While doing some spring cleaning the other day, I ran across the commeration program from 1995. If anybody wants a copy, it's only about ren pages, PM me and I'll make a photocopy (this is anybody, anywhere, not just North America). It has a chronology that reminded me of some important details. For one thing, there were a lot of rallies being held in that era, and in that season. Things really started on May 1, a Friday night, one of the first warm evenings that spring. Those of you that went to college, remember that first nice weather? Remember getting together with everybody else, drinking lots of beer, maybe doing foolish things? Well, that's what started it off, I guess; the beer, stepping outside on a nice night, a spontanious anti-war demonstration, a couple of beer bottles tossed at a police car. Yes, they were stupid, and it escalated; a bonfire, broken shop windows. Stupid. The police came and proceeded to clear the area. The police ordered everyone to leave the bars, putting hundreds more out on the street (and it is still pretty much a couple of blocks on one street) and herded toward the campus (maybe about a mile away), even if it was opposite the direction from where the students lived.
The next day, some students helped with the downtown cleanup, but paranoia was setting in, probably on both sides. (If you weren't in college then, you might not know that there were government provocateurs on college campuses. I was lucky enough to go to college close enough to Canada to get Canadian radio, where they broadcast interviews that were censored in the USA. The ROTC building burned at the University of Alabama was provocateurs' work.) The rumors started that Kent's ROTC building was a target. A dusk to dawn curfew was imposed, and the mayor called in the National Guard. The University was unaware of this. Things got stupider; there was an attempt to burn the ROTC building, at least one student was bayonetted.
Sunday was quiet, except that the governor (who was running for re-election, election day two days off) came to town, and made a speech declairing that the students were worse than brownshirts or communists, and whatever force necessary would be used to drive them out of Kent. That evening the National Guard commander told his troops that Ohio law gave them the right to shoot if necessary.
Monday, May 4, you know more about than the days that led up to it.
I hadn't meant for this post to go so long, but I thought you folks would be interested in just what led to the shootings. There was fear on both sides, and stupidity, but as I said in last year's thread, I'm thankful that we still have enough freedom of speech in the USA that the government hasn't been able to obliterate this huge, tragic governmental blunder from history.