1970s student mobilization
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American student radicalism
antiwar demonstrations documentation
antiwar movement history
antiwar sentiment in heartland universities
antiwar student protests
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campus safety and military intervention
campus strikes history
campus violence and government response
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civil unrest in higher education
Cold War era protests
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grassroots antiwar organizing
grassroots political organization
historical accounts of May 4
historical analysis of campus shootings
historical memory of protests
intergenerational activism
Kent State eyewitness accounts
Kent State massacre legacy
Kent State shootings
labor and student coalitions
labor history and student activism
Language_English
local and national response to shootings
May 4 1970 incident
media coverage of May 4
memorialization of Kent State
Midwest student demonstrations
National Guard violence
nationwide campus strikes
Ohio historical political conflicts
Ohio university unrest
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political conservatism in Ohio
political history of campus protests
political repression and student rights
post-WWII university expansion
postwar youth movements
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public university unrest
radicalization and repression
social movements of the 1970s
softlaunch
student activism and social change
student activism scholarsh
student political movements
student resistance to war
student strikes and social impact
student-led social activism
university administration conflicts
Vietnam veterans on campus
Vietnam War campus activism
Vietnam War dissent
working-class student activism
Product details
- ISBN 9781625341112
- Weight: 620g
- Dimensions: 154 x 233mm
- Publication Date: 24 Feb 2016
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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On May 4, 1970, National Guard troops opened fire on unarmed antiwar protesters at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four students and wounding nine others, including the author of this book. The shootings shocked the American public and triggered a nationwide wave of campus strikes and protests. To many at the time, Kent State seemed an unlikely site for the bloodiest confrontation in a decade of campus unrest—a sprawling public university in the American heartland, far from the coastal epicenters of political and social change.
Yet, as Thomas M. Grace shows, the events of May 4 were not some tragic anomaly but were grounded in a tradition of student political activism that extended back to Ohio’s labor battles of the 1950s. The vast expansion of the university after World War II brought in growing numbers of working-class enrollees from the industrial centers of northeast Ohio, members of the same demographic cohort that eventually made up the core of American combat forces in Vietnam. As the war’s rising costs came to be felt acutely in the home communities of Kent’s students, tensions mounted between the growing antiwar movement on campus, the university administration, and the political conservatives who dominated the surrounding county as well as the state government.
The deadly shootings at Kent State were thus the culmination of a dialectic of radicalization and repression that had been building throughout the decade. In the years that followed, the antiwar movement continued to strengthen on campus, bolstered by an influx of returning Vietnam veterans. After the war ended, a battle over the memory and meaning of May 4 ensued. It continues to the present day.
Yet, as Thomas M. Grace shows, the events of May 4 were not some tragic anomaly but were grounded in a tradition of student political activism that extended back to Ohio’s labor battles of the 1950s. The vast expansion of the university after World War II brought in growing numbers of working-class enrollees from the industrial centers of northeast Ohio, members of the same demographic cohort that eventually made up the core of American combat forces in Vietnam. As the war’s rising costs came to be felt acutely in the home communities of Kent’s students, tensions mounted between the growing antiwar movement on campus, the university administration, and the political conservatives who dominated the surrounding county as well as the state government.
The deadly shootings at Kent State were thus the culmination of a dialectic of radicalization and repression that had been building throughout the decade. In the years that followed, the antiwar movement continued to strengthen on campus, bolstered by an influx of returning Vietnam veterans. After the war ended, a battle over the memory and meaning of May 4 ensued. It continues to the present day.
Thomas M. Grace is adjunct professor of history at Erie Community College. A 1972 graduate of Kent State University, he earned a PhD in history from SUNY Buffalo after many years as a social worker and union representative.
