On This Day in History: May 4

The Kent State Massacre

AUDIO VERSION HERE

“What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?”

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: May 4, 1970--

When it comes to remembering the Kent State Massacre, two things stand out: the song “Ohio” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and the photograph of a despairing Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of a slain protestor.

On May 4, 1970, students at Kent State University in Ohio were protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War, with U.S. forces bombing neutral Cambodia. Two thousand people showed up. So did the National Guard.

They tried to disperse the crowd with tear gas, which was thrown back at them by the protestors. Despite the protesters being at least 70 feet away and unarmed, dozens of Guardsmen proclaimed to fear for their lives and opened fire on the crowd. A presidential commission later proclaimed the slaughter “unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.” No shit.

The body Vecchio cried over was that of Jeffrey Miller. The photograph seems to convey an image of a young woman crying over the death of a friend, but she didn’t know the man. Mary Ann was a 14-year-old runaway from Florida who was only on campus that day because it was where hitchhiking had taken her. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said of that moment. “I was screaming because I couldn’t help him.”

The image ran on the front page of almost every newspaper in the U.S. and many other publications internationally. For novice photographer John Filo, it won him a Pulitzer and launched his career. For Mary Ann, she said it ruined her life.

The governor of Florida said Vecchio was part of a communist conspiracy. When she returned home to her parents, neighborhood children and classmates shunned her. She received tens of thousands of pieces of hate mail saying things that would make any YouTube comment section seem tame by comparison.

Vecchio would struggle for years, eventually marrying and settling in Las Vegas. On the 25^th anniversary of the massacre, she finally met the man who made her famous. John Filo approached her with sadness in his eyes, and she burst into tears and embraced him. Filo, who also suffered much backlash over the photo, said of the meeting, “I’m just glad she doesn’t hate me.”

And the song? Many radio stations banned it because of its criticism of President Nixon, but it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2009.

Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.