Where were you on May 4, 1970?

[Faygo Kid]

May 4, 1970. 45 years ago Monday. Just damn. I was a freshman completing my first year at Wayne State University in Detroit. One week before was the first Earth Day - beautiful day, dogs wearing bandanas, Frisbees flying everywhere. Then this. An overcast day that changed everything.

[ScreamingMeemie]

1. Kicking the crap out of my mother's ribs.

(I was born June 6, 1970)

[HereSince1628]

25. Interesting, my father and I were actually in a brawl, I took a few shots to my ribs...

He didn't much like my interpretation of Kent State as Vietnam's equivalent of the Gardelegen Massacre of WWII.

I insisted Kent State was a war crime against it's own civilians.

That fight was the last time he ever hit me

[madokie]

2. Vietnam war

I'd been in country 10 months by then. Left there on the 12th of october of '70

[monmouth4]

3. Those were terrible days....n/t

[Jackpine Radical]

4. A grad student at UW-Madison, a bit more than a year out of the Army.

That was a fucked year. A few months later, Carleton Armstrong & Co. blew up the AMRC on campus, devastating the antiwar movement.

[orpupilofnature57]

5. Watching my 6th grade teacher cry while arguing with 3 teachers

about the students right to protest, while the others argued they were disturbing the peace .

[ohheckyeah]

6. I was a freshman in high school

just dealing with the fact the government didn't give a shit about we the little people.

[hifiguy]

7. I was 13

and absolutely horrified by Kent State.

[Auggie]

28. I was 13 too, living near Cleveland ...

(right up the road from Kent State).

[Skittles]

40. I remember doing a double-take when reading the headline in the Stars & Stripes

three months earlier I had been shocked when Capt Jeffrey MacDonald murdered his family

[JEB]

8. Senior in high school ready to take to the streets.

[True Blue Door]

9. Wasn't even a stem cell yet.

And I'm very glad of that. The Bush regime pissed me off so much, I'm not sure how I could have handled Richard Nixon. Dick Cheney was merely a faded shadow of Nixon.

[giftedgirl77]

10. 7 yrs from being born

[angryvet]

11. Eating lunch in the messhall

in the Ft. Carson Army Hospital. One of the people at the table told about the shooting at Kent State. Another one of the people at the table said "good." I couldn't believe it. I knew lots of people in the military conservative but I didn't realize they could be ignoramuses.

[cwydro]

12. Whites have rioted,

and whites have paid the price.

I was young, but I sure remember that day.

[sadoldgirl]

13. Don't remember that date exactly,

but was out on the street protesting a lot during that year.
Not that it made much of a difference.

[kentuck]

14. I was on Interstate 75 on my way to Detroit...

I had returned from Vietnam and had worked a few months in the insurance business and decided to drive to Detroit and see kinfolks and find a new job and buy myself a car...

[Faygo Kid]

18. Thanks for your service, and to all those similarly posting here.

I marched against that war, and was almost drafted, and still believe it was a horrid mistake, but all the 2.5 million American soldiers who served get my respect always.

P.S. Lifelong Detroiter, too.

[Elwood P Dowd]

15. Just out of college and working to make a few bucks before the draft notice came.

1970 is not my favorite year.

[JohnnyLib2]

16. In uniform just ahead of the draft, completely horrified.

Stationed at an Army hospital which was receiving hundreds of wounded.....as stated, a very rough year.

[musette_sf]

17. High school chemistry class

We walked out en masse to join the protest at the college quad next door.

[Caretha]

19. I was graduating High School

getting ready to choose a college for the fall, and completely completely blown away. We (myself & friends) could not believe this was happening...then, it was like one of our parents had just killed us for being us.

This anniversary always depresses me.

[okaawhatever]

20. Langely Virginia. Staying with the neighbors. My brother was born May 1, 1970. That may have been

the day he came home from the hospital. I was 5 so I don't remember anything about Kent St. My grandfather was serving one of his tours in Vietnam (3 total). He had served in WWII and Korea so I don't think we were as worried as we probably should have been.

[marlakay]

21. 8th grade being bullied around by a weird group of girls

I was a shy scared kid, socially ackward back then.

Thank god i got a new next door neighbor before highschool who they thought was cool so they left me alone.

[etherealtruth]

22. 2nd grade, ~ 15 miles north of you

[Aerows]

23. A sparkle in my

daddy's eye

[ileus]

24. Almost 2 months old....eating, sleeping, crying...

[Art_from_Ark]

26. I was looking forward to spending summer days swimming and bike riding

I have just a fleeting memory of hearing about the incident on the news, and I don't remember hearing anyone discussing it at the time. A couple of years later, when I finally realized what it was all about, I couldn't believe that some people actually supported the shooting of college kids by national guardsmen

[Go Vols]

27. At school in the 2nd grade.

[raccoon]

29. About to wind up my freshman year at college. That made a big impression on me.

And like others I was and still am appalled that some people think the students had it coming.

[mainstreetonce]

30. In third grade

Teaching

[smokey nj]

31. I don't recall. I was 9 months old.

[former9thward]

32. Organizing for a national student strike at Portland State University.

Our Students for a Democratic Society chapter was organizing for the strike which was successful in shutting down our campus. Yes I know SDS nationally collapsed in the fall of 1969 but some local chapters soldiered on. A newspaper said our chapter was the last in the nation to shut down (Jan, 1973). I don't know if that is true or not.

[kaiden]

33. About to graduate from high school.

Independence, Kansas. 97 kids in the graduating class.

[cascadiance]

34. I was living in Turkey less than a year before terrorists kidnapped my teacher's boyfriend there...

... which fortunately he got away from, but was part of a scene where we had bombings, the killing of an Israeli diplomat, martial law and a coup that changed the government then. They weren't Islamic terrorists in those days but Red Brigade style terrorists much like the Baader Meinhoff gang in Europe then, aligning themselves against an American presence in those countries then.



http://bianet.org/english/people/114342-1971-1972-last-days-of-young-revolutionaries-before-execution

[vankuria]

35. In the 9th grade

And not socially aware of much, just living in my own little world...I did vaguely remember something bad happening, a protest, gunshots...at the time world news had no effect on me.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

36. Going to community college while working at the Post Office.

Collecting veteran's benefits to help pay for it. My wife was an art major at CalState Northridge. We both hit the streets to protest what happened at Kent State soon after the tragedy.

[rurallib]

37. not totally sure, but I believe I was deeply involved in a protest on the U of Iowa campus

It was close to around that time, so in my stories I have blended it together.
At some point I was acting as a body guard for our US senator as he gave a rousing anti war speech.

[dumbcat]

38. Senior in college

Getting ready to graduate, join the army, and go to Viet Nam.

You really wouldn't want to know what the prevailing sentiment was in my conservative frat house.

[AwakeAtLast]

39. In my mother's arms

I was 5 months old.

Sometimes I think people my age were screwed from birth.

[MrMickeysMom]

41. I was a junior in high school...

Beginning to see my world… confused… less assured…

[burrowowl]

42. In France as a student exchange TA in English

was greeted at the door of a 2000 plus student lycée shown the newspaper and asked how could this happen by a few hundred professors and the 2000 plus students.

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

43. In school at Great Lakes about to become a corpsman.

[pinboy3niner]

44. In an Army hospital in San Francisco

Being treated for wounds from Vietnam. And absolutely shocked by what happened at Kent State.