Four Dead in Ohio

mieyeed
7 days ago
3 min read

Eleventh in a series of posts about Protest Music for the current crisis.

Mary Anne Vecchio mourns the murder of Kent State student Jeffrey Miller.

I don't remember where I was when I first heard this song, but I do remember where I was when I heard the news.

Senior year, high school, a few days prior to our Spring chorus concert. We were gathered in the rehearsal room when one of my fellow singers came in and said that the National Guard had killed four people on the campus of Kent State University.

Though we were a generation jaded by the assassinations of beloved leaders, the nightly reports of deaths during the Viet Nam war and the incessant news of officially-sanctioned violence against anti-war and civil rights protesters, this news was chilling. Four students, not much older than we were, dead at the hands of a national force never designed to be used against fellow citizens.

These were American students, protesting the war, shot down by National Guard soldiers who were likely the same age as those they gunned down.

A protest of 300. Twenty eight National Guard soldiers who fired 67 rounds over 13 seconds at unarmed students. Four dead. Nine wounded. Two of the dead were not even involved in the protests.

It was another in a line of unspeakable outrages from the Nixon administration. If we only knew then how tame the Nixon administration would seem when faced with the monstrous actions of this current administration.

This is one of those protest songs that because it is so specific - the deaths at Kent State, and Nixon's demonizing of war protest - that I never expected it to have a life beyond that specific historic moment.

Then, we learned, that the National Guard has been activated in American cities against American citizens once again by a tyrannical president.

Ohio

The shootings at Kent State happened on May 4, 1970. The song was recorded a few weeks later on May 21, and was rush-released by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Atlantic records.

Looking back at Young's career, we might think he'd already been steeped in protest song.

He performed with Buffalo Springfield on the timeless For What It's Worth, but Ohio was the first protest song Young had written and released, though not, of course, his last.

Young reportedly was inspired to write the angry track after seeing the photo of student Mary Anne Vecchio kneeling and wailing over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller.

Young reportedly said that it was the most important lesson ever learned on an American campus.

The song was released as a single, backed by Stephen Stills" Find the Cost of Freedom, and flew up the charts. It didn't appear as a studio album cut until the best of collection, So Far.

The commercial power of a good protest song proven once again.

Now as the National Guard patrols Los Angeles, DC and is scheduled to be deployed in Chicago and in other American cities by a raging despot, those of us who were alive wonder when the next bullets will fly.