Above the shots : an oral history of the Kent State Shootings / Craig S. Simpson and Gregory S. Wilson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Simpson, Craig S., author.

Wilson, Gregory S., author.

Contributor:

Kent State University. Press, publisher.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kent State University--History.

Kent State University.

Kent State Shootings, Kent, Ohio, 1970.

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 254 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Kent, Ohio : The Kent State University Press, [2016]

Summary:

A deadly confrontation at Kent State University between Vietnam War protesters and members of the Ohio National Guard occurred in the afternoon on May 4,1970. What remained, along with the tragic injuries and Eves lost, was a remarkable array of conflicting interpretations and theories about what happened-and why. Above the Shots sheds new light on this historic event through the recollections of more than 50 narrators, whose stories are unique and riveting: the former mayor of Kent, a witness to the riot in town a few nights earlier, a protester who helped burn the ROTC building, a Black United Students member who was warned to stay away from the protest, a Vietnam veteran who deplored the counterculture yet administered first aid to the wounded, a friend of one of the mortally wounded students, who died in his arms, a Guardsman sympathetic to the students, a faculty member supportive of the Guard, an outraged student who went to the state capital to make a citizen's arrest of Governor Rhodes, a pair of former KSU presidents who, years later, courted controversy by how they chose to memorialize the tragedy, From the precipitous cultural conflicts of the 1960s to the ever-raging battle over how to remember the Kent State incident, the authors examine how these accounts challenge and deepen our understanding of the shootings, the Vietnam Era, memory, and oral history. Spanning five decades, Above the Shots not only chronicles the immediate chain of events that led to the shootings but explores causes and consequences, prevailing conspiracies, and the search for catharsis. It is a narrative assemblage of voices that rise above the rhetoric-above the din-to show how a watershed moment in modern American history continues to speak to us. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part 1 "The largest unknown university in the world" 29

Part 2 "An edge in the air" 53

Part 3 "A bullet is a drastic answer" 91

Part 4 "The divide in this country" 136

Part 5 "The beginning of an ending" 180.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781606352915

1606352911

OCLC:

949338418