40 years later : Shots still reverberate for survivors of Kent State shootings
NPR
May 3, 2010
Out in the world, when people talk about the shootings at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, they call it "Kent State." But in the small town of Kent, 35 miles south of Cleveland, and on the university campus, they call it "May 4th."
It was 40 years ago Tuesday that the shootings — which killed four people and wounded nine others — stunned the nation. Even at the height of the Vietnam War protests, no one imagined that government soldiers would fire real bullets at unarmed college students.
"I saw the smoke come out of the weapons, and light is faster than sound, and so I knew immediately [they] were not firing blanks. So it was almost instinctive to dive for cover," remembers Jerry Lewis, who was 33 and teaching sociology at Kent State in 1970.
Often, at tense times, Lewis served as a faculty marshal. He had some Army training and was worried about bayonet attacks and butt strokes with M-1 rifles. He hadn't thought about live fire.
Lewis says that when he takes people to the scene of the shooting on the Kent Commons, he likes to point out a particular mark — a perfectly round bullet hole in a steel sculpture.
"This is what an M-1 bullet, .30-caliber bullet, does to steel," he says. "And the artist, to his credit, has refused to fix this. So, ironically, the [National] Guard created their own memorial."
Shots rang out for 13 seconds that day, killing Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Allison Krause, William Knox Schroeder and Sandra Lee Scheuer. More than 60 shots came from 28 guardsmen. Some fired into the ground; some fired high on purpose.
The students had gathered for an anti-war rally, and the Guard command had wanted them to go away. Tear gas was fired, and then the canisters flung back. The youths gathered were screaming insults, giving the guardsmen the finger. Rocks were thrown.
Then a group of guardsmen moved in formation to the top of a small hill. Some of them turned in unison, aimed and fired. They could have just kept going over the hill. Most of the students were in a parking lot downhill, more than 100 yards away.
For Lewis, after 40 years, that is still the question: Why did the Guard start shooting?
