Mon 5/4 @ noon
Mon May 4 @ 7:30PM
May 4 is a day that stands out in stark relief to anyone who has ever been connected to Kent State University. That is the day in 1970 when the National Guard opened fire on student protestors, killing four and wounding nine. The campus now has the May 4 Visitors Center where the history of that event is honored, and every year, it hosts a commemoration, the culmination of a series of events taking place in the days leading up to May 4.
That will take place on the KSU Commons at noon, with Dick Gregory as the keynote speaker. KSU president Beverly Warren, peace activist Paul Chappell and New Mexico State University professor of history Ken Hammond, who was an SDS leader at KSU in 1970, will also speak.
In the evening, at the Performing Arts Center of the Kent State University Tuscarawas campus, the spring theater production May 4 Voices will be performed. Students, staff and community members will perform the work, written by director of the Kent State Poetry Center David Hassler, based on interview material from the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project. Video of six local oral histories will be shown on screens in the Performing Arts Center before and after the performance. Admission is $10 or $5 for students with I.D.
800 E Summit St, Kent, OH 44242-2501
330 University Drive Northeast, New Philadelphia, OH 44663
One Response to “45th Anniversary of @KentState Shootings Remembered”
Marijo Mastroianni
I live in Topeka but was raised in Kent and was in 6th grade when riots occurred.What I remember most is the rioting on Water Street and throwing bottles at bars and breaking windows.Water Street had glass all over it from bottles being thrown and I remember there was a curfew.The song “Four dead in Ohio” was about the Kent State riots.It was by Neil Young.I wrote a poem when I was in 7th grade about the riots.It is called “That Day in May”I’ll never forget May 4th,the riots at KSU,Broken windows everywhere,And then at night a curfew. People with guns were shooting And then 4 students were dead People weeping everywhere And a lot of bad things said School had been let out early Nobody could go outside Parents had to pick us up Because the 4 students died Then soon it was less crowded And students had run away All because of the riots That happened the 4th of May Teenagers were arrested In bars where they drank some beer Police screaming here and there And where it happened was here So in the city of Kent There’s a very special day
That’s when rioting took place The date is the 4th of May.The poem is 6 verses with 4 lines in each one. What I compare this to is the rioting going on in Baltimore and the curfew and guardsmen called there because of the recent killing of a black kid.My dad and youngest sister still live in Kent and though I am in Topeka,I still come home at times.I am 57 years old. Marijo Mastroianni