Howard Means is a former syndicated columnist and the author or coauthor of ten books including a biography of Colin Powell. Finally, on Monday, May 4, came the large protests that ended in the fatal confrontation. These events were followed by the burning of the ROTC building on Saturday and the Sunday visit of Governor James Rhodes to Kent, where he issued a series of inflammatory statements about eradicating student unrest. Beginning on May 1, the Friday after the announcement, there was a small protest during the day on the Kent campus and evening disturbances in the downtown area around bars where college students congregated, leading the mayor of Kent to request National Guard assistance. That announcement led to campus upheavals around the nation, including in Kent, Ohio. The focus of both is the days following the April 30 announcement by President Richard Nixon that US troops were expanding the Vietnam War by invading neighboring Cambodia. In addition, the two books place the events at Kent in the historical context of the 1960s and the Vietnam War and follow the story through to the 1979 settlement reached with the families of those killed and those wounded by the Guardsmen on May 4, 1970.
While their methodologies are different, both the Howard Means book and the Craig Simpson and Gregory Wilson collaboration emphasize the confusion (both before and after the shootings), the rumors, the divisions, and the debate over who was responsible.
Nearly fifty years after the killing of four students and the wounding of nine others by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University, several books have been published in the past year including the two reviewed here. Above The Shots: An Oral History of the Kent State Shootings. 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence.
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