Kent State Shooting: Due to protests
Protests against the Vietnam war were very apparent amongst colleges as students rallied together in what was mostly peaceful protests. However, things took a turn for the worst and fell into complete chaos on May 4th, 1970 at Kent State University. During Nixon’s solution of Vietnamization, which was the process of replacement of U.S soldiers with South Vietnamese soldiers to prevent Vietnam from communism, Nixon continued to bomb and raid neighboring areas such as Cambodia and Laos. On April 30, 1970, with the announcement of the Cambodia invasion by American troops, Nixon called for a draft of 150,000 American soldiers to continue the war efforts in Vietnam. Amongst countless other universities, Kent State began to hold protests. To demonstrate their frustration and anger with the events of the time, Kent students set fire to the ROTC building, which lead to the arrival of 900 National Guardsmen on campus. On May 4th, chaos occurred as twenty-eight Guardsmen opened fire on the protestors, leading to the death of four and wounding nine. After the shooting, almost five hundred colleges were reported shutdown or disrupted by protestors begging for justice. Finally, the Grand Jury indicted eight National Guardsmen, but due to lack of evidence the charges were dropped. The Kent State tragedy evoked national attention, overshadowing the shooting at Jackson State, an all black school in Mississippi. Due to student protests, police and highway patrol opened fire in a dorm, leading to two deaths and nine injuries. Similar to Kent State there was no justice for the students due to a lack of evidence. These student protests demonstrated the pandemonium of the Vietnam War abroad and the effects it had on U.S soil.
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