- 20 Apr 2021 11:39
#15168041
Sometimes a short story tells a lot.
She was 14, a runaway. Not a protester, just a girl passing through. That photo changed her life, not for the better. The National Guard fired roughly 60 bullets, killing 4 kids. One of them was the person she had been talking to.
Afterwards, she and her family received death threats among the hate mail. The FBI harassed her (that was common back then). She eventually became a respiratory therapist working for the VA. She recognised the trauma she still lived with, in the soldiers.
"Her family received calls and letters calling her a drug addict, a tramp, a communist. The governor of Florida said she was “part of a nationally organized conspiracy of professional agitators” that was “responsible for the students’ death.” Back in Kent, Ohio, local business owners ran an ad thanking the National Guard. Mail poured in to the mayor’s office, blaming “dirty hippies,” “longhairs” and “outside agitators” for the violence. Some Kent residents raised four fingers when they passed each other in the street, a silent signal that meant, “At least we got four of them.” Nixon issued a statement saying that the students’ actions had invited the tragedy. Privately, he called them “bums.” And a Gallup poll found that 58 percent of Americans blamed the students for their own deaths; only 11 percent blamed the National Guard."
It was a peaceful protest, the Guard had no reason to shoot. None.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/04/19/girl-kent-state-photo-lifelong-burden-being-national-symbol/?itid=hp_mr_1
Sometimes a short story tells a lot.
She was 14, a runaway. Not a protester, just a girl passing through. That photo changed her life, not for the better. The National Guard fired roughly 60 bullets, killing 4 kids. One of them was the person she had been talking to.
Afterwards, she and her family received death threats among the hate mail. The FBI harassed her (that was common back then). She eventually became a respiratory therapist working for the VA. She recognised the trauma she still lived with, in the soldiers.
"Her family received calls and letters calling her a drug addict, a tramp, a communist. The governor of Florida said she was “part of a nationally organized conspiracy of professional agitators” that was “responsible for the students’ death.” Back in Kent, Ohio, local business owners ran an ad thanking the National Guard. Mail poured in to the mayor’s office, blaming “dirty hippies,” “longhairs” and “outside agitators” for the violence. Some Kent residents raised four fingers when they passed each other in the street, a silent signal that meant, “At least we got four of them.” Nixon issued a statement saying that the students’ actions had invited the tragedy. Privately, he called them “bums.” And a Gallup poll found that 58 percent of Americans blamed the students for their own deaths; only 11 percent blamed the National Guard."
It was a peaceful protest, the Guard had no reason to shoot. None.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/04/19/girl-kent-state-photo-lifelong-burden-being-national-symbol/?itid=hp_mr_1
Facts have a well known liberal bias