C'mon talk to me
So you can see
What's going on
(Marvin Gaye - 1971)
Recently I found myself thinking back to the spring/summer of 1970. I was young then, still a student - twenty years old.
It’s May 4th. And I have a vague recollection of preparing to leave my parents’ house for a night shift in Hamilton at Stelco’s #2 Rod Mill. Around 10 p.m. I heard the news. There had been people killed in a shooting earlier that day at Kent State University (KSU).
What were my thoughts at the time? Mainly about myself I’m afraid. Two years earlier I had embraced a rather unrealistic dream of attending Kent State on a track scholarship. If I had been granted one, I would have been finishing my second year at a small liberal arts school in conservative northeastern Ohio. It was only 275 miles away from home. What would I have been doing when the shots rang out? Would I have been protesting? Studying? Out for a run? Sleeping in?
Unknown individuals had burned down the campus ROTC building on May 2nd. On this Monday students and other demonstrators had been in their third day of protesting the invasion of Cambodia and escalation of the Vietnam War. President Nixon had described the military action as an “incursion.” A euphemism, I’d say.
You’ll remember that four students were killed. Perhaps you’ll recall more details - like nine wounded (one permanently paralysed) when twenty-eight National Guardsman fired off about 67 rounds in just 13 seconds.
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| CSU Archives/Everett Collection |
A 20-year-old from Youngstown Ohio, speech therapy student Sandra Lee Scheuer, was one of the four who died that day. Ten years later Canadian Gary Geddes in his poem Sandra Lee Scheuer wrote:
She did not throw stones, major in philosophy
or set fire to buildings, though acquaintances say
she hated war, had heard of Cambodia.
Shortly after the tragedy Neil Young, having come upon a picture of a KSU student “dead on the ground,” documented the event with the song Four Dead in Ohio. Crosby Stills Nash and Young recorded it. Almost overnight Four Dead was a hit and became one of the best-known protest songs in history. It pointed fingers, named names.
“Tin Soldiers and Nixon’s Coming.
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming.
Four Dead in Ohio."
Protests expanded across America; schools closed. People took to the streets.
The violence spread down south to where Jackson State brothers. Learned not to say nasty things about southern policemen's mothers. (The Beach Boys - Student Demonstration Time, 1971.)
Many miles south of my home late on May 14th, more students were shot. This was at Mississippi’s Jackson State College, a school attended primarily by black students. State and local police fired hundreds of rounds into a women’s dormitory from just 30-50 feet away. Every window was blown out on the street side of the building. Two young black men were killed. At a minimum twelve were injured as it is likely others were fearful of reporting their injuries.
Across from the besieged girls’ residence on Lynch Street, a 17-year-old high school senior, a runner who dreamed of attending UCLA, heading home from a part time job, was gunned down. Later that night family members searched for him. Incredibly, no one in authority reached out to the family to say Earl Green was dead. Unbelievably, no one was ever held responsible for his death or that of 21-year-old father and Jackson State honours student Phillip Lafayette Gibbs.
The Jackson College shootings never received the big headlines and media attention that Kent State did. The uprising that triggered the excessive police response was less about the war and more about that other American bifurcation – racial injustice.
Back Home
Later in that summer of 1970 I was part of the Torch Team that carried the ceremonial flame to Flint Michigan for the CANUSA games. The games were, and still are, an annual gathering between Flint and Hamilton Ontario promoting goodwill through amateur athletics. Twelve of us covered the 250-mile distance through Port Huron arriving in Flint on a Friday evening to officially open the games.
Over that weekend I was privileged to meet other young athletes; Americans my age, with interests similar to mine. But their obsession, among the men at least, was the recently introduced military draft and whether their birthdate would be drawn and not the many trivial pursuits that engaged me.
I returned to school in September where among other subjects I studied U.S. and Canada comparative politics. Peace order, good government - that’s us. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is what America is built on. That was the basics back then that I grasped to the extent a young student could. Today, I wonder if the relative consensus in our political life in Canada contrasted to the extreme polarization down south can be traced to these different guiding principles.
Looking back, I can hear sirens wailing, the shattering of glass, the acrid smell of a burnt armoury, pinging of M1 military rifles. I can sense the fear of an unknown future and try to imagine the frustration felt by those dealing with racism and discrimination. Plus ca change.
Where I live now is only 17 miles to America. Somehow it seems farther away.
