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Four Dead in Ohio: I was at Kent State University, May 4, 1970
by Debbie L. Miller
“They should have shot you all!” the store clerk said to me when I told him I’d been at Kent State University. The sting of these words was felt by many KSU students in the summer of 1970. These angry words came from strangers, family members, and prospective employers.
I was a freshman at KSU on May 4, 1970. I’ve often been asked: “Just what happened at Kent State?” “Well,” I’d begrudgingly reply, “four people were murdered and nine wounded, but I don’t like to talk about it.” I didn’t like explaining history, and I didn’t like feeling bitter. But I was angry. And I was gun-shy from being told, at the age of 18, that I ought to be dead.
Sunday night, May 3, my boyfriend, David, and I sat in my dorm lounge, watching and listening to the National Guard helicopters passing overhead, searchlights combing the campus for curfew violators. We worried about the tanks out on the old football practice field. There were checkpoints at all entrances to the city of Kent. Why were they there?
Monday morning, May 4, I was angry about the National Guardsmen posted in hallways outside classrooms. I confronted one outside my 9 o’clock Intro. Psych. class in University Auditorium and later thought about his M-1, which was surely loaded. But nothing bad could…
