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Blogfest 2005 - May 4, 2005 - Printable Version
- Four Dead in Ohio
by Mark Faulk
It was thirty-five years ago today that the National Guard opened fire on students at Kent State University, killing four students....not protestors, but students who were over 250 feet away from the group that was protesting the war in Vietnam. I was 14 years old at the time, and after years of hope that things would "get better", and that our youth would be the catalyst for changing our world in a positive way, Robert Kennedy's and the Rev. Martin Luther King's assassination, the violent fiasco of the 1968 Democratic Convention, the tragedy of Vietnam, and finally.......Kent State, I, like many young Americans, felt disillusioned and betrayed. They were killing US! Not some unseen enemy in the far off jungles of Vietnam, not our young soldiers in uniform, but our college students, killed by our own military. It was unthinkable. I hung a makeshift homemade poster on my bedroom door, centered by the now-famous picture of Mary Vecchio crying in grief-stricken agony over the body of Jeffrey Miller, who lay dying in a pool of his own blood, which flowed like a crimson red stream across the parking lot in which he laid. Around the perimeter, I pasted pictures of the four students who were killed that day, Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder, and Sandy Scheuer, and wrote their names and the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young line "Four Dead in Ohio" in bold letters across the page. I also painted a poster of the silhouette of a dead body lying on the ground, with a target painted over it and the words "They Shoot Students, Don't They?" written across that. It was a fitting epitaph to the also handpainted massive poster that hung on my bedroom wall that read simply, "What if They Gave a War and Nobody Came?"
Fifteen years later, on a trip to the National Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, I passed by the Kent State University campus, and was shocked to see the sleepy little college where one of our country's most tragic and unnecessary events took place. It could have been any small town campus in America, and I remember crying at the sight of the hill where the protesters stood, facing down the Ohio National Guardmen who would eventually kill four innocent students. It was a chilling moment, even fifteen years after the fact.
Those events changed me forever, and even today, I am saddened by that tragic chapter in our country's history. Have we learned anything from those events, or did we simply forget the lessons with the passage of time? Only time will tell, but with the war in Iraq and the stealth attack on our citizens through the erosion of our freedoms and rights by those in power, it seems to me that the only thing that has been learned is how our own government can attack our citizens through more covert means, by backdooring legislation while we sleep. This time, they are taking away our liberty without firing a shot.
Let's hope it doesn't take another assassination, another decade of demonstrations and riots, another twenty year long war....or another Kent State....before we wake up to the realization that our country is, once again, hurtling headlong into the abyss of chaos and uncertainty. And that, fellow patriots, is the Faulking Truth.
"I don't care if you've never listened to anybody before in your life. I am begging you right now, if you don't disperse right now, they're going to move in. It will only be a slaughter. Please, listen to me. Jesus Christ, I don't want to be part of this. Listen to me," ~ Kent State Professor Glenn Frank, pleading with students to disperse after the fatal shootings on May 4, 1970.
Immediately after the Kent State Massacre on May 4, 1970, Neil Young composed the song "Ohio" after looking at photos appearing in Life magazine and then taking a walk in the woods. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young went to the studio and recorded the song which was released to radio stations shortly after the killings. Soon, the lyrics "Four dead in Ohio" became an anthem to a generation. In some parts of the country, the song was banned from playlists because of it's "anti-war" and "anti-Nixon" sentiments.
"It's still hard to believe I had to write this song. It's ironic that I capitalized on the death of these American students. Probably the most important lesson ever learned at an American place of learning. David Crosby cried after this take." ~ Neil Young
Ohio
By Neil Young
Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are gunning us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?
Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.
Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.
Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.
Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.
Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are cutting us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?
Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
To learn more about the song "Ohio", and see photos from the Kent State Massacre, go to:
http://www.thrasherswheat.org/fot/ohio.htm
To see John Filo's famous picture of Mary Vecchio grieving over the body of Jeffrey Miller, go to:
http://dirckhalstead.org/issue0005/filo.htm
To learn more about the Kent State Massacre, go to:
Kent State shootings remembered
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/05/04/kent.state.revisit/
(Editor's note: This is an entry from The Faulking Truth blog, ingeniously entitled "Blogfest 2005". If you'd like to waste more of your valuable time blogging, go to www.faulkingtruth.com/blog/ )
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