'Four Dead in Ohio'

It was 50 years ago today that shots from National Guard rifles rang out in Ohio. When the gunsmoke cleared, four students lay dead at Kent State University.

I was a student then myself, though on a more placid Tennessee campus far away from the scene of chaos that noon in Ohio, but I clearly remember the feelings of shock, revulsion and anger at the news reports. How could this have happened? Had all the antiwar emotions of the Vietnam war – dividing Americans by generation, class, politics, and race – come to this murderous extremity in our nation?

Yes, it had.

“Four Dead in Ohio” were the words in headlines that night and for days long after. The words also became the angry refrain of Crosby, Stills Nash & Young’s iconic “Ohio.” 

The punishing, spirit-crushing losses in Vietnam would stagger on for five more years, but four deaths at Kent State put a period to any airs of moral ascendancy the Nixon administration could claim about the doomed war.

Soon, the Pentagon Papers would make crystal clear how our own government, over several administrations, had been lying in their official promises of victory in Vietnam. Further unraveling would come with Watergate two years later, but also the voting age would soon be lowered from 21 to 18, opening participation in the government to younger voices.

Something died that day in our country’s soul. But something of a new America, from the ashes of a rending calamity, was also being born.