2005 news from Kent, Ohio, KSU, Kent State 1970

NEWS: The racist murders of three civil rights workers named Cheney, Goodman and Schwerner in Mississippi in 1964 was the subject of a Hollywood film, "Mississippi Burning". This injustice was finally re-opened after 40 years and the primary conspirator-killer was recently convicted in June of 2005 and sent to jail for the rest of his wasted life: www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/21/mississippi.killings/

NEWS: The racist murder of 15-year-old Emmitt Till in Mississippi in 1955, the topic of a song by Bob Dylan, was also recently re-opened after 50 years of cover-up and injustice: www.alternet.org/columnists/story/18690/

QUESTION: IS THE COVER-UP OF MURDER AT KENT STATE IN 1970 THE NEXT INJUSTICE TO BE RE-OPENED AND UNCOVERED? A new Hollywood film about Kent State/Vietnam? And new truthful information is forthcoming soon? Added pressure upon the triggermen at Kent State in 1970 to finally come forward and identify the officers (and Governor?) responsible for the orders to shoot and kill on May 4, 1970, at Kent State University?

We do not seek vengeance or imprisonment for those responsible at Kent State 1970 all these years later. We seek true healing for everyone victimized by COINTELPRO and other abuses of US government power during the 1960s and 1970s.

For the sake of the mothers of our four Kent State martyrs, we seek truth and reconciliation. We welcome the support of the family of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other USA victims of injustice and cover-up.

We seek an official US government-approved TRUTH COMMISSION exactly like other victims in foreign countries.

Only the truth can free the Kent State 1970 triggermen from the awesome burden of guilt forced upon them by the politicians and military leaders responsible for the orders to kill at Kent State University on May 4, 1970.

Check out the proven value of international TRUTH COMMISSIONS in other countries...

Here's proof that truth and justice for our Kent State martyrs remains just around the corner in the near future. What will it take? A new Hollyword film production featuring modern young actors reaching out for justice across decades of modern US history? New books filled with new information crying out against the cover-up of murder at Kent State in 1970?

Each year, Kent May 4 Center director Alan Canfora assists numerous US students creating Kent State 1970 educational projects as part of NATIONAL HISTORY DAY educational competions (NHD). See: http://nationalhistoryday.org/ Many of these NHD students creating Kent State educational projects have won their state competitions and earned honors at the national competitions held each year near Washington DC.

Recently, three young Chicago-area NHD students created a documentary film regarding the longstanding injustice of the 1964 racist murders of three young civil rights workers in Mississippi. Their NHD educational documentary film led to the new investigation and 2005 conviction and jailing of Edgar Ray Killen, the 1964 KKK ringleader:

Students Redo Civil Rights History

CHICAGO, June 10,2005

High school students Sarah Seigal, Britany Saltiel, and Allison Nichols inset on video Edgar Ray Killen after his arrest. (Photo: CBS)

Despite receiving threatening e-mail to mind their own business, the young girls lobbied the governor of Mississippi and members of Congress to take another look at the murders.

Murdered civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, left, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, right. (Photo: CBS)

Edgar Ray Killen is shown in a file photo from 1964. (Photo: AP)

(CBS) A trio from an affluent suburban Chicago high school played a role most students don't get: They helped change history.

"I don't think that it hit us that this was actually happening until we got the call that Killen was arrested," says Allison Nichols, a student at Stevenson High School.

Killen is Edgar Ray Killen. The former Klan leader was arrested in January for the 1964 murders of three young civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner. And, as CBS News Correspondent Cynthia Bowers reports, some of the credit goes to the students and their school project.

"I think we really helped draw attention to the murders and really just kind of sparked it," says student Britany Salatiel,

The students' documentary wasn't the first to look into the killings. Hollywood's version, "Mississippi Burning," came out 17 years ago.

But without a blockbuster budget, Sarah Seigal, Salatiel and Nichols looked into questions that the film left hanging, spending hundreds of hours pouring over documents, watching old news footage, talking to investigators and even interviewing Killen himself.

"We kept hearing that they were trying to undercover recruit the young blacks for the communist movement," says Killen in the documentary.

"After talking with the family members of the boys who were murdered, the project was no longer something we did for school," says Siegel.

So the sophomores pushed on. Despite receiving threatening e-mail to mind their own business, the young girls lobbied the governor of Mississippi and members of Congress to take another look at the murders.

Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis knew the three slain civil rights workers and after meeting with the students helped to draft the congressional resolution to reopen the case.

"These three young women they had a vision," says Lewis. "They got in the way, and sometimes you have to be creative to get in the way."

The students never got a grade or school credit for the project but say they did learn a valuable lesson.

"If you care about something and if you are affected by something, it is not enough to just sit there and talk about it," says Nichols. "You have to take action you have to see what you can do to help."

The teenagers will be watching Killen's trial closely, hoping their history project will finally end in justice.

On September 12, 1905, a small group of young American socialists gathered at Peck's Restaurant located at 140 Fulton Street in lower Manhattan and established the first national US student activist organization -- the INTERCOLLEGIATE SOCIALIST SOCIETY.

Prominent young activists including Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Clarence Darrow and other prominent socialists founded the ISS. According to:

"The ISS was organized for the purpose of promoting the study and advocacy of socialism among college students and faculty members. During its most productive years, the ISS had active chapters on many campuses across the country, particularly in the eastern and Midwestern states. As a socialist educational organization, the ISS established numerous study and reading groups, sponsored rallies and lecture engagements for prominent socialists, published book lists and pamphlets relating to a variety of socialist issues, and held occasional national meetings and annual conventions. In 1921, the ISS changed its name to the League for Industrial Democracy so as to reflect its then older constituency and broader objectives."

During the 1920s and 1930s, the Student League for Industrial Democracy inspired new student activist organizations which blossomed across America in hundreds of campus chapters that rallied millions of anti-war students before World War II.

In 1962, the Student League for Industrial Democracy morphed into a new national student activist organization: STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY (SDS). The civil rights movement and Vietnam War provoked SDS to emerge as a powerful activist organization which unfortunately self-destructed in 1969. However, SDS inspired all modern US student activism which continues to thrive at high schools, colleges and universities all across modern America in the 21st century.

Therefore, the link between American student activists in ISS in 1905 and modern student activism in 2005 is an unbroken chain of organizations, events and activists! If you were a US student activist at anytime, anywhere during the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s or in the new 21st century: JOIN US to announce our pride for the past and our commitment to support, promote and join modern student activism in 2005 and beyond!

NOTE: for details of ISS/SDS history, see the appendix of the book SDS by Kirkpatrick Sale online:

NOTE: this announcement is the beginning of a plan of action, demonstration and commemoration. Feel free to contact us to assist planning, organizing and promotion of this important event. Of course, we will speak out about modern issues of concern and promote modern student activists in the lead of this event!

C-SPAN TV offered the May 3, 2005, educational forum at KSU sponsored by the May 4 Task Force students. Featuring 3 wounded at Kent in 1970: Dean Kahler, Joe Lewis and Jim Russell as well as 1970 student Rita Rubin-Long and two current KSU student activists: Erin Root and Greg Schwartz.

This great forum may be available again in the future. For updated C-SPAN SCHEDULES, see:

Nice job once again this year, as usual, by the fine May 4 Task Force students. See their web site: http://dept.kent.edu/may4/

May 4, 2005: 35th annual Commemoration at KSU was a fanatastic success! Well over 1,000 people joined us for May 1-4 events sponsored by the fine young students of the May Task Force student organization: http://dept.kent.edu/may4/

Kent State remembers students killed protesting Vietnam War

KENT, Ohio - (KRT) - Most Americans old enough to remember President John F. Kennedy's assassination can recall what they were doing or where they were when it happened.

But the sister of one of the four students slain at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, told about 500 onlookers Wednesday that probably only a handful of people remember what they were doing when those shootings occurred during a Vietnam War protest. Nancy Tuttle remembers. She was in Lawrence, Kan., with a month-old boy. Her brother, William Schroeder, was one of the four killed.

Barry Levine, who was the boyfriend of Allison Krause, also remembers. She died in his arms after being shot while running through a campus parking lot.

The Victory Bell at the Commons at Kent State University rang 15 times at 12:24 p.m. Wednesday in honor of the students killed and wounded at Kent State and 10 days later at Jackson State University in Mississippi.

Killed at Kent State were Schroeder, Krause, Jeffrey Miller and Sandra Scheuer. Nine others were wounded. At Jackson State, two students were killed: James Earl Green and Phillip Gibbs.

Turnout Wednesday for the 35th anniversary of the Kent State shooting was relatively light. People drifted into and out of the audience that listened to speeches delivered over three hours.

Banners were displayed on the side of a fenced-in area that blocked off a construction area. The signs included: "Carry On the Struggle, March On" and "Casualties of War; The Cost of Freedom" and "Kent State, unnecessary, unwarranted, inexcusable and unforgettable."

The theme of this year's commemoration was "Tell Me Father, Did They Aim?" - a quote from a telegram sent by Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary to then-FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover the day after the shootings.

An anonymous poem, Who killed Allison and Why?, was read aloud. It laid out the positions of townspeople, teachers, the mayor, guardsmen, Gov. James Rhodes and President Richard Nixon on the shooting.

In the poem, no one took the blame: The townspeople felt the protesters were bums and needed to be taught a lesson, the teachers thought the students' opinions should be written and not heard, the governor said "not on my watch," and the guardsmen said they were "just doing what they were told."

"Stay home, Billy, stay home," Tuttle said she had pleaded in her last conversation with her brother. "He never did listen to me anyway," she said of her 6-foot-2 younger brother. "My brother's life was taken away - all his creativity, ambition and intelligence was lost. I lost him to history, and his history became mine."

Russell Miller, Jeffrey's brother, talked about the insight his brother had even at age 16, and he urged today's students to maintain balance in their lives. He described war as senseless and said the May 4 protest contributed to shortening the Vietnam War.

Mike Alewitz, Scheuer's friend, said he came not to mourn but to honor his friend. "When we act together, human solidarity can defeat corporate greed," he said. "Don't let them trivialize what we did at Kent State and Jackson State."

A former guardsman, Chad Salamon, 25, of Ravenna, Ohio, spoke out against the war in Iraq. He spent six months in Iraq and said he learned firsthand that it is a "pointless conflict. When they approve a policy that replaces debt and destruction, then I will support our leaders."

The May 4 Task Force, which organizes the annual commemoration, ended the event with a performance by the Waterband, a local band, singing the May 4 anthem "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

An anti-war protest sponsored by the Portage Community Peace Coalition and the Kent State Anti-War Committee followed the commemoration. About 200 people marched peacefully from the campus site to downtown Kent.

NOTICE: May 4 Commemorative Double-CD MUSIC COMPILATION! Featuring brand new songs by Chryssie Hynde, Joe Walsh, Yoko Ono, The Numbers Band, DINK, Chris Butler, Holly Near and many others! Only $20! Support the May 4 Task Force students at KSU and their annual memorial student activism scholarship fund. All proceeds to scholarship fund. Available at May 4 Commemoration at KSU or online. For song/musician details and online purchase: https://commerce.cashnet.com/may4

The May 4 Task Force student organization at KSU is sponsoring 35th anniversary commemoration events from May 1 through May 4, 2005. The May 4 commemoration will start at noon on the KSU Commons. For details, see: http://dept.kent.edu/may4/

1pm-3pm: Vietnam veterans' panel discussion featuring Gary Lockwood, Tim Butz, Ken Johnson and others to be announced.

4pm-7pm: Kent Students for a Democratic Society public reunion event featuring premier of a new documentary film by Dr. Daniel Miller of Oregon, "Fire in the Heartland -- A History of Dissent at Kent State University, 1960-1980". An educational panel of Kent SDS speakers will follow. Panelists to be announced.

7:30pm-9:30pm: "I Was There" panel discussion featuring eyewitness participants at KSU in 1969 and 1970. Panelists include: Tim Butz, Vietnam veteran/KSU grad student in 1970; Chuck Ayres, 1970 Daily Kent Stater cartoonist and May 4 photographer/eyewitness; Bob Carpenter, WKNT-Radio broadcaster who taped live KSU protest actions in May of 1970; KSU Prof. Dr. Jerry Lewis, May 4 faculty observer/eyewitness; Candy Knox and Howie Emmer of Kent SDS in 1969.

The Kent State University administration of President Carole Cartwright will sponsor the Sixth Annual Symposium on Democracy, "Democracy and the Arts: Voices and Choices," on the Kent cmpus of Kent State University. For details, see: http://www.kent.edu/History/may4_1970/democracy/Democracy2005/index.cfm

7pm-9:30pm: "Looking Back, Looking Forward" panel discussion in Kiva auditorium of KSU Student Center. 1970 eyewitnesses will discuss their views of tragic events. Panelists include: Joe Lewis, Jim Russell and Dean Kahler (wounded by gunshots on May 4, 1970), Rita Rubin-Long, 1970 friend of KSU martyrs Allison, Sandy and Jeff; KSU 2005 students Erin Roof and Greg Swartz; and audience participation including families and friends of our four martyrs and various May 4, 1970 eyewitnesses.

11pm: Annual Candlelight March sponsored by May 4 Task Force students at KSU. Gather at Victory Bell on KSU Commons at 10pm. March led by KSU Prof. Dr. Jerry Lewis departs KSU Commons at 11pm. March is followed by all-night candlelight vigil in Prentice Hall parking lot at memorial spaces where our martyrs died in 1970. See M4TF web site for vigil sign-up info and to reserve your 30-minute vigil place between midnight and noon: http://dept.kent.edu/may4/

9:30am-11am: Women's Gathering on 3rd floor of KSU Student Center. Kent SDS women and modern KSU feminists gather to share women's liberation inspiration.

Noon-3pm: 35th annual May 4 Commemoration sponsored by the May 4 Task Force students. Speakers include: William Schulz, leader of Amnesty International USA; Gene Young, Jackson State massacre eyewitness 1970; families and friends of our four martyrs, including Russell Miller (Jeff's brother), Nancy Tuttle (Bill's sister), Barry Levine (Allison's mate), Mike Alewitz (Sandy's friend); Ken Hammond and Marc Lencl of Kent SDS; and others to be announced.

NOTE: Anti-War MARCH from KSU campus into downtown Kent will follow the commemoration!

Philip Caputo has a mediocre new book, "13 Seconds", but the free DVD is excellent! This weak book without photos is one of the most unhelpful books ever about Kent State 1970. But the DVD alone is worth the $20 cost of the book/DVD package so, I recommend buying this package at your local bookstore or online.

Too bad the book is mostly awful. What a shame such a previously great author would botch the task of writing a modern Kent State 1970 book.

Fortunately, the excellent documentary film DVD, "Kent State: The Day The War Came Home", is offered attached to the book package. The DVD documentary is the best ever and features 1970 student victims, eyewitnesses, guardsmen, mothers of our martyrs and great 1970 film footage. This fine 50-minute DVD documentary film, originally shown on THE LEARNING CHANNEL in 2000 and on DISCOVERY CHANNEL in recent years, is finally available (cheap) to the public!

So, buy the book/DVD package online for under $20, sit back and learn from the fine DVD documentary film and use this lame book as a coaster for your beer or coffee. Or sell the book at Ebay for a few bucks and keep the excellent educational DVD.

This quite disappointing book really is a poor volume of mostly copied/pasted internet info along with recycled info from other people's books about Kent 1970. The thin book I read last night, only 122 pages written by Caputo, mostly regurgitates obtuse opinions of others with no footnotes or index. Nearly 80 pages of very old free-internet 1970 information is added as filler in appendices. The book is promoted online, however, as 207 pages. This 122 page essay by Caputo would be more appropriate as a long magazine article perhaps.

Caputo admits he was a young 1970 newspaper reporter sitting on an airplane from Chicago to Cleveland when we were gunned down at Kent State on May 4, 1970. Later in the book, he claims he "was there" at Kent. Several times he admits he simply cannot recall exactly where he was at times during 1970!

To my knowledge, Caputo never interviewed me or anybody else from Kent 1970 for this surprising volume of emptiness. Yet Caputo feels free to pronounce his off-the-wall analysis of the intentions and impact of everybody he does not understand. A strange approach, in my opinion.

Yo, Phil. If you wanted the real story you should have contacted the real people instead of parroting bad info from questionable second-hand others. Why not follow the lead of the brilliant DVD film-makers who actually interviewed real Kent State eyewitnesses?

I wonder: did Caputo even bother to watch the great DVD documentary? He could have learned a thing or two, I'm certain.

This book is not a legitimate search for the complicated set of facts, circumstances and developments of May, 1970, at Kent State University. Philip Caputo, probably based upon poor advice, has merely assembled a recycled sham of poorly-selected, previously-published information and misinformation.

Caputo's obvious May 4 mentor is a fellow-May 4 charlatan named William A. Gordon -- a notorious California tour-guide author who despises most May 4 activists. It's too bad Caputo praises, mimics and supports Bill Gordon's questionable old distortions throughout this "new" Caputo book.

Disregarding the 4 million students who shut down over 800 colleges during the National Student Strike of May, 1970, anti-activists Caputo/Gordon declare the May 4 massacre as America's "most popular murders". Overlooking numerous legitimate historians, Caputo/Gordon also state Kent 1970 had little impact upon US war policies in SE Asia.

Caputo/Gordon now exaggerate KSU anti-war student militance in 1970 -- militance similar to hundreds of other campuses without massacres -- and mostly let the Kent State killers off the hook.

Like his pal William A. Gordon, Philip Caputo is not a legitimate May 4 "expert", in my opinion. Caputo/Gordon are second-hand information interpreters with questionable biases. Seeking to capitalize upon the 35th anniversary of the 1970 Kent tragedy, this book was clearly rushed to publication.

Memo to Phil Caputo: next time you write a quickie-book, get a legitimate fact checker. Kent, Ohio, is located in Portage County, not "Porter County". The Ohio National Guard invaded Kent on May 2, not May 3, 1970. Numerous other errors of fact and opinion are found throughout this hastily-compiled bit of "journalism".

Caputo closes his book with a groovy appeal for perpetual pacifism among people everyplace always. How nice. He tips his hat to well-known pacifists and implies the tired old "blame the victim" mentality we've heard so many times before.

Such an experienced journalist, a Pulitzer Prize winner when he was younger, could have summarized all available factual information for students and others seeking this valuable historical information. But, no. Caputo has chosen the easy way to publish fast in 2005: copy/paste/regurgitate/distort/sell.