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(Monday, May 4, 1970, 12:24 p.m. EDT; during the Cambodian Campaign, part of the Vietnam War, Cambodian Civil War, Indochina Wars and the Cold War) — Four unarmed students at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, two of them women, were shot to death this afternoon by Ohio National Guardsmen during a mass protest against the bombing of neutral Cambodia by U.S. military forces.
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Twenty-eight National Guard soldiers fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.
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Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the Cambodian Campaign, but other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.
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The four students killed included Jeffrey Glenn Miller, 20, shot through the mouth and killed instantly; Allison B. Krause, 19, suffered a left chest wound and died later that day; William Knox Schroeder, wounded in the chest and died almost an hour later in a local hospital while undergoing surgery; Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, shot in the neck and died a few minutes later from loss of blood.
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There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of 4 million students, and the event further affected public opinion, at an already socially contentious time, over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.
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Photographs of the dead and wounded at Kent State that were distributed in newspapers and periodicals worldwide amplified sentiment against the United States’ invasion of Cambodia and the Vietnam War in general.
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In particular, the camera of Kent State photojournalism student John Filo captured a 14-year-old runaway, Mary Ann Vecchio, screaming over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller, who had been shot in the mouth.
The photograph, which won a Pulitzer Prize, became the most enduring image of the events, and one of the more enduring images of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
