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View Winners → Death and Dissent at Kent State in the 1960s- Pasadena Library April 13
Education Mar 23, 2017
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– Courtesy photo
On April 13, Pasadena Central Library “Thursdays at Central Library” lecture series will focus on a new book about Kent State:
– Courtesy photo
The book is entitled Kent State: Death and Dissent In The Long Sixties by Thomas M. Grace PhD who is a history professor and incidentally one of the nine wounded. On May 4th, it will mark the 47th commemoration of this seminal event in our history that still resonates today and I might add given the current climate of some statehouses across America devising laws to regulate public dissent continues to be a relevant topic that a number of your readers might find interesting.
– Courtesy photo
The talk will examine one of the most searing incidents of American history during the 1960s Vietnam era — the killing of four students and the wounding of nine others, including the presenter, by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in May, 1970. In a recently published study by historian Thomas M. Grace, Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties, the author and presenter deconstructs media-generated myths about the university’s student movement, among them that the campus was without an activist tradition, that members of the National Guard were young and inexperienced, and that the killings led to an end of the era of mass protest at Kent State. Taking issue with these myths, the presentation will argue that the shootings were not a tragic anomaly. Rather, the fatal clash was grounded in a tradition of activism extending back to labor referendum battles and civil rights protests of the 1950s. Consequently, the deadly shootings at Kent State were the culmination of a conflict between the forces of radicalism and repression that unfolded throughout the decade of the 1960s.
