July 2023 Bonus Review: Kent State

The crime
On May 4, 1970, after three days of increasing unrest and the functional (and illegal) imposition of martial law on and around the campus of Kent State University, the Ohio National Guard fired on a peace rally protesting the U.S.’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. The shooting, which consisted of 67 rounds fired in 13 seconds, killed four — Allison Krause, 19; Jeffrey Glenn Miller, 20; Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20; and William Knox Schroeder, 19 — and wounded nine others, the majority in the back or while fleeing.

The story
The subtitle of Kent State, Derf Backderf’s award-winning 2020 “graphic history” of the shooting, is Four Dead In Ohio, and that’s what remains of the case with most of us half a century later, thanks to Crosby Stills Nash & Young’s “Ohio,” David Crosby sobbing through the fade-out. That, and the Pulitzer-winning photo of 14-year-old runaway Mary Ann Vecchio, kneeling beside Miller’s body and wailing in anguish.