Kent State Massacre

All this talk about the Montgomery Boycott, Dr. King, and Obama....made me call my mom and have her tell me some her experiences growing up. I always remember her talking about the tear gas at Kent State in Ohio, which is known as the Kent State Massacre or the May 4th Massacre. But I never really asked mom to go into detail about it until today.
Before I get into the details let me give you some background information from Wikipedia..i shortened some of it:
Thursday, April 30-President Richard Nixon announced to the nation that an incursion into Cambodia had been launched by United States combat forces.
Friday, May 1 At Kent State University, a demonstration with about 500 students[8] was held on May 1 on the Commons. As the crowd dispersed to attend classes by 1 p.m. another rally was planned for May 4 to continue the protest of Nixon's expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia. There was widespread anger, and many protesters issued a call to "bring the war home." As a symbolic protest to Nixon's decision to send troops, a group of students watched a graduate student burying a copy of the U.S. Constitution while another student burned his draft card.Around midnight when people left a bar and began throwing beer bottles at cars and breaking downtown store fronts. In the process they broke a bank window which set off an alarm.By the time police arrived, a crowd of about 100 had already gathered. Some people from the crowd had already lit a small bonfire in the street. The crowd appeared to be a mix of bikers, students, and out-of town youths who regularly came to Kent's bars. A few members of the crowd began to throw beer bottles at the police, and then started yelling obscenities at them. The disturbance lasted for about an hour before the police restored order.
Saturday, May 2Kent's Mayor Leroy Satrom declared a state of emergency on May 2 and, later that afternoon, asked Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes to send the National Guard to Kent to help maintain order. When the National Guard arrived in town that evening (at around 10 P.M.), a large demonstration was already under way on the campus, and the campus Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) building was burning. The arsonists were never apprehended and no one was injured in the fire. More than a thousand protesters surrounded the building and cheered the building's burning. While attempting to extinguish the fire, several Kent firemen and police officers were hit with rocks and other objects by those standing near the fire. More than one fire engine company had to be called in because protesters carried the fire hose into the Commons and slashed it. The National Guard made many arrests, tear gas was used, and at least one student was wounded with a bayonet
Sunday, May 3 By Sunday, May 3, there were nearly 1,000 National Guardsmen on campus to control the students. During a press conference, Governor Rhodes called the protesters un-American and referred to the protesters as revolutionaries set on destroying higher education in Ohio. Rhodes also claimed he would obtain a court order declaring a state of emergency, banning further demonstrations, and gave the impression that a situation akin to martial law had been declared; however he never attempted to obtain such an order. Around 8:00 p.m., another rally was held on the campus Commons. By 8:45 p.m. the Guard used tear gas to disperse the crowd, and the students reassembled at the intersection of Lincoln and Main Streets, holding a sit-in in the hopes of gaining a meeting with Mayor Satrom and President White. At 11:00 p.m., the Guard announced that a curfew had gone into effect and began forcing the students back to their dorms. Ten Guardsmen were injured and a few students were bayoneted by Guardsmen.
Monday, May 4 a protest was scheduled to be held at noon, as had been planned three days earlier. University officials attempted to ban the gathering, handing out 12,000 leaflets stating that the event was canceled. Despite this, an estimated 2,000 people gathered on the university's Commons, near Taylor Hall. The protest began with the ringing of the campus's iron Victory Bell to mark the beginning of the rally, and the first protester began to speak.
Fearing that the situation might escalate into another violent protest, Companies A and C, 1/145th Infantry and Troop G of the 2/107th Armored Cavalry, Ohio ARNG, the units on the campus grounds, attempted to disperse the students. The legality of the dispersal was later debated at a subsequent wrongful death and injury trial. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that authorities did indeed have the right to disperse the crowd.
Just before noon, the Guard returned and again ordered the crowd to disperse. When most of the crowd refused, the Guard used tear gas. Because of wind, the tear gas had little effect in dispersing the crowd, and some began a second rock attack with chants of "Pigs off campus!" The students lobbed the tear gas canisters back at the National Guardsmen; however, they had put on gas masks upon first throwing tear gas at the students.
At this point, at 12:22 PM,[1] a number of guardsmen at the top of the hill abruptly turned and fired their M1 Garand rifles at the students. The guardsmen directed their fire not at the closest students, who were on the Taylor Hall veranda, but at those on the grass area and concrete walkway below the veranda, at those on the service road between the veranda and the parking lot, and at those in the parking lot. Bullets were not sprayed in all directions; instead, they were confined to a fairly limited line of fire leading from the top of the hill to the parking lot. Not all the soldiers who fired their weapons directed their fire into the students
The shootings killed four students and wounded nine. Two of the four students killed, Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller, had participated in the protest, and the other two, Sandra Scheuer and William Knox Schroeder, had been walking from one class to the next at the time of their deaths. Schroeder was also a member of the campus ROTC chapter. Of those wounded, none was closer than 71 feet to the guardsmen. Of those killed, the nearest (Miller) was 265 feet away, and their average distance from the guardsmen was 345ft.

Can you image a group of people seriously stand up for what they believed in no matter what the consequences are. It really makes my question myself and my generation and ask....is the reason we dont protest and fight for what we want, because we have no will power, no determination, no structure, self will, or are we scared of the consequences?

I think that things were a lot different then, and had no choice but to recognize peoples protest and change the problem, or atleast come up with a solution. I think many people including myself feels that we would get the same responses if we protested like they did in the 60's.
I am glad to say i feel we(all people) came together to make Obama our President elect/President.
It just blew my mind and thought it would be fun to share!