Healing old wounds : public memory, commemoration, and conflicts over historical interpretations of the Kent State shootings, 1977-1990 /

Abstract

This thesis will illustrate how two different groups interpreted the shootings that occurred on the Kent state University campus May 4, 1970, in the subsequent twenty years. The first group, comprised of the university administration, the National Guard, and Ohio state officials, represents the official view of the events which holds that neither the state nor the university or guard was culpable for the May 4 deaths. Rather, it was the students that provoked the situation during an unlawful anti-war rally. The second group, consisting of the victims of the shootings, their families, and protest groups sympathetic to them, represents the vernacular view that contends state and university officials, as well as the guard, were responsible for the deaths that took place on the Kent campus and that the rally was a legal demonstration of free speech. Many confrontations occurred between the KSU administration and victims of the shootings and student protest groups during the late 1970's and 1980's. This thesis concerns itself with three developments related to the May 4 incident and how the events were interpreted by both aforementioned groups. By examining these events, it becomes apparent that the university and state commanded the right of interpretation over the May 4 incident. This ideological struggle was manifest in the gymnasium annex controversy of 1977, which was about who controlled the physical site where the shootings took place; the George Segal sculpture controversy of 1978, which was about how the shootings were interpreted and commemorated by a voice outside the Kent community; and the controversial commemorative sculpture competition of 1985. The conflicts between the two parties also shows how KSU was and extension of the Vietnam War to American soil. The conflicts over interpretation became issues about how events are remembered and how individual memories can be influenced by various special interest groups' attempts to form public memory. Finally, this thesis illustrates how time did much to heal wounds at Kent State, but not totally close them. The KSU administration attempted to work with the victims and protest groups by sponsoring a memorial competition to commemorate the shootings twenty years after they occurred. This event was not without controversy, however, and many of the victims and protest groups still feel slighted in spite of the university's latest efforts to responsibly address the shootings of May 4, 1970 in a public forum.