Narrator / Host (likely Sharon McMahon or co-host) (22:42)
Critics and scholars have said that if Nixon had emphasized the operation's goals of faster troop withdrawal from Vietnam instead of noting its importance to keeping the US A world power, people may not have responded so passionately and poorly as it was though. On May 1, just hours after Nixon's announcement, almost 900 college campuses participated in the first, first nationwide student strike in the history of the United States. If you were a male college student in early 1970 and your grades were high enough to put you in the top half of your class, chances are you were granted a deferment from the draft. But many college students saw graduation looming in the near future, meaning that they would not just be free of homework, but they or their loved ones would be left wide open to the draft process. Things were even more tense for people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds as they had less opportunity to pay for college or gain the types of jobs that would earn deferments. Between 1954 and 1964, as the Korean War ended and the Vietnam war gained steam, 1.4 million American men were drafted. Peacetime drafts had been signed into law in 1940 by President Roosevelt as the U.S. anticipated joining World War II. So despite the fact that the conflict in Vietnam was never officially declared a war, 120,000 young men were pulled into service every year. College aged people in 1970 had lived nearly their entire lives with the threat of themselves or someone they loved being drafted into a conflict that was either just starting to happen or fully escalated in a faraway country. For reasons that many people disagreed with, the first lottery drawing for the draft since 1940 occurred in December 1969. Young men born between 1944 and 1950 watch TV or listen to the radio as blue plastic capsules, each containing a different day of the year, were drawn one by one. If the first date drawn happened to be your birthday, you would be in the first group called to serve. It's easy to imagine lots of American young men between 19 and 25, as well as all their loved ones walking around with sweaty hands, waiting for their numbers to be called. Add to all of that the knowledge that what was happening in Vietnam seemed very confusing to many Americans. Some felt that this was not America's fight and that the country should not be sacrificing American lives for a cause that so many Americans did not understand or support. October 15, 1969, had seen the moratorium to end the war in Vietnam, when over 2 million people across the country participated in marches, speeches and ceremonies. By that time, 39,000Americans had been killed in Vietnam. One month later, there was a second moratorium to end the war in Vietnam, attracting even bigger crowds across the country. Half a million people marched in Washington, D.C. alone. All of this tension had been building for so long that by April 1970, when Nixon announced what sounded like an escalation of the war, college students were poised to protest in record numbers. Many college students saw the choice as really that simple. Protest and risk arrestor beatings or watch the war continue and end up dead. On the morning of May 1, Nixon spoke to a group of civilian employees, employees at the Pentagon referring to student protesters as bums blowing up campuses, which was the strongest language he'd used publicly when talking about the issue. At noon, around 500 students at Kent State University gathered to protest after they'd buried a copy of the Constitution to symbolize their belief that it was dead. Thanks to Nixon, they conducted a peaceful rally. That evening, a fight broke out at a local bar between students and locals. Windows were broken in town and a few people were arrested. The mayor declared a state of emergency and mobilized the town's entire police force. The students were forced back toward the campus and things finally calmed down around 2:30am the mayor ordered a dusk to dawn curfew, but was still nervous. Sometime very late on the night of May 1, the mayor contacted the governor and asked that the National Guard be sent in to keep things calm. More than 1,000 Ohio National Guard troops were sent in and told that there could be machine guns brought in by outside militants. The governor compared the student protesters to the Brown Shirts of Nazi Germany and vowed to rid the community of the problem. On the evening of May 2, a fire started in the back of the ROTC building on the Kent State campus. No one has ever been able to verify how the fire started. Hundreds of students were drawn to the fire despite their curfew. When fire trucks arrived to try to put the fire out, some of the the students cut the hoses with knives, hampering the firefighters efforts. The ROTC building burned to the ground. It was fully engulfed just as the Ohio National Guard arrived on campus. As the building burned, around 1000 rounds of.22 caliber ammunition exploded within the burning building, adding to the mayhem. Using bayonets, rifle butts and tear gas, the National Guard cleared the students from the smoldering scene. Martial law was declared and another curfew imposed until classes were in session. While the students were stuck inside, they planned their next move. At noon on May 4, when between 1 and 2,000 students, students had gathered in a parking lot and grassy area on campus called the Commons, they found themselves facing a line of Ohio National Guardsmen. The National Guard ordered the demonstrators to leave. When the students refused and threw rocks at the Guardsmen, the National Guard used tear gas to try and disperse the crowd. Ellis Burns, a Kent State student, recalled these moments.
