Step inside a sleek museum at Kent State and you’ll see everything from a freshman beanie to a poster with 1969’s draft lottery numbers to graphic photos of wounded GIs.
This is the university’s newest record of the world surrounding the antiwar protests of May 4, 1970, in which four students were killed and nine wounded.
The university cleared part of the ground floor of Taylor Hall to create the May 4 Visitors Center, which officially will open at KSU’s Homecoming on Saturday.
The center will enable visitors “to better understand the events of that day set against the political and cultural changes of the times,” KSU President Lester Lefton said in a statement.
KSU invested $1.1 million in donations from the public, the university, veterans groups and the National Endowment for the Humanities to transform the former 1,900-square-foot student newspaper office into three galleries.
The exhibits depict the 1960s, President Richard Nixon’s expansion of the war in Vietnam into Cambodia and what it meant at Kent State and the aftermath.
The last often is underplayed today, but it was enormous at the time — 4 million students nationwide went on strike. The revolts led to the closings of hundreds of colleges and universities, many for the rest of the school year.
The design firm Gallagher & Associates of Silver Spring, Md., recaps those events using artifacts, photos and maps. A new, nine-minute film weaves footage from the events with eyewitness reports and recollections.
Neither the film nor the museum points the proverbial finger at who was right or who was wrong — the National Guard, which fired on the students, or the students, who pelted the guardsmen with rocks and called them pigs.
“Some accept evidence of an order to fire,” the film reports evenhandedly. “Some do not.”
But for some who were there in those dark days, the museum demonstrates KSU’s growing comfort with its legacy.
Dean Kahler, paralyzed from the waist down by a guardsman’s bullet, said he remembers when he didn’t feel welcome on campus, when KSU administrators balked at talking of the tragedy, even though he was truly a victim.
He was cautiously watching events unfold, marking time until his next class at 1:10 p.m., when a stray bullet pierced his spine. A grainy photo in the museum shows him on the ground, attended by two students, just seconds after the shooting.
“I didn’t want to get too close,” he recalls today. “Those people had rifles.”
Animosity also has faded for Jerry Lewis, the now-retired KSU sociology professor who as one of five faculty marshals tried to quell the May 4 disturbance.
He regularly received hate mail when he appeared in the media in the first few years after the shooting.
Sometimes the hate mail was foolish — like the postcard labeled “confidential.”
KSU has paid tribute to the events of May 4, 1970, in other ways over the years.
They include a seven-point walking tour narrated by civil rights activist Julian Bond, and four bullards — or posts — that mark the location where the four students died.
Admission is free to the May 4 Visitors Center, which will be open Monday through Thursday and Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. The center also will be open for group tours by appointment. Call 330-672-4660 or email may4@kent.edu.
For more details, visit www.kent.edu/may4.
Carol Biliczky can be reached at cbiliczky@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3729.