck Ayers, was one of my art teachers, and former political cartoonist for the Akron Beacon Journal. He also collaborated with Tom Batiuk drawing the comic strips Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft.

I wasn’t there when this happened, I started my classes in 1974, but this event was so much a part of the history there. Upon seeing all the familiar landscapes in these photos, I can’t imagine seeing the heavy military presence, just boggles my mind.

[LakeArenal]

1. I went to college just after they bombed Sterling Hall in Madison

We were teargassed so often just going to school. Armed swat teams lined the sidewalks. It was a ferocious time.

[Ohiogal]

4. Just unimaginable.

What was it like to be teargassed?

[LakeArenal]

9. Poisonous. Teary. Acid in the eyes and nose.

A bit of disorientation but not enough to forget who just tear gassed you.

BUT.... not bullets.

That’s why the “Move over Boomers” pisses me off.

Talk about disenfranchised youth. Also today’s youth has financial college debt.
We had the draft. Talk about not knowing what the future looked like......

All Vets tend to have lifelong problems associated with war. For life.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. I was at Ohio State where the National Guard was also armed to the

teeth.

https://www.thelantern.com/2010/05/1970-protests-erupted-across-ohio-tear-gas-at-osu/

And here are more photos from the spring of 1970 in Ohio.

https://www.dispatch.com/photogallery/OH/20171005/NEWS/428009998/PH/1

[Ohiogal]

5. It was a time of great social change and political activism.

Thank you for sharing these.

[Aristus]

3. Chilling photographs, all of them.

Just as an aside, the caption writer seemed unable to distinguish between an armored personnel carrier and a tank. There were no tanks in those pics. Just the M-113 Armored Personnel Carrier, and in one of the early pics, an M-577 Command Post vehicle, painted blue for some reason.

Those Ohio National Guardsmen and their commanders should have been ashamed of themselves. Poorly-trained, poorly-led, willing to commit extra-judicial murder. With that incident, turning armed soldiers on unarmed civilians, the U.S, joined the League of Ordinary Nations.

[Ohiogal]

6. Thanks for lending your expertise, Aristus.

I remember many adults at that time, my parents included, saying things such as, “Those damn radicals were taunting and throwing rocks at armed soldiers! What did they expect”?

I don’t think anyone expected deadly gunfire into a crowd of unarmed students, some of whom were just on their way to class.

It’s such a black eye for our country’s history, and sometimes I wonder if we’ve learned anything at all from it.

I guess we’ll never know who authorized the bullets and the permission to fire. Many sources say it was Gov. James Rhodes.

[Aristus]

7. What did your parents say when they found out two of the dead had nothing to do with the protest?

Not that that should matter. No one deserved to die.

[Ohiogal]

8. I don't remember hearing any comments about them

Although a lot of people who thought the same way back then probably would have blamed those “radicals” for causing innocents to die.