this oral history was absolutely integral to putting together the pattern that i've talked about today. and it's certainly a pleasure to get to share my research with you. thank you very much. thank you. our next speaker is two presenters, craig simpson is the lilly library archivists at indiana university where he's responsible for the arrangement and descriptions of the man script collections. pryer to iu she was special collections librarian at kent state university where he headed the kent state shootings oral history project and did approximately 40 interviews on the events pertaining to may 4, 1970. craig is a member of the academy of certified archivists and twice a member at the oral history training institute held

annually at kenyon college. gregory wilson is associate professor in the department of history at the university of akron. his research and teaching interests include 20th century united states political economy, public and environmental history, ohio history and the scholarship of teaching and learning. he is the author of "communities left behind: the area redevelopment administration 1945 to 1965" as well as the co-author on an upcoming state history of ohio. his oral history project done with ua students, the times they were a-changing, akron remembers 1968, won the ohio academy of history, public history award in 2010. their paper is entitled "above the shots, the kent state shootings and the politics of truth, trauma and reconciliation." craig? okay.

thank you, barbara. the shootings of may 4, 1970 lasting all of 13 seconds have reverberated for approximately 40 years. in purely factual terms, they were the culmination of a clash at kent state university between student protesters and members of the ohio national guard. in the lingering debate over historical memory the shots have been regarded, depending upon one's point of view, as the responsibility of either left wing radicals or a right wing government. as a symbol of younger or older generation malfeasance, as the

end of the 1960s protest movement or the beginning of a new protest movement entirely. to understand the memory of the kent state shootings it's essential to become familiar with the events immediately preceding them. on friday, may 1st, 1970, the day following president nixon's announcement of the invasion at cambodia student protesters, as you can see in this photo gathered on the kent campus and symbolically buried the constitution. that evening at kent riots broke out in town and resulted in many stones being thrown at local properties of business establishments and resulting in a lot of property damage. the following day on saturday, may 2nd, fulfilling a rumor heard throughout the whole day, the rotc building was set on fire by arsonists, and the national guard was called in. they arrived i think around after midnight or thereabouts. the next day on sunday, initial

calm was interrupted by an inflammatory speech by governor james rhodes echoing governor reagan's sentiments in california. rhodes, it should be mentioned, was in the middle of a hotly contested primary race. the primary which was held i think that tuesday, the day after may 4th. and that evening there was a lot of tension between the guard and students, all throughout campus and the town. and then, of course, on monday, may 4, midterm classes and exams were held during the morning. at the noon hour the victory bell was rung and about 2,000 active protesters and a few more thousand curious onlookers gathered on the campus. the national guard threw teargas canisters, fixed their bayonets and marched toward the crowd. at the top of the hill known as the pagoda as things appeared to

be over and were calling down, some members of the guard suddenry wielded around and fired killing four students and wounding nine others. the formal may 4 oral history l fired killing four students and wounding nine others. the formal may 4 oral history project first began around 1990, long before i was ever at kent. it was actually started by a member of the kent community in conjunction with the ksu special collections in archives who received all of the interviews. approximately 69 interviews were collected. it was based almost entirely around the big commemoration. so the 20th commemoration in 1990, the 25th in '95 and then the 30th in 2000 were where most of these were actually collected. in 2005, after the project had been dormant for a few years, the special collections

librarian, which was me, took over and managed the project until about 2010 when i left ksu and went to indiana university. we collected approximately 40 interviews, we being myself and then a few students that i supervised. and we wanted this new part of the project to reflect some new goals and one of these goals was to have more variety of narrators. what i mean by that is the initial stage of the project, because it was heavily commemoration-based, inevitably you'll get primarily former students and then some faculty. now, we still did collect those and we did collect interviews during the big commemorations like the 35th and then the 40th which was the last one i attended in 2010, but we also wanted to collect a wide variety of interviews which we did just kind of informally throughout each year. and so as a result, we cast a bit of a wider net. so, for example, during that

five-year period we interviewed two former presidents of kent state university, michael schwartz and carol cartwright. also interviewed several citizens of the kent community whose voices really had not been heard, they had not been interviewed that much either. and a member of black united students who eventually became president of b.u.s. after may 4, i think around 1971 and also two members of the ohio national guard as well. we also wanted to have a wider time frame, and by what i mean by that is this. a lot of times when people look at may 4 they focus specifically on may 4 or just the four days i gave you. we wanted to broaden the perspective a bit and look at some of the precursors, i didn't actually put it on here. but two of the big precursors

were the b.u.s. walkout in 1968 on the kent campus and the sds takeover speech in 1969. we actively sought and got a couple of interviews that talked about those events. as far as the aftermath, we also wanted to look for narrators who could discuss some of these issues mentioned here. legal cases like the kent 25 which greg will talk about in a few minutes, the krause verses rhodes big civil suit in the mid 1970s, the gym annex controversy also known as tent city in 1977 which is when student protesters camped out and unsuccessfully prevented an extension of the ksu gym from being built on part of the site of the shootings. the memorial design competition, some might say debacle, between 1985 and 1990 which was very controversial because some people -- there was a lot of

debate over how these events should be remembered or if they should be remembered at all. and eventually the memorial commemoration in 1990. the strubbe tape, which is an ongoing debate about a very old tape which some believe rendering audible "order to fire." you may have seen that in the papers the last couple years. the national hedge center of historic places in 2010 officially recognized the site as a historic landmark which was a very significant event. and greg put up the website there. some common denominators and conflicting interpretations in this -- i should say i'm speaking in a lot of generalities here. what i'm saying here does not reflect every single narrator. these were some general broad observations. one of them is that many of the people that i interviewed tend to see themselves more as bystanders than participants. many of them were against the vietnam war and they talk about their opinions of the war kind

of starting neutral and then gradually changing over time with middle of the road political views. what they were really up by and large on the first few days of may was actually military occupation of the campus. chuck ayers, a student reporter talked about in his interview he took off his sweater vest to reveal his kent state t-shirt underneath and he did so as a sign of solidarity with the students and what they were going through. a more extreme case of activism was recounted by a narrator named james mueller. mueller, the day after the shootings, he didn't belong to ksu but a university of akron alums. the day after the shootings we . the day after the shootings we took a bus to columbus and tried to make a citizen's arrest of governor rhodes. there were also accounts from

students who were actually in the line of fire such as this one here. it's kind of hard to see in the back there. but catherine delattre, one of the students i interviewed, she's being pushed out of the line of fire by her boyfriend. that's a better view of her. glen frank was able to calm the students down, defuse the situation and probably save a lot of lives that day. the two national guardsmen offered very diverse interpretations of these events. one, j. reynold schneider who was a captain who led a company on may 4 that day, his company was not involved in the actual shootings. but he bristled at the suggestion that the guard was unprepared for riot training for this kind of event. another guardsman, art crump el also said they had very lytal riot training in the kind that the campus state presented. let's play just a little bit of

this if i can. there we are. this might be a little loud. >> well, when i saw this happening and the man was edging his car forward and bumping my friend who staggered back a couple steps each time, i realized that this could be a very, very unhappy outcome at the least. and very dangerous. i then unclicked the safety on my m-1 which was loaded, and one thing we were trained and pretty well in the national guard and in the army when we were trained on active duty was to never click the safety off your weapon

until you were ready to use it. i was fully ready to use it. and i can remember still the feeling on my finger of clicking that safety. so anyway, luckily i saw a police car pull out -- there was a -- >> sorry to cut that short. all right. additionally many narrators believe in a conspiracy solve some sort.of some sort.

nobody believes on exactly what that conspiracy is. some believe a circle of guardsmen made up their minds in advance to open fire in order to teach the students a lesson. on the other side, albert van kirk who was a vietnam veteran with right wing leanings who also administered first aid to many of the wounded suggested radical organizations in town created an elaborate underground network that deliberately provoked a confrontation with the university administration, the town administration and members of the guard. he also implied that a bullet hole in the pa go da sculpture shows a bullet trajectory implying perhaps a sniper fired first.go da sculpture shows a bullet trajectory implying perhaps a sniper fired first.da sculpture shows a bullet trajectory implying perhaps a sniper fired first. yet another narrator who is in this photo in the background behind this famous john filo photo, he claimed to have observed one of the victims also in this photo throwing stones at a very close range at the guard, although i should hasten to add

his memory of where the victim's body landed does not match the factual record, as you can see here. what this last account may suggest instead though is how the gym annex has altered the collective memory of this event because he recalls viewing the shootings and where the annex now stands. we actually went out there during his interview. it's -- i show this to give an approximation of how the annex gets in here. many protesters were upset about the annex being built because they felt it was being built on holy ground, on sacred ground. certainly respect and understand that opinion. i think as a historian i would just add to that that the other issue here is how it can alter people's historical memory because it was very -- he was very sincere in his account, but it's very easy to get confused out there with this structure being built. i'll turn it over to greg.

>> okay. let's carry forward a little bit and talk maybe a little bit about how we can contextualize the events of these four days in may. we in this short paper can't begin to deal with all the complexities, obviously. but we'll offer a few initial observations today and hopefully engage in some discussion afterwards. at the core of the events are the four deaths and the nine wounded. the dead and the wounded make the events significant. they are at the heart of what locals call may 4 and what those out sigh the area call kent state.s the area call kent stati the area call kent statd the area call kent state the area call kent state. and all of the narrators are coming to terms with the dead, with the manner of their death, the wounded and the manner of their injuries. it's not simply that students

were shot, but rather why they were shot, that the shooting, the woundeding and the dying have signified. hence the heart of the matter is the contextualizing of the dead and the wounded. through oral history that emerge in the process of narration, recording and analyzing those narrators. we're engaged in an effort to assign meaning to the deaths that craig outlined and to the larger period of time we have come to call, quote, the '60s. we're mrs. considering issues of power in society and the narrators discuss various conversations, issues related to government policy, to university policies, to behavior and to social norms as well. and again, just considering this issue in terms of the idea of reconciliation over the deaths and the two issues there are the reconciliation and again the larger meaning of the 1960s. if we take a queue from work in conflict resolution, we can see that the events at kent are a long way from a point of

reconciliation which you can consider on a continuum between sort of an additional stance on one end and then reconciliation at the end of a conflict resolution process. it's clear within the oral history testimonies that in the collection, and in many other sources that you can look and read about, that the events are still yet marked by an additional stance. scholars have written that these adversarial relationships in the context of conflict and trauma which is our theme for the conference involve assigning blame to the other's actions. the goal in this discussion then is to get the other person or other group to change behavior based on assigning guilt. both sides then defend their

actions and relate those actions as merely a response to the other's actions as well. that's this adversarial stance. now, within -- as craig mentioned, just sort of general patterns here sort of emerging as we begin to really look at these interview, i'll offer just three narratives if you will that have emerge friday the interviews so far. one we might call a radical perspective which sees the deaths as murder or at least unwarranted action by the guard. craig has mentioned some of that already. or they came from a direct order to fire. the strubbe has fed into this perspective of late. another narration perspective would be maybe a conservative one in which the deaths came mainly from radicals who escalated events through illegal and violent protests. and then there's a third narrative which i've come to call our tragic or accidental narrative in which the dead and wounded were largely victims of circumstance, accidental. in all of these but perhaps in

the radical and say conservative one, we can see that there is an effort to defend the position circumstance, accidental. in all of these but perhaps in the radical and say conservative one, we can see that there is an effort to defend the position through memory, through narration of events through these oral histories. in the words of paul thompson who has cited the work of others, these narrators have a, quote, sense of self protectiveness in the maintenance of their traditions. so from the perspective of maybe a radical perspective here for the guard as committing murder or at least committing an unwarranted action of shooting students on may 4th, there's a stronger sense that in this continuum of conflict resolution that justice must precede reconciliation. here, just a sample from carol mirman who is pictured here in the filo picture which i think everyone has probably seen, looking at other people in this picture besides mary veccio and the body down here, carol miriman is here and her

testimony i think gives us a perspective on this radical end. i'll see if this works for us today. >> but nonetheless, it was really, really, really painful to say students should have been shot based on misconceptions and narrow minded views of love it or leave it. people today still say, forget it, get over it. forget this stuff. they were rabble rousers, what does it mean to stand up and say when you're in opposition to the war, when you say we shouldn't be surrounded by tanks and troops, when nobody is really willing to negotiate and talk about things, what other options are available? i'm not saying [ inaudible ]. i'm saying what happened was wrong and what came out in the press, lies. the awful things that people said were terrible and made it a lot harder for the healing process, for the guards and the students to be able to stand up and tell the truth. to try and heal. that's what i want to say.

>> from the other perspective, a more conservative narrative has emerged again in the interviews that craig has conducted and others that were done earlier. justice was already served on that day in the form of the shootings or in the form of the trials that came afterwards which resulted in a civil suit -- a civil suit which resulted in an apology, some would say an apology, but not an admission of guilt. the conservative view has taken that perspective, but also, as craig mentioned, others have seen the event here as not worthy of memorialization or commemoration at all. get over it is the typical phrase that you will hear and see in many of these narrators as they talk about the

experience. john garibaldi was a young professor at kent state in psychology. he was interviewed by craig for the project. he has followed this pattern as well. i'll play a short clip from his interview here. >> what do you think the consequences were of the shootings? >> well, one of the consequences that was rather parent was that there weren't any further demonstrations. that is to say, there weren't demonstrations of the sort that we had or that were going on. it was like all of a sudden people realized this was a deadly game. this was not a panty raid kind of mentally. this was not something that could be done on a whim without

regard to consequences, that the consequences were indeed dramatic and severe. and i think it was a sobering moment nationally to see that we could have an occasion where the youth of our country were actually killed by the military units that were there to preserve the peace. of course, there was a lot of sympathy for slain students, talking about young people, they weren't children, first of all. they were young, they were age of reason, they were grown people. we had innocent victims. but i'm talking about the people who were leading the rebellion, who were fomenting unrest among the student body. these were people fully in control of their faculties, and they were people that had a mission. >> okay. since we're running short on time, i'll try to move through the last part of this more quickly. just in terms of a third narrative, if you will, about a tragic narrative or accidental narrative, captain ron snyder is

pictured here with the arrow here and the body of jeff miller and carol mirman is in this photo, as well. snyder has said, and we don't have time to play his clip, my personal feeling is that it was a terrible accident. that's number one. second thing would be it was a terrible accident that received national attention to the national conscience. okay? another guardsman who remained a anonymous said there's no one to blame, no incident to blame. in my mind i think was the dynamics of a lot of things happening at that one time. i truly feel sorry for a lot of people and i want to say that i feel equally sorry for the families of those students that were shot and equally sorry for the guards man that shot them. so trying to wrap up, in how we can sort of think about these

narratives and the events at kent in the larger understanding of the '60s, historian david steigerwald has said that for those on the left, the '60s was a moment of great change abruptly ended by war and right wing backlash. those on the right, conservatives, quote the beginning of a national crisis in authority and morality that legitimized anti-social behavior. clearly you see both of these perspectives in a variety of ways. and carol mirman and o and clearly then the oral history testimonies certainly don't settle the questions that have arisen about the events of kent. and they certainly haven't settled what the meaning of the 1960s is, but they certainly have given us a lot of evidence to look at and to consider as we begin to contextualize these

events. and accept them in the context in the meaning 1960s. so thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, craig. our next speaker is rosalie uyola a phd. student from rutgers university new park. she earned her master's in technology. as a sixth year public high school teacher, she promotes student directed oral history and mixed media community outreach projects and has been recognized by the national oral history association for her work. this year with the martha ross teaching award. she grew up in moscow and immigrated to the united states in 1991.

her dissertation newark remembers is an interdisciplinary project that will be the first to examine the struggles over memory and identity in newark, new jersey. liberation of rutgers newark history memory and black stude >> thank you so much. good morning, everyone. on february 24th, 1969, a group of black student activists took sit in. the illegal taking of the building was a highly contested event. student activists and supporters viewed the sit-in as a localized part of a larger protest for equality, social justice and freedom during the 60s. the opposition which included members of rutgers

administration, faculty, student body as well as councilman and his constituency identified the takeover as a disruptive act of disobedience and an attack on the american institutions of higher education. when rutgers university celebrated the 40th anniversary of the conklin hall liberation, in 2009, the collective memory changed from conflict to consensus through commemorative process that highlighted racial cooperation. the commemoration heralded the event as a turning point in the history of a racist university and credited the take over as the most diverse campus in the nation. in 2009, it was the 13th year run. i argue that the commemoration of conklin hall emphasizes the progressive narrative a university that changed