Today is the 41st Anniversary of Killing of Students at Kent State

Today is the 41st anniversary of the killing and shooting of students by the State of Ohio's National Guard at Kent State University.  At the link please read the 40th anniversary posts on Bad Lawyer.

May 4th Update--Terry Norman's Role

On May 4, 2010 I wrote at some length about Ohio's slaying of 4 students at Kent State University and my personal connection to that campus in the ensuing years.

My academic path brought me into contact with the collective behavior researcher, Dr. Jerry M. Lewis, a peace marshall on May 4, 1970 and an eye witness to the arbitrary and capricious killing of Sandy Scheuer who died for the crime of walking between classes at the wrong time and in the wrong place.    My study with Dr. Lewis led me to do archival reading of all the local news accounts from that region then on microfilm at various libraries.  One of the tantalizing questions never fully answered was what was the involvement of a "law enforcement" photographer Terry Norman (pic, above) who was packing a .38 caliber revolver which was thought to have been discharged by Norman prior to the fatal fusillade by the National Guard.  Over the weekend, an investigative news story at the Cleveland Plain Dealer website, Cleveland.com renewed this forgotten wrinkle. 

Remember that the National Guard defended themselves initially by claiming that they were responding to sniper fire.  This was refuted.  The Guard claimed the sniper fire that provoked their gunfire came from locations and places for which film (yes, there was film in those days) and photographs demonstrated no evidence.  Dr. Lewis speculated in conversation and classes with me that Norman was the source of the gunfire based on this and other photographs of him walking around with a revolver.  It turns out that audio analysis actually now corroborates Dr. Lewis' speculation.

This is an extraordinary mystery, so let me add a further fantastic facet to ponder.  The 4 dead in Ohio came in the wake of the invasion of Cambodia, and the Senate campaign of close Nixon ally, then Governor James Rhodes.  It was Rhodes' incendiary May 3d rhetoric in which he called students "Brown Shirts" among other invective which has long been credited as the motivation for the shootings and the subsequent generational schism over the shootings.  Bearing this context in mind, we now know that a group of thugs were then officially operating out of the White House, engaged in break-ins, assassination conspiracies, and political operations of all stripe.  These were Nixon's plumbers: E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, financed by Howard Hughes, and orchestrated by Colson, Haldeman, and Erlichman.  Many, many others, former FBI, CIA, even a former NAZI agent were involved in the dirty tricks and crimes that fall under the rubric, Watergate, and which have come to light.  So, is this one of the early provocations by the Nixon gang? 

We can now say with relative certainty that Terry Norman, an anonymous "photographer" with press credentials issued by the Ohio National guard walked into a crowd of students brandishing and ultimately discharging a .38 caliber revolver 4 times.  The national guardsmen claimed in sworn testimony that they wheeled and fired because they took sniper fire although none could pin point the location for where these shots came from.  I can add one further fact from viewing the physical area where the massacre occurred.  The Guard stood on a hill below them like a reflecting bowl, the students stood.  It is easily conceivable that Norman's gun shots resonated off the hard and rocky surfaces and was heard by these riot-geared National Guardsmen who killed my alums.

After his role at Kent, the FBI obtained employment for Norman with the District of Columbia police as a narcotics agent.  Janis Froelich wrote an intriguing story for the Tampa Tribune about Terry Norman.

So did Nixon and this crooks have a direct hand in triggering the slayings at Kent State on May 4, 1970?  What was once was purely speculation seems a step closer to being established fact.

Note:  todays' update at this link.

40 Years Ago, 4 Dead in Ohio

This will be the only post for today.

Forty years ago, Govenor James Rhodes of Ohio ordered the National Guard onto the campus of Kent State University in the wake of an arson fire of a small garage that housed the Army ROTC.  The fire came in the wake of the invasion of Cambodia ordered by Richard Nixon as he pursued a "secret strategy" to ring peace in Southeast Asia.  This expansion of the war drew half-assed protests at Kent, a full-time midwest party and bar school.  But Rhodes, was the archetypical demagogue and in the middile of a US Senate race which he would lose, Rhodes decided it was in his political interests to teach those filthy hippy malcontents a lesson.  Rhodes came into Kent, Ohio and in a Sunday afternoon radio address denounced the "protestors," calling them "brown shirts" and issuing a warning that he and the Guard would not tolerate disobedience. 

Govenor Rhodes diatribe was braodcast among the troops and tents of the bivouacing troops which had just been pulled off duty from a Teamster's strike where some of the men, (all were young men in those days) had been exposed to genuine threats of physical violence.  This was during an age when the National Guard were known as "sunshine soldiers" who did not typically see active duty--and, were in fact pretty much avoiding service in Viet Nam. 

One of the great myths of Kent State is that there was martial law, and that this was one big riot.  Quite to the contrary, classes were in session and when shortly after noon on May 4th, 1970 a confrontation unflolded, most students were in transit between classes.  One of the children, Sandy Sheurer was crossing between buildings when a National Guard bullet blew her brains all over the parking lot.  No one is for certain what caused the fussilade (28 Guardsmen shot 67 rounds in 13 seconds) of gun fire.  In the days, weeks, months and years following the killings at Kent State, the National Guard and their defenders claimed that sniper fire came from the students and this caused them to shoot, or alternatively the Guard thought they were about to be overrun by protestors.  All of this has been thoroughly debunked--there is video and it shows the crowds of protesting students being moved backwards from one side of hill towards another side of building with the Guard in an elevated position.  There were some rocks thrown at the Guard, but the shootings are inexplicable, unforgettable and unforgivable.  The nearest kid killed, Jeffrey Miller whose dead body Mary Ann Vecchio wails over with her arms outstretched in the famous Pulitzer Prize winning photo--was 265 feet away from the Guardsmen.  One of the other dead was shot at a distance of 345 feet.  Four Ohio young Ohio students were murdered by the State of Ohio, 9 others were shot and in the case of Dean Kahler's injuries severed a vertebrae and caused paraplegia. 

I was a High School junior when this event happened.  Afterwards I read and researched collective behavior and violence with Dr. Jerry M. Lewis a sociologist and parade marshall who was standing a few feet from Sandy Sheuer who as I said was walking between buildings during a break in college classes.   Dr. Lewis, an Army veteran, reports that he knew within moments that Sandy Sheuer was dead and Dr. Lewis ran around telling students to leave the area, that the Guard was shooting "real bullets."

I've read extensively in the archives of the local Kent newspaper.  I scrolled through the microfilm of all of the local news accounts of the events leading up to the shootings, the shootings, the aftermath and even the trial transcripts from the civil lawsuits in US District Court in Cleveland in the decade that followed.  The most shocking aspect of it, and you see it almost invariably in the fresh aftermath of these sorts of things was the hateful blaming of victims; it was not uncommon to hear adults say "they should have shot them all."  Or, "they had it coming." One of the children murdered in the hail of gunfire, Allison Kraus, was falsely rumored to have been dying of end-stage venereal disease.  False reports of Guardsman being killed were circulated in fact one Guardsman was treated for "hyperventilation."   Professor Lewis calls this "victimology," in other words, blame the victims.

I've attended many of the candle light vigils over the years--I can attest that Kent (I was there recently) is a far different place than it was in those days.  Kent was never terribly a hotbed of political activity, it's less so now. 

When the Bad Lawyer talks about these tough guy politicians and the dangers of demagoguery, my remarks spring from opinions formed in those years.  I perceive the consequences of law enforcement thuggery and tough talk.  The bullets that came from National Guard guns were triggered by angry words and tough guy talk from the likes of Nixon, Agnew, Colson and Rhodes.  Nowadays this sort of demagoguery comes from the likes of Govenor Perry, Sheriff Arpaio, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Glenn Beck.  Will we ever learn?

Children, that's right, children were killed and injured as they attended a state college.  Now after all these years, having a daughter almost at an age to leave for college, I grieve.