Shootings at Kent State University

May 4, 1970

Overview

Antiwar demonstrations erupt on over 400 college and university campuses across the United States in the wake of the Cambodian incursion. Amid protests on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsmen fire at students. Four students are killed and nine are wounded.

The shootings at Kent State become a focus of national attention and perhaps trigger as much outrage as the incursion itself, spurring the spread of demonstrations. Protests continue to break out nationwide over the following weeks, reinvigorating the antiwar movement.¹

Paul J. Scheips, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1945–1992 (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, 2012), 401, 404; Richard A. Hunt, Melvin Laird and Nixon’s Quest for a Post-Vietnam Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2014), 14; Spencer C. Tucker, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (2nd edition; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 571–72; David L. Anderson, The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 131; George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975 (4th edition; New York and other cities: McGraw Hill, 2002), 293, 294; Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (2nd revised edition; New York: Penguin, 1997), 626.