Fifty years ago today … I remember it more vividly than I remember yesterday. Kent State. The tragedy of the year, perhaps of the decade. Have we learned? Are we better today? I think not. Thank you, Jeff, for sharing your memories of that tragic, brutal day. 😥
I’ll never forget coming home from elementary school on the afternoon of May 4, 1970. Only eight years old at the time, I hadn’t heard about the tragedy that occurred only a couple of hours earlier, 20 minutes up the road from my hometown of Akron, Ohio, at Kent State University. Four students were slaughtered and nine more were wounded when the Ohio National Guard opened fire at 12:24 pm while attempting to disburse several thousand protestors that had gathered on the commons to protest the Vietnam War.
I’m not quite sure who it was that told me, but I assume it was one of my older siblings. I remember the sadness and I certainly remember the anger. My oldest brother was hurt the most. He’d been a vocal opponent of the war and if not for a later nervous breakdown, he would have been on his way to fight…
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Salutary share Jill.
Remember this one
Lyrics
I was down in Nashville just payin’ my dues
Headed for Ohio when I read the news
‘Bout the people demonstrating ‘gainst the President’s views
Four were shot down by the National Guard troops
Just like Uncle Sam I put on my fighting shoes
School shot down cause there’s no more to lose
Now we’re headed to D.C. two by twos
Cause those low down, profound, killin’ four blues
Lookin’ for my Congressman to make it well known
But the politicians already won’t answer his telephone
Making in his office while they’re shooting kids down at home
Worried about the voters but he won’t be worried long
Silent majority still glued to the tube
Say CIA ain’t lookin’, FBI come unglued
Shot some more in Jackson just to show the world what they can do
While we’re marching to D.C. cause there’s too much to do
Give peace a chance
Give peace a chance
There’s no turnin’ back my friend
There’s no turnin’ back
When the President said that the tear gas is gone
The army’s pulled out leavin’ blood on the ground
The streets are empty and the crying’s died down
You can be President if no one’s around
Just like Kow Kow*, you’ve heard it before
Get back gangster, don’t you open that door
Space Cowboy’*s back to tell you the score
Nothing any good is gonna come from a war
Got those low down, profound, killin’ four blues
Give peace a chance
Give peace a chance
Give peace a chance
*Reference Miller’s Third Album ‘Brave New World’
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I must honestly admit that I never heard that one!!! Thanks for including the lyrics, for otherwise I would have had no clue. I wonder why I never heard it???
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Steve Miller, although popular, didn’t have the pulling power of the bigger names, and it was only an album track…. ‘Number Five’ (fifth album), so generally only known to Miller fans.
Packs a punch though.
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Yes, I remember. A defining moment, certainly, even here in the UK. But most of those who vehemently support Trump are probably too young to remember it themselves, or the Vietnam War. The problem with learning lessons is that two generations later the incidents and events that teach those lessons are forgotten as so many people were born too late to experience them. Then we need another event, sadly.
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You’re so right, Mick. When I question why we cannot seem to learn the lessons of history, I realize that as we move further and further from the events that defined an era, a generation, it becomes less personal for each generation and pretty soon it is just something the high school history teacher makes them learn, not a real event with real people. Sigh.
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It was ever thus. And as we move further and further into a world where events move faster and faster, and changes from one generation to the next become ever more extreme, I think that is highly dangerous.
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You’re right … I remember my paternal grandparents, Jews who were survivors of the Holocaust, telling of their experiences, and my father, who fought in WWII, telling of his, and it was so very real to me. But, it was less real when I retold the stories to my children, and to my only grandchild, it is but a story. And, as you say, technology is leaving history in its dust. Sigh.
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thanks for sharing…
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Kent State, Anti-Vietnam protests, Civil Rights protests with the klan marching down the streets of Washington DC, both Kennedy’s, MLK, Malcolm X assassinations, Watergate, and all the other stuff we lived through in the 60’s and 70’s. But we came through it to the era of greed is good which really screwed us up.
Simply wow.
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Yes, in the 50s, 60s and early 70s we thought we were moving toward a better world, one of tolerance and understanding, one of brotherly love. Sadly, greed and arrogance took the reins and turned this nation into something toxic and ugly.
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😔
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Exactly.
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We never learn the lessons from history do we.
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No, if we do, it’s only short-term. A generation or two pass, and the lessons are forgotten, relegated to high school history class where half the kids are sleeping. Sigh.
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We always seem to repeat them.
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I was finishing up my freshman year of high school when this happened. The news struck like a thunderbolt. One month later, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young released the haunting song “Ohio” which played across the radio dial all summer long. I can still hear the lyrics: “Four dead in O-hi-o… Four dead in O-hi-o…”
It made me angry. It made me focus. I protested. I rebelled. The cultural chasms that split America over the Vietnam War and Civil Rights were ripped wide open. The nation would never be the same. We lost whatever innocence remained. Four years later, President Nixon resigned in disgrace. It was poetic justice.
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It was one of those defining moments, like the assassination of JFK, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, or 9/11 … we remember where we were and what we were doing with clarity, almost as if it were just last week. Sadly, I don’t think we’re one bit better today than we were then, and I can easily see the same thing happening under the current batch of fools in Washington.
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I believe by summer, sadly? We will be seeing a totally melting down country with the Trumpsters going off the deep end. And they really do not care in their anarchy, they want to see it all burned to the ground.
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That is my prediction also. We are projected to have the hottest summer on record, tensions are already at an all-time high, the pandemic and shutdowns are further dividing us, and the ultra-contentious election is now less than 6 months away, with Trump doing his best to turn a presidency into a dictatorship. What could possibly go wrong, eh?
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