Name: _________________________________ Hour: _________ NB#: ________
The Report of the President’s Commission
On Campus Unrest (1970)
President Nixon’s effort to “Vietnamize” the war and to reduce American
involvement initially defused the antiwar movement, but his decision in the spring
of 1970 to send troops to Cambodia to destroy Viet Cong sanctuaries unleashed a
new round of demonstrations and riots. The worst incident occurred at Kent State
University in Ohio. Over 750 National Guard troops were called in to quell the
violence. During a tense confrontation, Guardsmen fired on student protesters,
killing four. The tragic incident prompted the creation of an investigative
commission.
From President’s Commission on Campus Unrest, Report (Washington, D.C., 1970), pp.
272-77.
On May 2, the ROTC building at Kent
State was set afire. On May 5, Kent State
students congregated on the university
Commons and defied an order by the Guard to
disperse. Guardsmen proceeded to disperse the
crowd. The students then began to taunt Guard
units and to throw rocks…
Many guardsmen said they had hard going
as they withdrew up the hill. Fassinger said he
was hit six times by stones, once on the
shoulder so hard that he stumbled.
Fassinger had removed his gas mask to see
more clearly. He said the guardsmen had
reached a point between the Pagoda and Taylor
Hall, and he was attempting to maintain them
in a reasonable orderly formation, when he
heard a sound like a shot, which was
immediately followed by a volley of shots. He
saw the troops on the Taylor Hall end of the
line shooting. He yelled, “Cease-fire!” and ran
along the line repeating the command.
Major Jones said he first heard an
explosion which he thought was a firecracker.
As he turned to his left, he heard another
explosion which he knew to be an M-1 rifle
shot. As he turned to his right, toward Taylor
Hall, he said he saw guardsmen kneeling and
bringing their rifles to their shoulders. He heard
another M-1 shot, and then a volley of them.
He yelled, “Cease-fire!” several times, and
rushed down the line shoving rifle barrels up
and away from the crowd. He hit several
guardsmen on their helmets with his swagger
stick to stop them from firing.
General Canterbury stated that he first heard
a single shot, which he thought was fired from
some distance away on his left and which in his
opinion did not come from a military weapon.
Immediately afterward, he heard a volley of M1 fire from his right, the Taylor Hall end of the
line. The Guard’s fire was directed away from
the direction from which Canterbury thought the
initial nonmilitary shot came…
Canterbury, Fassinger, and Jones – the three
ranking officers on the hill – all said no order to
fire was given.
Twenty-eight guardsmen have
acknowledged firing from Blanket Hill. Of
these, 25 fired 55 shots from rifles, two fired
five shots from .45 caliber pistols, and one fired
a single blast from a shotgun. Sounds tracks
indicate that the firing of these 61 shots lasted
approximately 13 seconds. The time of the
shooting was approximately 12:25 PM. Four
persons were killed and nine were wounded…
The shootings led to protests on college
campuses throughout the United States, and a
student strike - causing over 450 campuses
across the country to close with both violent
and non-violent demonstrations.[10] A
common sentiment was expressed by students
at New York University with a banner hung out
of a window which read "They Can't Kill Us
All."[11]
Just five days after the shootings, 100,000
people demonstrated in Washington, D.C.
against the war and the killing of student
protestors. Ray Price, Nixon's Chief
Speechwriter from 1969-74 recalled the
Washington demonstrations saying, "The city
was an armed camp. The mobs were smashing
windows, slashing tires, dragging parked cars
into intersections, even throwing bedsprings off
overpasses into the traffic down below. This
was the quote, student protest. That's not
student protest, that’s civil war."[10] Not only
was Nixon taken to Camp David for two days
for his own protection, but Charles Colson
(Counsel to President Nixon from 1969 to
1973) stated that the military was called up to
protect the administration from the angry
students, he recalled that "The 82nd Airborne
was in the basement of the executive office
building, so I went down just to talk to some of
the guys and walk among them, and they're
lying on the floor leaning on their packs and
their helmets and their cartridge belts and their
rifles cocked and you’re thinking, 'This can't be
the United States of America. This is not the
greatest free democracy in the world. This is a
nation at war with itself.'"[10]
Shortly after the shootings took place, the
Urban Institute conducted a national study that
concluded the Kent State shooting was the
single factor causing the only nationwide
student strike in U.S. history—over 4 million
students protested and over 900 American
colleges and universities closed during the
student strikes. The Kent State campus
remained closed for six weeks.