Remembering Kent State with Derf Backderf

This is one of the Kent Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) leaders, Rick Erickson, from Akron. 

One of tricky parts of this book is how much backstory there is. The Kent State Massacre was the bloody climax of nearly a decade of civil unrest, and government crackdowns. It’s complicated history, too, with a lot of players and competing, sometimes warring, movements and constantly shifting factions within those movements. 

Much of it is still secret, or at least untold. The CIA has yet to cough up its secrets, even though it was secretly (and illegally) waging a vast clandestine war on US citizens. On the other side, the old radicals are still reticent to talk, for good reason. Laws were broken. Once the Weathermen seized control of SDS in Summer 1969, the remnants of the organization (those who didn’t leave in disgust, or who weren’t exiled in the Weathermen’s many purges) moved into outright terrorism. Some of the Weathermen leaders have written biographies in recent years that are fascinating reading. I kind of went down the rabbit hole with them, because it’s just SUCH fascinating, and largely unknown, history. I’m STILL researching it, just for fun.

I tried to inject just enough background information so readers could understand the forces at play, and the passions that roiled the nation, but without bogging down the narrative of the Four. This, after all, is their story. 

SDS didn’t form at Kent until Fall 1968. SDS was already a well-established force nationally. Kent SDS immediately put a charge into the rather sedate antiwar movement at Kent State, and in the process scared the living shit out of the university administration and local and state authorities. SDS was small, only 200 or so members, but they were all closely watched. And by watched, I mean spied upon. The FBI had them under constant surveillance. I’ve read the intelligence reports. 

Whether you agree with their politics or not, and much of it is pie-in-the-sky politics, what you have to admire is the incredible courage these college kids showed. A small band of scruffy twenty-somethings took on the combined might of the US government: the intelligence services, the Pentagon, the Nixon White House, the Ohio government, and many layers of law enforcement, from the FBI all the way down to yahoo Kent cops. They didn’t blink. I salute them.

Unfortunately, the Kent SDS leaders were as reckless as they were passionate. They walked into a trap laid by the University Administration, and were rounded up, expelled, permanently banned from campus, and prosecuted. SDS lasted a scant 8 months on the Kent campus. Most got tough six-month sentences in the Portage County Jail. They were released on May 1, 1970, just hours before the Water Street Riot. The conservative Kent press baron, Robert Dix, was certain the leaders planned the whole weekend’s unrest from their cells, and directed all the violence once they were released, like they were the Legion of Doom. In truth, they had nothing to do with it and did not participate. Most left town and did not return to Kent.

The national SDS, too, was a spent force by May 1970. The Weathermen had turned an organization of over 100,000 members into a smoldering ruin in just six months time. The 100 or so remaining Weathermen were in hiding and on the run, and would remain so for the next 10 years.

What was left at Kent State was the unorganized shards of SDS. The late Alan Canfora, a protestor who was shot and wounded on May 4, described it to me as “50 rebels.” It was the shards that busted up Water Street, and torched the ROTC Building the following night. Crimes that, as it turned out, carried a death sentence.

It was the FEAR of SDS, and particularly of the Weathermen, that drove the brutal crackdown at Kent. Law enforcement saw Weathermen behind every bush, down every dark alley. They were certain the Weathermen had hidden caches of guns in the fields outside town, and guerrillas combat-trained in Cuba were sneaking onto campus to start a civil war. It’s the exact same fever dream bullshit we have today from the Right with Antifa. 

The grandstanding Gov. Rhodes ranted about “outside agitators” who were “the worst people we harbor in America” and vowed to “eradicate” them. 

Less than 24 hours later, Guardsmen opened fire on a parking lot full of unarmed students.

Black United Students, known as BUS, was probably the most effective activist group on campus.

BUS played a huge role in the protest movement at Kent State, and in the months leading up to May 4… and then no role at all on May 4 itself. As a result, they barely appear in my book, which recounts those four days of escalating unrest, although the reason for their absence from the narrative is an utterly fascinating one.

This page here sums it all up. I like this page, even though a page of eight small panels that consists of two guys talking is a tough one to draw. These are the hardest pages in a book. You can't let your concentration lapse when putting them together.

BUS’s protests, unlike SDS’s, were measured and brilliantly staged. BUS’s goals were mainly issues that concerned black students, and they quickly won concessions from the University on almost every one. A black student center, the hiring of more black faculty, Black Studies classes, and ramped up recruitment of African American students. SDS, as I recount in my earlier post, made headlines, but got nothing from the university, and were thrown off campus and had their members expelled or suspended.

BUS was opposed to the Vietnam War, too, since a disproportionate number of African-Americans served (and died) there. And there were confrontations about systemic racism, which were acute, especially in a conservative, white town like Kent, where there were no doubt a few old Klan members.

BUS held a small rally on Front Campus on Friday, May 1, attended by a few dozen students. Later that night came the window smashing spree on Water Street, which was met by a police crackdown that virtually sealed off the campus from the town. BUS leaders immediately recognized the danger. White student radicals did not. The following night, the ROTC Building was torched and the National Guard came streaming onto campus in overwhelming force. Martial law was imposed.

And that was it. BUS was out. The leaders sent out word to all black students. Stay in your dorms. Don’t go outside after dark. Avoid the soldiers at all costs. 

Why? Because these leaders knew damn well what it meant when the Guard took over. It had happened in THEIR neighborhoods in Cleveland and Akron, in 1966 and 1968. People were bayoneted. people were shot. Hundreds were beaten and arrested. BUS knew the National Guard meant business. This was no game.

The white students, on the other hand, had no such experience with the Guard. They’d never seen them before! They didn’t believe they were in any danger whatsoever. Who would shoot unarmed students? Why, their guns aren’t even loaded! It’s all a show. Even as bullets ricocheted off the pavement around them, and blew out car windows, students were yelling “Don’t worry, they’re only shooting blanks.”

And you’ll note that none of that naiveté is present at the BLM protests of 2020. Protestors, black, brown and white, know damn well they could be shot, and yet they take to streets anyways. 

That’s the lasting legacy of Kent State right there.

This box belonged to Bill Schroeder's Mom, Flo. After he was murdered, she stored all his letters and photos in it, wrapped in it tape and wrote "save forever" on the side. She stashed it in a closet and never opened it. But she knew it was there. This little cardboard box literally emanates grief and pain. It's very moving to see.

Her grandson donated it to the May 4 Center.

Bill's letters are the best source material for what he was like. Bill wrote his Mom every week. The letters are playful and funny, but also show a young man who was serious about his studies, and of the role he would have in life. They were a treasure trove for me. Of the Four, Bill was the only one who offered a glimpse of his life, in his own words.  

"It's Monday afternoon and I just back from my disastrous bowling class. I guess I'm in a slump."

"I didn't go to sleep until 6:00 this morning. I wasn't studying. Louis, Mike & I just held one of our stereotype bull sessions. I think we find each other quite compatible, as well as partially stimulating."

"My political science class is a fairly good course. My psych prof is a cross between William F. Buckley and Morey Amsterdam. My anthropology prof is the old man who can't talk enough about his past affairs with beautiful co-eds."

"I wrote my first theme two days ago and did really great. Out of four topics, I chose "to find true happiness".... and you had to complete it! I said one must have a goal in life. Impressed?"

"I gave myself a haircut with my neighbor's surgical scissors and I must say I look stunning!"

"Thanks loads for telling me I'm old enough to decide what to do. Were you going to come and make sure I listen to you? Actually, I'm not old... and I miss Mickey Mouse."

"Me and ROTC are sort of co-existing at separate levels. I don't have any worry about the future. I'll always be rolling along having a good life. I talk with the bossman (ROTC commander) from time to time. We disagree on a lot, but there's intangible mutual respect."

On May 4, Bill was shot in the back in the parking lot, 382 feet from his killer. He was not a protestor. He had books in his hand. 

His ROTC commander, it turns out, had been filing regular reports about Bill to Military Intelligence, following a standing dictate from the Nixon White House to monitor any potential troublemakers in the ROTC ranks, future junior officers in Vietnam. Their "disagreements" during chats apparently did not produce the "mutual respect" Bill believed.