55 years since the Kent State shootings and the story behind Neil Young’s protest song “Ohio”

It is 55 years to the day since the Kent State University shootings left four students dead and several others injured, amid protests on the college’s campus over the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War.

The subject of an iconic, prize-winning photograph, the massacre sparked student strikes at universities across the U.S., is credited with tilting American public opinion against the war, and gave rise to one of music’s best-known protest songs.

What happened in the Kent State shootings?

On Monday, May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on demonstrators on the Kent State campus, as students protested against the U.S.’s invasion of Cambodia as part of a widening of America’s Vietnam campaign.

Anti-war protests had erupted at universities across the U.S. after President Richard Nixon’s announcement of the move. Just 18 months earlier, Nixon had been elected amid promises to bring an end to the Vietnam War.

On Friday, May 1, a rally on the Kent State campus was followed by disturbances in downtown Kent, where police used tear gas to disperse protestors. Kent’s mayor, LeRoy Satrom, then sought the mobilization of the National Guard, and confrontations ensued between protestors and Guardsmen over the weekend.

Although authorities announced a ban on a further rally planned for May 4, by noon on Monday around 3,000 students had gathered in the middle of the campus, Kent State University says in a detailed report on the massacre.

And in an account of what happened next, the History Channel explains: “National Guard troops arrived and ordered the crowd to disperse, fired tear gas, and advanced against the students with bayonets fixed on their rifles.

“Some of the protesters, refusing to yield, responded by throwing rocks and verbally taunting the troops.”

According to Kent State University, Guardsmen reacted by suddenly firing between 61 and 67 shots over a 13-second period. “Many guardsmen fired into the air or the ground,” the university says. “However, a small portion fired directly into the crowd.”

The shots killed students Allison Krause, 19; Jeffrey Miller, 20; Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20; and William Schroeder, 19. Nine others were injured, including 19-year-old Dean Kahler, who was permanently paralysed from the waist down after being shot in the back.

A Pulitzer winner and “the greatest protest record”

The immediate aftermath of Miller’s killing is recorded in a still image which, the following year, earned its photographer the Pulitzer Prize.

Taken by John Filo, then a photography major at the university, the photo shows Miller’s dead body lying face down on the ground, with a screaming Mary Ann Vecchio, a 14-year-old runaway, kneeling over him.

The Kent State shootings also prompted the singer-songwriter Neil Young to pen the iconic song “Ohio” - a track described by the music journalist Dorian Lynskey as “the greatest protest record”.

Written, recorded and released within less than three weeks of the massacre, “Ohio” urges those Americans who were critical of the protestors to consider: “What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?”

Earlier this year, Rolling Stone magazine placed the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young track at No. 9 in its all-time ranking of protest songs, lauding it as “one of the defining songs of the anti-war movement”. “We were speaking for our generation,” Young has said of “Ohio”, per Rolling Stone.

What happened to the National Guardsmen?

The National Guard troops involved in the Kent State massacre argued that they had only opened fire as they feared their lives were in danger.

“Guardsmen testified before numerous investigating commissions as well as in federal court that they felt the demonstrators were advancing on them in such a way as to pose a serious and immediate threat to the safety of the Guardsmen, and they therefore had to fire in self-defense,” the university says.

In a 1974 criminal trial against eight Guardsmen, a judge sided with their version of events, dismissing the case. Four years later, a civil case ended up in an out-of-court settlement that saw the state of Ohio pay $675,000 to the injured students and the families of those killed.