67 shots kent state and the end of american innocence

The pivotal moment came when the city’s mayor contacted Governor James Rhodes, a tough law-and-order Republican who was locked in a tight primary campaign for a U.S.

Soon the ROTC building became a target for arson campus police and officials watched it burn down. The eventual confrontation escalated from disorderly drinking in the adjacent town of Kent, Ohio. Even though we know the outcome, Means builds the suspense, making the well-known story a gripping and thought-provoking teachable moment. He brings the same level of solid storytelling to present a chilling picture of how bravado, naiveté, miscalculation, lack of training, poor management, and even politics came together to shatter lives and shock a nation.Ĭulling through oral histories and conducting his own interviews, the author develops the narrative, which takes the reader from the immediate reaction to Nixon’s Cambodia announcement through the next week, when “Kent State” was transformed from a university name to a rallying cry. Howard Means, a prolific author and former Washingtonian editor, has now joined them with 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence.Īmong Means’ previous books on history and biography are those on Johnny Appleseed, the Civil War, Colin Powell, and former FBI director Louis Freeh.

Over the past five decades, this tragedy has been examined in films, plays, music, and a number of books, including ones by Philip Caputo, James Michener, and I.F. The school was still relatively little-known outside its region that changed on May 4th, when four students, ages 19 and 20, were killed and nine others were wounded in a confrontation that could have been avoided. Kent State, a mid-sized institution in Northeast Ohio, was among the many campuses roiled by his action. One of the most iconic photographs of the Vietnam War era is that of a horrified teenage girl kneeling beside a student shot dead by a National Guardsman on the Kent State University campus.Īmerican colleges had already been in turmoil as a result of the increasingly unpopular war, but in the spring of 1970, protests reached a new height when President Richard Nixon announced a U.S.

67 shots kent state and the end of american innocence