Nixonland: America's Second Civil War and the Divisive Legacy of Richard Nixon 1965-72

by Rick Perlstein

Guardsmen sent home for a respite after the trucking strike were called back for Kent State. Kent citizens were thrilled to see the tanks and jeeps rumble through town. Rumors poured into City Hall: “I saw an Illinois car loaded with six Weathermen armed with shotguns!” The units established a perimeter around the ROTC building. Students greeted them with obscenities and rocks. The guardsmen sent out their first volley of tear gas, which blew back due to a miscalculation of the wind. Daring students got in the troops’ faces and screamed. A sergeant moved in on a jeep to try to arrest ringleaders. “A very pretty girl stuck her hand right under my nose, gave me the finger, and uttered four words I’ve never used myself,” he recalled. “I’m not sure I want my daughter to go to college if that’s how they teach her to talk.” Such psychic considerations were not trivial, not to men who sang songs to guard against the humiliation of being called tin soldiers. “You have enough girls throwing wisecracks at young soldiers,” an observer reflected, “it does something to them.” The students were subdued with minimal force. The shabby old ROTC building, which was built to be carted to the South Pacific as a temporary World War II field hospital, burned itself out by 10:30 p.m. Commanders corrected their wind bearings and cleared out the mob with tear gas. The boldest protesters kept on harassing them, which didn’t take that much courage: after the disasters of the sixties urban riots, it ...