The Four Dead in Ohio

Chronicle of a National Tragedy

Spring shows its friendly side on that May 4, 1970 in Kent, Ohio. This Monday is lightly clouded at 20°C, a faint breeze blowing in from the southwest. A beautiful day.

But appearances deceive. These are not peaceful times in the U.S.A. or in the world. The Vietnam War is raging. 50,000 Americans and over a million Vietnamese have already lost their lives in the senseless fighting. A few days earlier, on Thursday, April 30, President Richard Nixon announced in a televised address the expansion of the war into Cambodia. Nixon, the eternally driven man, wants to win the war through still more war.

The Vietnam conflict divides the nation. Some support the intervention, arguing that it is necessary to prevent the spread of communism in Asia. Others demand an end to the bloodshed; they have recognized that this war cannot be won. Hundreds of thousands take to the streets for peace.

Divide et impera. Then as now. Richard Nixon ridicules the war’s opponents and contemptuously calls them bums, Penner. War chancellor Olaf Scholz today calls the peace demonstrators fallen angels from hell. Both are less than original, and both rest on the crude principle of divide and rule. We know it all too well.

The universities in the U.S.A. are currently a haven of ingratiation with those in power. In the late sixties and early seventies they were centers of the peace movement. The students wanted no war, and above all they did not want to be drafted and sent to fight the Vietcong on the other side of the world.

One such student center of resistance in 1970 is that Kent State University in Ohio, KSU for short. Since 1968 students there have repeatedly demonstrated against the war policies of the Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson and his Republican successor Richard Nixon.

One must, however, keep a few numbers in mind to gauge the scale of the protests at KSU correctly: 19,000 students live on the grounds, most of them opposed to the Vietnam War, but only 300 to 1,000 people take part in the protests. Those who dare are in the minority.

The mood on campus has been tense for over two years. What the U.S.A. is doing in Vietnam weighs on the young people; they fear for their future. Nixon’s televised address and his announcement to expand the war into Cambodia finally set the fatal stone rolling. The students’ protests turn violent, the escalation takes its course.

On Friday, May 1, 1970, that is one day after Nixon’s speech, a handful of students riot through downtown Kent. They throw stones and bottles, smash shop windows. The police respond with tear gas, the students withdraw onto the university grounds.

Kent’s mayor LeRoy Satrom thereupon declares a state of emergency and imposes a curfew. He also calls in — fateful decision! — the National Guard. The next day, a Saturday, the demonstrators set fire on campus to a building of the U.S. armed forces where students are prepared for their careers in the army. Ammunition worth 50,000 dollars explodes, the building burns down.

Sunday, May 3. There is still the possibility of easing the situation at KSU and seeking dialogue. But then a dark figure enters the stage: James A. Rhodes, governor of Ohio, a Republican like President Nixon. Rhodes has only one goal, he wants to be elected to the Senate. To this goal he subordinates everything. Now, just before the election, he unexpectedly has one more chance to cast himself as a man of law and order. Rhodes wants to score points with the conservative voters, to whom KSU, this city within the city, has remained alien. To the journalists Rhodes says after the latest riots:

These students are worse than the brownshirts and the communists. They are the worst type of people that we harbor in America. And I want to emphasize that these radicals are not going to take over the campus.

Punchy words from a man out to raise his profile. Rhodes pours oil on the fire. Branding those who think differently as Nazis or communists, marking them as enemies of democracy — we know that too.

Rhodes declares any further gathering in Kent and on the university grounds illegal and orders the National Guard to put down the protest by all necessary means. To use whatever force necessary to break up the protest: the abolition of the red lines.

The following night too brings riots on campus. The National Guard again deploys tear gas. The students announce further protests for the next day. This time teachers and professors will also take part in the demonstration.

It is May 4, 1970 — the fateful Monday. It is noon. About 300 demonstrators gather on a lawn at KSU. Far outnumbering them are the onlookers. Over 1,000 gawkers show up. Most of the demonstrators are hippies, that is the kind of people Nixon, Rhodes and the bourgeois camp despise. The protesters wave flags and carry banners with peace slogans like Flowers are better than bullets.

The National Guard forms up. Governor Rhodes has given the soldiers an unambiguous order: End the protest! The Guardsmen are superbly equipped for it. They wear steel helmets and gas masks, their M1 rifles are fitted with bayonets and loaded with live rounds. Young men, prepared for a war. Against the unarmed.

On a hill of the campus the demonstrators ring the victory bell. It is the gift of a railroad company and is normally rung only after a win by the football team, the Kent State Golden Flashes.

A National Guard jeep rolls slowly through the ranks of the demonstrators. A policeman, flanked by two National Guard sharpshooters, calls through his megaphone: This assembly is illegal, you must break up the gathering!

The students answer with whistles and boos. They gather at the victory bell and ring it without pause.

A National Guard unit of 50 men sets off, marching up the hill toward the demonstrators. As they go, the soldiers fire tear gas grenades into the crowd. The students throw the grenades back. Smoke is everywhere, it looks like a battlefield. Both sides grow increasingly nervous.

The soldiers push the protesters down the hill onto a parking lot. There the students can go no further, a fence bars their way. They throw stones at the soldiers, who keep firing tear gas.

Then all at once the National Guard turns about, the unit withdraws to Blanket Hill. Some students follow the Guardsmen. Are the heavily armed soldiers really quitting the field now? No, they are not. Reaching the top of the hill, the 50-man unit suddenly turns around, and more than half of the soldiers open fire on the demonstrators without any recognizable order. — Fear, screams, panic! The horror lasts 13 seconds, and afterward Jeffrey Miller (20) and Allison Krause (19) are dead, Sandra Scheuer (20) bleeds to death right there on campus, William Schroeder (19) dies an hour after the shots in the hospital. Dean Kahler (20) will never be able to walk again from this moment on. Eight more students are wounded, some of them severely.

The victory bell has stopped ringing. The unimaginable has happened.

„Ohio“ — The Fury of a Supergroup

In 1970 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are THE supergroup in the U.S.A. David Crosby came from the Byrds, Graham Nash from the Hollies in England, Stephen Stills and Neil Young played together in Buffalo Springfield. They release their first album in 1969 on Atlantic Records still as a trio — Crosby, Stills & Nash — then the legendary record boss Ahmet Ertegün suggests bringing the charismatic Canadian Neil Young into the band. The four musicians hesitate briefly, for one thing distinguishes them all above everything else: a big ego. But after the first rehearsals it is clear that together they would be something extraordinary. Such harmony singing had until then only been heard from the Beatles. Neil Young later says: When we were good, we were really very good. The deal is struck.

From then on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are a money-printing machine. The quartet plays at the Woodstock Festival and is regarded as the concert attraction par excellence. Their album „Déjà vu“, released in March 1970, that is two months before the shots at Kent State University, reaches number one on the charts in the U.S.A., Canada and Australia.

I never really saw myself as an activist. I only want to have a voice, Neil Young writes in his autobiography published in 2012. It is precisely this voice that Young raises on May 19, 1970, when, staying with David Crosby in Pescadero, California, he sees the pictures of the shot students in Life magazine. Neil Young grabs his acoustic guitar and walks into the nearby woods. A few hours later he comes back and plays „Ohio“ for David Crosby. Crosby is shaken by the force of the song.

Just two days later, on May 21, 1970, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young meet at the Record Plant Studio in Los Angeles and record „Ohio“. In the end it becomes three minutes full of fury, outrage and never-again! Neil Young’s unforgiving voice, the accusing, condemning guitars, David Crosby’s cry at the end of the song: How many more? Why? — a song of one seamless piece. The forever unsettled account.

The Guardian will later call „Ohio“ the greatest protest song of all time.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young record the single within 24 hours. Ten days later it is on the market. The B-side is the short but equally magnificent „Find The Cost Of Freedom“, written by Stephen Stills.

In „Ohio“ Neil Young points his finger at President Nixon and his order-takers: Tin soldiers and Nixon coming. That is too rebellious for the big radio stations, they boycott the song. The mainstream broadcasters lack the courage, they would rather obey the government. But the small radio stations all over the country and college radio play the song on endless repeat. Whoever wants to can hear „Ohio“.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young have raised their voice. It is a loud one. That was all it was ever about for them.

What Remains of the Counterculture?

At first glance „Ohio“ changed nothing. Richard Nixon was re-elected president of the United States in 1972 by a large majority. To this day none of the shooters of May 4, 1970 have been convicted; the commanders and officers of that day retired decorated with military honors.

After countless lawsuits by the bereaved and the wounded, they were awarded together the laughable sum of 675,000 dollars. In a letter the 28 principal defendants expressed their regret over the tragedy. Note well: their regret. James A. Rhodes and the tin soldiers could not bring themselves to an apology.

Even more disconcerting is what became of the musicians themselves. They let themselves be co-opted by the establishment. The now deceased David Crosby, in his Rolling Stone column, called those who had decided against the Covid vaccine „idiots“. Neil Young too called for vaccination. He also sold the rights to half of his songs to a fund traded on the London stock exchange. This is said to have earned him 150 million dollars. The uncompromising man is no longer uncompromising.

But „what was, what is“ — this comparison is wrong when it comes to protest. Protest knows only the now. That is why „Ohio“ has lost nothing of its greatness. Graham Nash said in an interview:

In releasing ‚Ohio‘ we broke a few rules of the music business, but we didn’t care. We were angry. Now! The young people were angry. Now! They killed our children, we had to scream it out. Now!

The same is true of what is happening in the world today. Tomorrow does not count, tomorrow everything may be different. Protest against war and arbitrary power, against lies and injustice is important and right. Now!