four dead in ohio

Four dead in Ohio. Fifty years ago today. College kids at Kent State were demonstrating against the Vietnam war when, at 12:24, National Guardsmen shot a burst of 60 rounds into the unarmed crowd. LIFE magazine rushed the incident into print. The cover lines read "Tragedy at Kent: The Crisis of Presidential Leadership." Neil Young saw the magazine and immediately wrote a song. He and Crosby, Stills and Nash recorded it and, within three weeks of the shooting, it was the anthem for that era of protest. You can read more about that and hear Young's moving solo rendition of the song here. You can read about the photographer's rush to print here and LIFE's rush to print here.
   At the time, I too was a college kid, and, as on campuses all over the country, the antiwar movement was galvanized by the Kent State shootings. We took over the administration building at Vassar in protest. Twenty years later—30 years ago now, for those who aren't good at math—I went to Kent State to write about what happened there for LIFE magazine. RIP Arlene Gottfried, who was the photog on the story. My guide was Alan Canfora, the protest leader waving the flag who was shot through the wrist. He continues to be a political activist and is the standardbearer for Kent State commemorations. You can read about him here and here, but you can't read my story, because I don't have a copy of it. He does, though.
   You can participate in a virtual commemoration here.


 This is the most famous image of the Kent State disaster, taken by John Filo, along with the most famous recording of the CSNY song. LIFE famously, pre photoshop, airbrushed out the fencepost coming out of Mary Ann Vecchio's head and caught some shit for it.