Live from Kent Ohio, May 4, 1970
The Kent State shootings from a different perspective,
including an audio recording of news broadcasts from Kent radio station
WKNT made on that afternoon.
On May 4th 1970, Ohio National
Guardsmen fired into a crowd of students killing 4 people and wounding 9
others. Mountains of information and analyses exist on the shooting and
the politics of the time; I will not try to add to that here. However, one
aspect of the events of May 4th has become forgotten in the
intervening years: the ease with which the National Guard took control of
the city and its residents, and the extent of that control.
May 4th is an object lesson in how a coup might be achieved through the use of
disinformation, and the control of media, communications, and
travel. I certainly do not believe that was the
intent of anyone at that time and place. The fact that some degree of
normalcy returned within 24 hours attests to that. I do believe that
the events of that day illustrate how readily such a coup could have
come about had the government’s intentions been otherwise.
I lived in Kent when I was a kid; my
father taught at KSU and my mother was working on her PhD. I was
12 when the shootings took place. Initially all I knew was that school
was being dismissed early and no one would say why. When I got home my
parents were listening to the local radio station (WKNT, now called
WJMP). I turned on the TV, but the Cleveland stations were
running their standard soap operas. I suppose if I had left the TV on
there would have been periodic news interruptions, but I turned it off.
I picked up the phone to call a friend, but there was no dial tone.
Obviously there was no internet yet, so I couldn’t go online and
connect with anyone that way.
What I did do, for reasons I don’t fully
recall, is connect a Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder to the radio
speaker and record the broadcasts as they took place, starting just
before 2:30pm (an hour and 45 minutes after the shootings). The news
was not constant... there were commercials and they would switch back
to music when they had nothing new to say. I sat by the tape recorder,
stopping and starting it so that it wouldn’t run out of tape. I’ve kept
the recording safe for the last 40 years, and I recently transcribed it
to a digital format and cleaned up as much of the noise, hum, and pops
as I could without degrading the vocal content.
I have searched the web for evidence of
another recording of these broadcasts, but even the KSU library’s May 4th
Special Collection doesn’t reference it. Although I find it hard to
believe, this may be the only recording still in existence. I emailed a
query to the KSU library to see if they either had a copy themselves or
had any interest in this one; I did not receive any response. So I have
placed a copy on this web site in the hope that it may evoke in some of
you the same sense of isolation and powerlessness that it did in me all
those years ago.
As with any breaking news of a major
event, there was a lot of confusion during the initial hours. Much of
what the radio reported was wrong. The misinformation helped fuel a
series of actions that effectively suspended the constitutional rights
of Kent’s citizens and affected several surrounding towns. The
difference between misinformation and disinformation is mainly one of
intent; their effects are often indistinguishable.
I encourage you to download the recording
and judge for yourself. It is about an hour long, and the file size is
not large if you have broadband.
I also created a 2 minute video to put on YouTube as a sort of teaser to generate interest in the audio recording. If you are not sure if you would be interested in the full hour of radio broadcasts, then perhaps this video will give you a feeling of what it contains.
Thanks for visiting this site. If you are interested in learning more about the events of May 4th 1970, the links at the bottom of the page provide some good information and jumping off points for further exploration.
Audio and Video downloads:
Audio recording (1 hour) of WKNT news broadcasts on May 4, 1970 (26 MB)
"Teaser" video (2 minutes) for the audio recording (14 MB)
Photos: (Click for larger image)
These are a few photos I took on May 6th,two days after the shootings. Most of these appear in the video, but these are higher resolution. In reviewing these, I was struck by the incongruity of military jeeps and armored personnel carriers parked on the sidewalks of a peaceful, tree-lined American neighborhood.
Other sites devoted to May 4 1970:
http://www.kent.edu/about/history/may4/
http://dept.kent.edu/sociology/lewis/lewihen.htm
http://www.library.kent.edu/page/11247
http://www.may4.org/