Devo's Jerry Casale Looks Back at Kent State 50 Years Later: 'Time Stood Still' - Rolling Stone

[DBoon]

from 2020, but still worth revisiting for the 51st anniversary of this event:

It was 50 years ago today that the Ohio National Guard opened fire at a protest on the Kent State University campus in Kent, Ohio, killing four students, wounding nine others and leaving one paralyzed for life. The massacre was the culmination of fiery protests all across America in response to President Nixon going public with his plan to expand the Vietnam War into Cambodia.

The politically active students at Kent State had an uneasy relationship with the conservative townspeople of Kent, and they clashed many times in the weeks leading up to the shooting. Ohio Gov. Jim Rhodes sent the National Guard onto the campus on Saturday, May 2nd, 1970, as rumors swirled about a campus uprising. That night, students burned down the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) building on campus.

“These people just move from one campus to the other and terrorize the community,” Rhodes said on Sunday, May 3rd. “They’re worse than the brownshirts and the communist element, and also the night riders and the vigilantes. They’re the worst type of people that we harbor in America. Now I want to say this. They are not going to take over [the] campus.”

All of this set the stage for the horrors that unfolded at noon on Monday, May 4th. Among the student protesters that afternoon was future Devo founder/bassist Jerry Casale. (Future Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde was there as well.) Casale recently called up Rolling Stone and shared his memories of that awful day.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/devo-jerry-casale-looks-back-120038757.html

[pandr32]

1. An excellent read

Thanks for posting.

[abqtommy]

2. Let us remember. And never forget...

[malaise]

3. Kent State was a critical moment in my awakening

Get thee to the greatest page for visibility