Shots Still Reverberate For Survivors Of Kent State...remembering May 4, 1970. [View all]

[madfloridian]

Shots Still Reverberate For Survivors Of Kent State



From 2010: It's now been 45 years.

It was 40 years ago Tuesday that the shootings — which killed four people and wounded nine others — stunned the nation. Even at the height of the Vietnam War protests, no one imagined that government soldiers would fire real bullets at unarmed college students.

"I saw the smoke come out of the weapons, and light is faster than sound, and so I knew immediately [they] were not firing blanks. So it was almost instinctive to dive for cover," remembers Jerry Lewis, who was 33 and teaching sociology at Kent State in 1970.

Lewis says that when he takes people to the scene of the shooting on the Kent Commons, he likes to point out a particular mark — a perfectly round bullet hole in a steel sculpture.

"This is what an M-1 bullet, .30-caliber bullet, does to steel," he says. "And the artist, to his credit, has refused to fix this. So, ironically, the National Guard created their own memorial."

Here is the audio slideshow from NPR.

On May 4, 1970, unarmed college students were shot by members of the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University. Forty years later, this slideshow takes a look back at the events of the day.

The victims:


Allison Krause


Sandy Scheuer


Jeffrey Miller


Bill Schroeder