How did the Kent State Massacre affected the USA?

Kent, as it became known to many, was the first time that a government militia fired deadly force into a group of people exercising their first amendment rights.

The war in Vietnam, along with the draft was already immensely unpopular overall. Vietnam polarized the country into those who supported it and those who objected to it.

Many young people at college and university campuses protested the ROTC factions of their campuses. ROTC or Reserve Officers' Training Corps is a educational outreach method to train officers for a specific branch of the military. Most college and university campuses have a ROTC program as do many high schools.

Unknown students burned down the ROTC building at Kent University after a few days of large demonstrations protesting the invasion of Cambodia that was announced just days earlier by President Nixon on a Thursday or Friday. This action by the national government incited a great deal of emotions throughout the Kent campus (and nationally too).

The Governor of Ohio felt threatened by the scale of the demonstrations by students and even compared to the protesters to Nazis and communists. He called in the National Guard, and by the end of Monday, four were dead and nine were wounded. Only two of the wounded were involved in the protest. All other students who were shot were either innocent by-standers or were simply walking past on their way to class. One student shot was a member of the ROTC.

What this all did was bring to question a number of things:
1. The questioning how secure were rights guaranteed to Americans in the Constitution, such as free speech, and right to assemble.
2. Can the state/national government use force to quash gatherings of protesters.
3. When is a protest a threat to the public safety?
4. If a protest or gathering of people is a threat to public safety how does it get safely dispursed?

Students at univerisities, colleges and even high schools protested the shootings with class walkouts. In some cases, even faculty joined in the walkouts. Some universities sanctioned (punished) the faculty that took sympathetic actions, while other institutions tolerated it.

The Kent shootings became for many young protesters a symbol of their overall distrust of government and were further radicalized by it.

It was scary to think that if you had a gathering of people with an unpopular opinion, that the government could just go in and shoot at you.

It turned out luckily to be an aberration. This shooting was and is still today one of the sad moments of US history when no one seemed to be thinking clearly and made every wrong decision possible out of fear.

The ultimate outcome though is not to repeat this sad juncture in history.

Hope this is helpful.

Up until Kent State I was angry at the government and protested the war. When Kent State happened I was beside myself with fury and willing to join an armed band to attack government forces and outposts. Fortunately for me I never met any armed radicals.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young immediately produced a song about the event called "Four Dead in Ohio." This is an extremely angry song, and it was censored (radio stations were not allowed to play it).
At the time I thought Nixon was evil incarnate, but actually he was liberal compared to the Bushes.

It was terrible. Everyone thought that Gov. Ronald Reagan of CA would do that first (if ever) but we were shocked when it happened in Ohio!

It was a contributing factor to eroding American support of the Vietnam quagmire. I lived in the South at the time and was not that politically aware but this is one thing I do remember. I had a college professor who came into the room in shock about what had happened. I will never forget it. It was a political awakening for many and a major factor for declining support for the military action in Vietnam.

Judge for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

When the government begins to murder her own children, the country began to re-evaluate support for the government.

Yeah Kirk, I was alive when Kent state happened. I was in high school.

YOU haven't a clue. For some years after Kent there was still the popular myth that the students fired shots at the guard, so a lot of sympathy from mainstream America wasn't there, and Nixon was reelected because he WAS getting the troops out of Vietnam.

The full facts of what happened at Kent didn't come out for quite awhile because of stonewalling tactics by the Governor of Ohio.

It was, for many, the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. Alienation between the government and the youth in the country was already fairly severe, and it was increasingly expanding to include the ordinary middle-class citizens. However, some fair percentage of common Americans held out some hope the Nixon's admkinistration could turn things around. hen came the news of the Secret War in Cambodia (which was what the students were protesting at Kent State), and then the horrible news that unarmed college students had been gunned down by military forces. Now, the details were somewhat different, of course. The students were certainly unarmed, but they had done a great deal to provoke the troops, and the troops were mostly kids the same age as the students, and were members of the Ohio State Guard, rather than the Federal Army, but all the same, the image of American soldiers firing rifles (with fixedf bayonets) into crowd of defenseless teenagers was shocking. It enraged much of the country, and caused the "credibility gap" between the administration and the people to widen significantly.

See excellent information below.

Yes. It eroded such support for the government that in 1972 Richard Nixon won every state but Massachussetts and the District of Columbia!

C'mon folks, don't believe the hype. Were you people even alive then?

That huge block of young potential voters stayed home. George McGovern became a laughingstock.