67 Shots

Kent State and the End of American Innocence

By: Howard Means

Narrated by: Alan Sklar

At midday on May 4, 1970, after three days of protests, several thousand students and the Ohio National Guard faced off at opposite ends of the grassy campus commons at Kent State University. At noon, the Guard moved out. Twenty-four minutes later, Guardsmen launched a 13-second, 67-shot barrage that left four students dead and nine wounded, one paralyzed for life. The story doesn't end there, though. A horror of far greater proportions was narrowly averted minutes later when the Guard and students reassembled on the commons.

The Kent State shootings were both unavoidable and preventable: unavoidable in that all the discordant forces of a turbulent decade flowed together on May 4, 1970, on one Ohio campus; preventable in that every party to the tragedy made the wrong choices at the wrong time in the wrong place.

Using the university's recently available oral-history collection supplemented by extensive new interviewing, Means tells the story of this iconic American moment through the eyes and memories of those who were there, and skillfully situates it in the context of a tumultuous era.

©2016 Howard Means (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

A trove of surprisingly fresh information.

For those around the country who lived through the Kent State tragedy, much of the first half of this book may not be news. The reporting and analysis of events from the moment the last trigger was pulled, on the other hand, may well be a revelation. This is one of those rare achievements that get better with every page. My hat is off to the author.

New History

I always knew of Kent State, but never knew of the reality of it. The ridiculousness of the how things happened shocked me. This was an excellent explanation of exactly what happened.

Thorough, thoughtful, in-depth examination of Kent state

I thoroughly enjoyed this book from beginning to end. Not only does it provide an in-depth look at the tragedy at Kent State, it does so in the context of the times in which it occurred. It is well researched and the ending provides a very good analysis of the event as well as The many repercussions.

Great Book & Narrator

I love the way the narrator says "horror". Also, the intimate breakdown of this terrible period of history was great.

Outstanding

One of the best Audible books yet. It brought a lot of new (to me at least) information to the topic of the Kent State Massacre. Well rounded to include interviews with and thoughts of students, townspeople, guardsmen, faculty, political leaders and more. Outstanding narration held my attention throughout. If you have any interest at all in this topic, give this one a try.

Fitting story-line for today's events

I'm not sure what it was overall that made me reduce my rating as the story dragged on... maybe it's because I ignorantly thought this was the story about Charles Whitman, or because I felt like the author made an effort to wrap a historical-event in modern-events cloak? In any case, the polarization made me uncomfortable for the entire second-half of the book. Was glad when the story ended.

Extensively Researched, Perfectly Presented

This is THE book of the Kent State shootings and it is very well read by Alan Sklar. Howard Means has my deepest respect for his in-depth research of all documents, eyewitness accounts, photographs, and records, right down to the basketball game on TV at the college bars during riots. Each little detail provided a lasting image of the events leading up to the event and the aftermath. I was fascinated to learn of the grammatical error in the president’s sympathy letters, for example. I grew up in Akron/Canton area after the incident and I’d describe my knowledge of the events more of a “History Channel” version. I mean to say a flashy account condensed into a segment meant to capture a limited attention span. However, this book made me realize how little I knew and I feel that I have come away with a much richer and deeper understanding from multiple perspectives. One part that nearly made me cry was the response of the public to the death of the students and the seething misinformation spread immediately after the incident. Also, I had no idea what weapons were used beforehand and I have been on Kent campus and it is not a remote and expansive shooting range, it is a moderate-size campus with buildings snuggly spaced throughout. I cannot even imagine how it would feel to see a 30-06 bullet going into the wall while you stand in the dorm room hallway waiting for an elevator. I could go on and on in this review. One last thing that struck me was the clear inconsistency in the guardsmen’s accounts that is definitely not corroborated in any of the photographs. I cannot begin to think how social media and smart phones would have impacted the aftermath. It’s amazing that a few photos were snapped showing the students at a distance from the guardsmen and that at least one student in a dorm window thought to audio record the incident. I just cannot stop thinking about Allison Krause. Whew, I’m so thankful that I picked this book and my complete gratitude for the author for sifting through the minutia to offer us this lasting account with multiple perspectives from the cafeteria waitress all the way up to Nixon.

Extremely interesting

I now know more about this terrible tragedy, than I did shortly after it happened. It’s something that haunted me. But I didn’t know why. Now I do. Thank you!

How Not to Handle Unrest

I am still moved each time I hear Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s “Ohio.” “Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, We're finally on our own, This summer, I hear the drumming, Four dead in Ohio.”  I was in the 10th grade in May of 1970, focused on finishing the semester, working to pay for my car, and just being a teenager. I was not politically active and didn’t keep up with the news. Of course, I knew about the war and I had this vague feeling that we shouldn’t be there or at least that it was time to bring it to an end but I was not involved in protest. I did wear a bracelet with the name of a POW, a Capt. Lawrence Edwards. But, 4 dead in Ohio? How did that happen?  “What if you knew her and, found her dead on the ground? How can you run when you know?”  

Howard Means goes back to that event that pivotal event in modern US history. On May 4, National Guardsmen, who had been sent to Kent, Ohio to keep order after a weekend of student unrest which had included the burning of the university’s ROTC building, fired into a group of Kent State University students, killing 4 and wounding 9. There were 67 shots.  Two of the students who were killed were a part of a protest on the campus, but the other two were simply walking between classes and one was an ROTC student. 

Means starts the book, not in Ohio and not in Washington, but in Vietnam. He identifies the 24 Americans who were killed on that day. He reminds us that the mounting casualty toll was one reason for the growing opposition to the war and that by 1970, one of every ten male university students was a military veteran. The proportions would have been even higher at a university like Kent State which was made up mostly of students from working-class families. 

Means uses extensive testimony of witnesses and participants. He is careful to preserve the balance between respect for law and order and the constitutional freedoms of speech and free assembly. He describes the political atmosphere with Nixon having been elected on the promise that he would wind down the war and yet just a few days earlier having announced an expansion of the war into Cambodia. He describes the political decision behind calling in the National Guard rather than the Highway Patrol with a governor running for re-election and needing to shore up his base with promises to take a firm stand against student unrest. He carefully details the confusion when there was no clarity about who was ultimately in charge, the Campus Marshalls or the Guard, and even the confusing chain of command within the guard. And Governor Rhodes insisted that the university president keep the campus open, even though the Guard had now taken control and were taking an openly hostile and militaristic stance. It was a recipe for disaster and disaster eventually happened.

Means discusses all the different theories as to what caused a line of soldiers to turn, kneel, and fire. There were extensive investigations and later reinvestigations but there is no firm conclusion other than that there was no valid reason for it.  Means also cannot come to a definitive answer as to what happened but does show that, given the atmosphere and the political decisions made, the result was practically inevitable. However, he does bring in a lot of personal testimony and concludes with some lessons to consider for the future. One would be that we need to carefully consider the role of the military in dealing with any type of civil disobedience. But more important are several lessons that we can learn about decision making, clear communication, and clear and mutually understood goals in handling any crisis and particularly in dealing with crowds, especially crowds that may tend towards becoming unruly or worse. 

This book is now more than 5 years old, but it is particularly relevant as we have entered another time of unrest both for the right and the left. Means’ careful and balanced treatment of a past failure may well be of great help in dealing with new unrest now and in the years to come, that is, if we are willing to take the lessons learned to heart.

Amazing

Amazing narration of the events at Kent State. Sad to learn of the reaction the students got from the public and how the events affected activism.