Kent State & May 4 Part II
http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/kent-state-and-may-4-part-ii/Content?oid=1898377
A 40-year-old tragedy and the wounds that never heal
by Rick Perloff
April 28, 2010
Alan Canfora had given the talk dozens, maybe hundreds, of times. He
spoke passionately about the events that preceded the Kent State
University shootings: the U.S. incursion into Cambodia in April 1970
that galvanized thousands of antiwar demonstrators; Ohio Governor
James Rhodes' irresponsible diatribe the day before, when he said
campus protesters were "the worst type of people that we harbor in America."
Then there was the nightmarish confrontation itself the soldiers
who retreated to the crest of a hill and then suddenly turned, raised
their rifles, and began to shoot unarmed students. Most memorable of
all was the sharp explosive jab he felt when a bullet ripped his
right wrist, a pain that could not compare to the emotional turmoil
he experienced when he saw his friend Jeffrey Miller in an ambulance,
lying on his back, his shirt removed, blood caked on his chest, dying
of a gaping wound, silenced forever.
Canfora would tell audiences that Miller as well as Allison Krause,
Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder, who were also killed in the
13-second melee can never cry out for truth or justice. He would
mention the unspeakable grief their parents experienced each day, and
that he felt a moral obligation to speak for these "martyrs," as well
as for the other students who were injured near Taylor Hall.
He was accustomed to his talk arousing emotion in audiences. When the
tears came, he knew he was touching hearts and this pushed him to
press on, with more passion, more conviction. But on this particular
day, as he gave the talk to a group of KSU freshmen some 30 years
after the May 4 tragedy, he found himself unable to avoid the
emotional display of a woman sitting in the back of the room. From
the very outset, the woman sat, crying, sobbing uncontrollably. At
the end of the class, all the students departed, save her.
She walked to the front of the room. "Alan, I'd like you to know why
I'm so emotional," she said and then asked if he had heard of Jim McGee.
Canfora was shocked. He knew the name like the back of the wrist that
felt like an exploding firecracker on the early afternoon of May 4.
"He was one of the members of Troop G," he replied immediately,
thinking to himself that this was the troop that shot and killed four
students and injured nine others.
"Well," the young woman said, pausing for a moment so that Canfora
could grasp the enormity of what she was about to say, "that's my father."
"I want you to know that we have suffered too," the young woman said.
"My family knows that you have suffered, but we want you to know that
we have suffered too."
Canfora was speechless. A founding member of the May 4 task force
that had sought to bring justice to the victims and their families,
the controversial activist who had become a synecdoche for
unrelenting opposition to the university's decision in the '70s to
build a gym adjoining the site of the shootings, the man who had
spontaneously cried out "this is an outrage" and "there is no
justice" when a jury exonerated the guardsmen in a 1975 civil trial,
Canfora was surprised and deeply touched. "She was looking for
empathy, and she found it," he says today. The serendipitous incident
"began a process of change in my mind. I started to try to think of
it from their perspective and to think that they are haunted with
guilt. It had a profound effect on me."
Canfora began to seek out guardsmen, in the hopes of understanding
their mindsets and comprehending how they constructed events that had
pained him for years. He spoke with them, listened to their
perspectives, and even embraced one of the Guards' commanding
officers when he bumped into him at a Columbus museum. Canfora's
approach is emblematic of the transformation in attitudes and
outlooks over the past four decades. Kent State, which for years
sought to distance itself from the controversy that surrounds May 4,
has embraced the issue as part of its cultural fabric.
With the 40th commemoration of the May 4 tragedy set to begin next
week, the school is touting the planned construction of a Visitors
Center in Taylor Hall, which overlooks the site of the shootings. The
town/gown schism is largely gone, replaced by a cooperative
relationship between the city and university, exemplified by KSU
President Lester A. Lefton's announcement that the university will
invest $250 million in sleek campus facilities, including a
conference center and hotel.
Yet lurking beneath the patina of public appearances is a series of
layered complexities and unanswered questions. Conflicting narratives
abound, offering up numerous perspectives on the tragic weekend of
Friday, May 1 to Monday May 4, the legal battles that occurred over
the course of the 1970s, ensuing confrontations over the building of
a gym adjoining the site of the shootings, and conflicts surrounding
the construction of a memorial to the events of May 4 in the 1980s.
To many unconnected with the controversies, the Kent State shootings
lie in the recesses of political history, symbolized by John Filo's
iconic photograph of a 14-year-old girl, kneeling in horror over the
bleeding body of Jeffrey Miller and called to mind when Crosby,
Stills, Nash & Young's "Ohio" plays on the radio. To some, the issues
have been played out too many times and, in any event, happened so
long ago that they are best regarded as fossilized remains, part of
the detritus of the political past. But to liberal political
activists both old and young faculty scholars, historians, and
scattered residents of the "tree city" better known as Kent, the
issues are as vivid as they were 40 years ago, in some cases
poignantly activated when the phrase "May 4" is spoken. In their
view, these events are sufficiently important that their history
needs to be endlessly retold, so that future generations can draw
lessons from the tragedy, appreciate the complex but critical role
dissent plays in democracy during wartime, and ensure that the
mistakes of May 4 never will be made again.
The events of May 4 catapulted tiny Kent into the international
spotlight. The events diffused rapidly around the world, bringing
notoriety to KSU. The shootings represent one of the few times in
American history when soldiers fired on unarmed students. They
galvanized student opposition to the Vietnam War, sparking a national
student strike at more than 400 university campuses and causing
consternation at Nixon's White House.
"THEY WERE TEARING APART MY HOMETOWN"
In May 1970, Nancy Hansford lived on West Main Street, at the edge of
Kent near Stow. Her father started a heating business in the 1940s,
and her husband and brother-in-law took it over in the 1960s. "We're
pretty well known around town," she says. Hansford is 80, with white
hair and agility that belies her age. She speaks with abiding
affection for the small-town life that she has cherished over the
years, sometimes with a distinctive Ohio twang that recalls
characters in Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. She remembers the
pride her mother experienced when Kent was selected in 1910 as the
site of a teachers college that would become Kent State University.
On Friday, May 1, 1970, Hansford was preparing for a church retreat,
scheduled for early the next week. She recalls the damage that
occurred on Friday night when a crowd of young people, some of whom
were protesting the Vietnam War, others drunk and following the
group, moved en masse down Water Street. The crowd set a bonfire in
the street and blocked traffic for close to an hour; some members of
the group broke windows in downtown stores to demonstrate opposition
to the political-military establishment. "It was very frightening
because it kept going on and they were tearing apart my hometown. And
you get very possessive and get that feeling, 'How dare they?' And
the 'they,' at that point, you didn't know who it was."
Despite her anger at the young people who had caused damage downtown
and the professors who, she said, egged them on Hansford found
herself on the afternoon of May 4 extending a sympathetic hand to a
young couple who had been involved in the weekend's protests and were
sitting, numbed and shocked, across the street from her father's
house. Her father invited the couple to join them for supper, and
Hansford prepared a meal of meat and potatoes. "The young people were
quiet," she recalls. "But you could sense that they didn't know what
to do. I offered our phone to call their parents. And the young boy
said, 'No my dad called me a couple of days ago and said 'You get
in trouble, I'm not comin' down to help you, son, you're on your
own.' And that hurt me," says Hansford. Concerned, she put the couple
up overnight, letting the young man share a room with her son, a
senior in high school. "This is who we are," she says.
Ten years later, Hansford again found herself immersed in feelings
about May 4, this time as the mayor of Kent, the dutiful daughter
following the Greer family tradition (her father had been mayor in
the early '60s). Recognizing that a mayor has to decide in a crisis
whether to call in the National Guard, she reasoned that it would be
helpful to better understand how the Guard operated. She joined a
group invited to the Guard's bivouac in Michigan, only to be greeted
suspiciously by the guardsmen who, when they learned she was from
Kent, asked her flat-out "Why are you here? Why are you here?"
"Well," Hansford responded, "I'm here because you helped our
community once, and if it's necessary we hope that you will come again."
OUTRAGE AND VIOLENCE
The Rootstown Water Service Company is a small brick building
surrounded by cherry trees. It is about a mile from Ravenna and an
easy drive from Cleveland. The company's president is Ron Snyder, a
compact man with wire-rimmed glasses and a grandfatherly smile. In
May 1970, he was Captain Ronald Snyder, commander of C Company that
dispersed demonstrators near Taylor Hall on Monday, May 4.
When he arrived in Kent on Saturday night, he could see a bright red
glow in the sky, flames from the ROTC building that had been set
ablaze. On Sunday evening, he says, students threw rocks, pieces of
automobiles, wood, and "anything they could get their hands on" at
the guardsmen, even running toward the bayonets. Students were
outraged that the Guard was on their campus and some were willing
to resort to violence to repel them.
On Monday, Snyder's troops dispersed demonstrators with tear gas. His
nickname was Captain Gas. "Put the gas on 'em," he liked to say.
"That just takes the fight out of rioters." He was amazed that
students would pick up a 40 millimeter grenade and throw it back.
"Look at that fool," one of his soldiers, a man from Kentucky, would say.
Sometime before 12:25 p.m., he directed his men to move near Taylor
Hall. Suddenly, he heard shots and saw a young man felled by bullets.
"It happened right in front of me." After the shootings, which came
from the soldiers in Troop G, not Snyder's company, chaos ensued.
Snyder radioed Guard officials to let them know there had been
casualties and ambulances should be dispatched. He ordered his men to
form a circle near some of the students' bodies, fearing retaliation.
When he describes the events of Sunday and Monday, Snyder speaks in
military terms, talking about how he had a mission to perform or
stating that he took precautions to make sure protesters did not
attack his position. He refers to the students as protesters or
rioters. "A riot's a riot, no matter how you look at it," he says.
When asked why it happens, he prefers to focus on the facts, not to
dwell on emotions soldiers may have felt or to speculate about why
soldiers shot the students. "This is a military unit," he emphasizes.
The guardsmen who shot students are frequently thought to have been
cruel or vindictive, but this misconstrues the complexity of what
happened. "Those men weren't put on here to kill people," said a
guardsman who spoke anonymously to KSU's oral historians. "They
joined the Guard to get out of Vietnam. To be able to maintain their
life while they still were in the military. There were people from
Ravenna who worked as farmers or who worked in the factories or
taught school. No one came on here and said, "'Let's go kill some of
those damn college students.'"
Snyder still doesn't know why it happened. If anyone is responsible,
he says, it's the politicians who called up the Guard. Once the
decision was made, a series of events was set in motion. "We
responded to civilians' requests."
THE QUEST FOR TRUTH
I waved Alan Canfora over to my table in the back of the Pufferbelly,
the legendary Kent landmark that once served as the main depot for
the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad. He was dressed elegantly, with
sartorial flair, wearing a dark jacket and pants and a gray tie. His
hair had thinned over the decades, but his facial and physical
features seemed remarkably similar to those of the young man who
unfurled a black anarchist flag on May 4 to protest the Vietnam War
and the Guard's presence on campus.
He seems to have lost none of his passion. Canfora speaks with
intensity and urgency, never hesitating or evincing doubt. The former
member of the Students for Democratic Society is now chairperson of
the Barberton Democratic Party, and during his tenure, he says with
pride, "No Republicans have been elected in Barberton, so I'm batting
a thousand." Forty years ago he was battling the war in Vietnam,
engaged in what he calls "a righteous rebellion," a protest against a
"criminal war in Southeast Asia, where my friends were dying. As
patriotic Americans, we could not stand idly by and allow that to
continue. It was absolutely understandable in this circumstance that
a few windows in downtown Kent and a rickety old ROTC building became
targets, which were inconsequential compared to the government's
violence in Southeast Asia at the time." The ends, in his view,
seemed to justify the means.
Over the years, Canfora arrived at a new understanding when he
obtained what he regards as incontrovertible evidence that individual
guardsmen did not decide to shoot students. Instead, he says, a
commanding officer issued a verbal command to fire.
This question why did the Guard fire? has been a lightning rod
for divergent perceptions, a Rorschach on which individuals of
different viewpoints have frequently projected their own strident
beliefs. It is also an area in which opinions have tended to
overshadow factual evidence.
Some have suggested the guardsmen were angry at the students for
pelting them with rocks in the aftermath of the burning of the ROTC
building on Saturday May 2. Others have speculated that they were
tired and frustrated after having to police a truckers' strike near
Akron, where some truckers were reportedly shooting at non-strikers'
trucks. Another theory a sniper fired the first shot and the
guardsmen fired to retaliate has no supporting evidence, notes Dr.
Jerry M. Lewis, emeritus professor of sociology at KSU, who co-edited
three books on the shootings.
Canfora trumpets a relatively new interpretation one that he
advances with the breathless excitement of a scientist poised to
share a new discovery. Three years ago he received a digitized copy
of a reel-to-reel tape that a student made of the shootings from the
windowsill of a dormitory room that overlooked the rally. "When I got
that digital CD," he says," I played it, and immediately I heard the
order to fire. It was a very emotional moment. I was stunned. I was
shocked because I was anticipating hearing the gunfire, and I was
thinking of those four students, the fact that when this tape was
made during those last seconds before the gunfire, they were still
alive. I went back and played it again and again and again, and I
heard it every time: Right here, get set, point, fire. When I
discovered the proof of the order to fire in that audiotape, that's
when I really knew that they were following orders that it wasn't
just a bunch of individual guardsmen filled with hatred that decided
to shoot with the phony excuse that their lives were in danger."
Others who have listened to the tape disagree. Dr. Thomas R. Hensley,
a KSU emeritus professor of political science who has written
extensively on May 4, says, "I heard the tape over and over again,
and I couldn't pick it out. Some people say they could hear it; other
people didn't. There certainly wasn't any consensus. Even if it was
indisputable, I'm sure where that would lead." After the 1979 federal
civil settlement, in which the Guard expressed regret and modest
payments were awarded to the wounded students and parents of the
slain students, he says the parents and wounded students agreed not
to press on with further litigation.
The question of why some guardsmen shot without warning students
they had live ammunition remains a mystery.
You think that after 40 years we would know. You hope it would be
like a John Grisham novel where, just at the right moment, the
lawyer or reporter comes up with evidence that convicts the
criminals. Canfora clings to such hope. He feels a moral obligation
to the victims and says that a mother of one of the slain students
plaintively asked him, "Alan, when will we ever know the truth?" He
continues the quest. While some view it as quixotic, Canfora
persists, hoping the latest evidence will offer answers to mysteries
that have eluded us for decades.
"SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE"
When he learned that four students had been shot at Kent State, Dr.
Michael Schwartz was in Bloomington Indiana, sitting near a
picturesque fountain on the Indiana University campus. A sociology
professor at IU, he had long feared that student activism might end
in a violent confrontation with students getting shot. He never
dreamed that someday he would be running the university where this
transpired. But in July 1977, at the age of 39, Schwartz was
appointed interim president of Kent. He served as KSU president from
1982 to 1991. He was president when students protested that the
building of a gymnasium annex that adjoined the site of the shootings
was constructed in a manner that was insensitive to the memories of
those who died. He also shepherded the creation of a memorial to the
May 4 event that many praised but like all things associated with
May 4 is laced with controversy. His perspective showcases the role
that political and legal forces have played in the May 4 saga.
Schwartz is 72 now, having retired as president of Cleveland State
University. (Full disclosure: As a CSU professor and director of the
School of Communication, I knew Schwartz. However, he was no longer
president when I interviewed him for this article.) During our talk,
Schwartz wore the demeanor of a relaxed elder statesman, as he sipped
Franciscan wine in a Bratenahl restaurant overlooking Lake Erie.
Although two decades had elapsed since Schwartz led KSU, he
remembered the events vividly, offering up details never before
published. In the summer of '77, the Carter White House, terrified
that student protesters would be killed again, tried unsuccessfully
to mediate the conflict over the gymnasium. I asked Schwartz if he
was feeling anxious during this period, with police poised to arrest
students occupying the area near the gymnasium construction site.
"No," he deadpanned. "I think I was heavily sedated."
"I will tell you," he said, "that it was made very clear to me by the
governor [James Rhodes] and others if we didn't go forward and build
this thing, we had seen our last capital dollar. [Speaker of the Ohio
House] Vern Riffe said to me, 'It's pretty clear you're going to do
this.'" With both Riffe and Rhodes, who had famously conveyed his
attitude toward student protesters in an incendiary speech on May 3,
1970, pressing the university not to cower in the face of student
pressure, university administrators were in a difficult position.
Kent had lost considerable enrollment after the shootings, and some
worried about its financial survival. But there were also powerful
political forces on the other side. Schwartz subsequently received a
call from Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum, who told him that he should
tell the contractor to be a good citizen and not build the gym. The
39-year-old president says that he offered Metzenbaum an equally blunt reply.
"Senator," he said, "I want to explain two or three things to you."
He related his earlier conversation with officials in Columbus and
added, "You have to understand that the contract to build this gym is
between the Ohio Department of Administrative Services and the
contractor. Kent State University is a third-party beneficiary. I
don't have any standing with the contractor. On top of that, Portage
County is a very depressed area, and this is a lot of jobs you're
talking about." Metzenbaum hung up, furious, Schwartz says.
As it turned out, 193 students were arrested protesting the gym, but
there was no violence. To the frustration of those who felt the gym
was an affront to the memory of the slain and injured students,
litigation to halt construction failed.
I asked Schwartz to reflect on an issue that still evokes controversy
today: the May 4 memorial that was unveiled in 1990. The memorial
sits on top of a hillside that overlooks the parking lot where the
shootings occurred. Four granite disks planted in the earth lead to
the crest of the hill, where four brown slabs rest, as if to suggest
the silence that inevitably follows violence. Critics have long
charged that the KSU administration significantly reduced the size of
the monument. Even today, Krista Napp, a KSU junior who is co-chair
of the May 4 Task Force, laments that the memorial is seven percent
of its original design. However, KSU professor Carole Barbato is less
critical. "The original design would have been so destructive to the
hill and the shootings site that it would have destroyed the site,"
she says. "It is respectful and abstract. You can go there and contemplate."
The memorial has been a vortex of conflicting perceptions and
competing narratives. Many active in the May 4 Task Force wanted the
memorial to be dedicated to the slain and injured students, but
others in the town, including then-Kent mayor Nancy Hansford,
maintained that you could not understand the events of May 4 without
appreciating the violence that preceded it on May 1-3.
"What people don't realize," notes Schwartz, "is that there were two
sides the one side anti-military, but there was a conservative side
to this too, and you would hear people say things like 'the campus
was out of control, and something had to be done.' It was a serious
town/gown issue." Ultimately, he says, he decided the only way to
manage this was to keep the process as neutral as possible and gain
consensus. What emerged was a memorial to the events, not to the
slain students a decision that still riles critics today.
Schwartz says it was difficult to raise funds for the memorial. "Even
people who thought that having the memorial was a good idea were
reluctant to put money into the project. To give you some sense of
the memorial's unpopularity in many circles, I seem to recall that a
member of the State of Ohio Senate had language inserted into the
budget legislation that said that no funds appropriated in that bill
could be used for the memorial at Kent State University."
In Schwartz's view, the endless debate about the memorial, as well as
persisting controversies about the shootings, are part of what he
calls "the great saga" of May 4. "There's a very dramatic aspect to
it as the story is told over and over and over again to new
generations of students." However, he cautions, "I think that when
you develop a great saga, some of the truths are going to be
missing." Which truths and who determines their factual basis he
leaves to the historians.
--
Rick Perloff is Director of the School of Communication at Cleveland
State University. In May 1970, he reported on the incidents at Kent
State University for his college newspaper.
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