Death at Kent State by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Capstone
Published: 2016-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

“There’s nothing better than a dead destructive, riot making communist,” one letter writer said, “and that’s what your son was, if not he would have stayed away like a good American would do.” The letter writer continued, “They should all be shot, then we’d have a better U.S.A. to live in.” John Filo heard comments like that too. He received hate mail after his photo was published, and his own uncle said to him, “If you were out there, you should have been shot.”

The most visible reaction to the killings came on college campuses across the United States. First thousands and then tens of thousands of students began to protest the killings and refused to attend classes. By one estimate, 4 million students on 850 campuses eventually took part. Protests of some kind occurred on about 80 percent of the country’s campuses. The protests spread to some high schools as well, and demonstrators around the world protested both the killings and the Cambodia invasion. On May 9, about 100,000 protesters came to Washington, D.C. Once again, President Nixon remained in the White House, with extra security protecting the building.

At Jackson State College, a historically black school in Jackson, Mississippi, students came out for two nights of protests. The protesters were angry about the Kent State shootings, the war, and the treatment of blacks in the United States. By May 14, the protests in Jackson had turned confrontational, and a rumor that a Mississippi civil rights leader had been killed led to violence. Police officers fired into a crowd, killing one Jackson State student and a local high school student and injuring a dozen others. The incident touched on two of the great issues of the era—the Vietnam War and the status of blacks in the United States. The Jackson State killings, however, did not receive as much attention as those at Kent State.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.