Today was the 45th Anniversary of Kent State Riot: the day the '60s died.

[Whirlaway]

If you think the 1960s was about "peace and love", turning on, dropping out", then yes, Altamont and the Sharon Tate Killings were the end of the 1960s.......

But if you think the 1960s was about social change, revolution, make peace not war; then Kent State represents the end.

But in all honesty, there are only months between all three events...........the hope of the 1960s died a slow death between the Manson killings and Kent State....

What difference does it make?

58,000 young men died in Vietnam...

[Old-T]

Altamont was largely impactful to those it touched, but the audience it touched was mostly confined to the young.

Kent State touched the entire nation.

[Whirlaway]

What a year 1969 was....

Altamont occurred between the Tate Killings and Kent State, a time frame of less than 9 months. And sandwiched between was Woodstock, 3 days of peace and music. But it was all preceded by Apollo 11 landing.....

The Tate Killings was a seminal event that bared the ugly side of the tune in drop out culture...the image of the peace and love hippie was forever changed by the Tate Killings, Woodstock seemed to recapture the hippie movement, but Altamont came only a few months later, underscoring the dark dangerous side of the hippie culture, and then a few months more came Kent State.

After Apollo 11 land in July 1969, it seemed that the 1960s were a time of great change, all for the better....It is silly intellectual stuff to argue which event killed the 1960s.

America's psyche was whipsawed by the events that happened in very short time, starting in the summer of 1969.

Originally Posted by Old-T

Altamont was largely impactful to those it touched, but the audience it touched was mostly confined to the young.

Kent State touched the entire nation.

[cptjohnstone]

I remember very well, my sophomore year in ROTC

OU's ROTC drill almost went close to being like Kent State, our drill was 2 days latter and it was rumored that 100 highway patrolman were just outside of town

OSU is a very conservative campus but we had our fair share of "long haired hippies"

They moved our drill inside a fenced in football practice field. We were singing "jodies" as loud as we could. The hippies were outside singing "give peace a chance and the "cowboys" were singing "Okie from Muskogee". There were jocks hanging out of windows of our basketball arena saying "national guard 4, Kent State zero"

I do remember leaving the drill and being shoulder to shoulder and being spit on

[Whirlaway]

More important than Neil Young's "Ohio" song is the iconic Kent State Killing photo taken by Kent State student John Filo.

The girl in the picture is 14 year old Mary Ann Vecchio. The below photo is the unedited picture (the fence post over Mary's head was removed from subsequent prints).



This photo is often compared to one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings in history - Picasso's Guernica.

[Old-T]

I don't think any one photo or song or headline or speech told the story so completely. It was the multi-faceted collection of images and reflections. Even though there were divisions of left and right arguing where the blame belonged "more", the true "catastrophe event" was that EVERYONE knew that what happened was fundamentally wrong. This wasn't VK dying, it wasn't commies killing GIs. It was Americans killing very average American kids on what was supposed to be a safe ground on American soil in a tragedy neither "side" wanted.

[Guest040616]

Two historic events (Apollo 13 & Kent State) occurred, just a few weeks apart and at the time I wasn't aware of either. As it relates to Kent State, I remember hearing about it a few days (perhaps even weeks or months) after the fact but quite frankly, I had no idea where the University was even located. For a variety of reasons, it was difficult for me to put Kent State into its proper perspective, at the time.

Kent State didn't really come into sharp focus to me personally until a full year later. In late April/early May 1971, my entire Battalion was sent to Ft. Myer, Va. to provide support against the rioters participating in the May Day riots in Washington DC. Obviously, the powers that be did not want another Kent State to deal with. Thus, numerous references were made about the events that had occurred a year earlier at Kent State during our briefings.

As for Apollo 13, I did not know the circumstances behind that mission until I saw the movie 25 or so, years later. While watching it, I remember thinking to myself, why didn't I know about this historic event. And then it once again dawned on me! Specific details behind late breaking news events didn't travel quickly through the jungles of SE Asia.

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by Old-T

I don't think any one photo or song or headline or speech told the story so completely. It was the multi-faceted collection of images and reflections. Even though there were divisions of left and right arguing where the blame belonged "more", the true "catastrophe event" was that EVERYONE knew that what happened was fundamentally wrong. This wasn't VK dying, it wasn't commies killing GIs. It was Americans killing very average American kids on what was supposed to be a safe ground on American soil in a tragedy neither "side" wanted.

+1

Originally Posted by bigtex

Two historic events (Apollo 13 & Kent State) occurred, just a few weeks apart and at the time I wasn't aware of either. As it relates to Kent State, I remember hearing about it a few days (perhaps even weeks or months) after the fact but quite frankly, I had no idea where the University was even located. For a variety of reasons, it was difficult for me to put Kent State into its proper perspective, at the time.

Kent State didn't really come into sharp focus to me personally until a full year later. In late April/early May 1971, my entire Battalion was sent to Ft. Myer, Va. to provide support against the rioters participating in the May Day riots in Washington DC. Obviously, the powers that be did not want another Kent State to deal with. Thus, numerous references were made about the events that had occurred a year earlier at Kent State during our briefings.

As for Apollo 13, I did not know the circumstances behind that mission until I saw the movie 25 or so, years later. While watching it, I remember thinking to myself, why didn't I know about this historic event. And then it once again dawned on me! Specific details behind late breaking news events didn't travel quickly through the jungles of SE Asia.

One of the documentaries on the Apollo 13 mission noted that the mission wasn't really covered by the media at that time, because space flight had become "too routine" to be "news". The documentary also noted that even after the mission encountered problems, the story was considered less important than other issues at that time. Hence, the real reason you missed the story, is because the media really didn't cover the story.

[Old-T]

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

+1

One of the documentaries on the Apollo 13 mission noted that the mission wasn't really covered by the media at that time, because space flight had become "too routine" to be "news". The documentary also noted that even after the mission encountered problems, the story was considered less important than other issues at that time. Hence, the real reason you missed the story, is because the media really didn't cover the story.

Sad but true.

[Guest040616]

Originally Posted by Old-T

Sad but true.

That very well may have been true but you couldn't prove it by me. I knew absolutely nothing about the Apollo 13 mission until 25 years after the fact.

[cptjohnstone]

Originally Posted by bigtex

That very well may have been true but you couldn't prove it by me. I knew absolutely nothing about the Apollo 13 mission until 25 years after the fact.

did the battery on your smart phone die?

[i'va biggen]

Originally Posted by cptjohnstone

did the battery on your smart phone die?

Originally Posted by bigtex

Two historic events (Apollo 13 & Kent State) occurred, just a few weeks apart and at the time I wasn't aware of either. As it relates to Kent State, I remember hearing about it a few days (perhaps even weeks or months) after the fact but quite frankly, I had no idea where the University was even located. For a variety of reasons, it was difficult for me to put Kent State into its proper perspective, at the time.

Kent State didn't really come into sharp focus to me personally until a full year later. In late April/early May 1971, my entire Battalion was sent to Ft. Myer, Va. to provide support against the rioters participating in the May Day riots in Washington DC. Obviously, the powers that be did not want another Kent State to deal with. Thus, numerous references were made about the events that had occurred a year earlier at Kent State during our briefings.

As for Apollo 13, I did not know the circumstances behind that mission until I saw the movie 25 or so, years later. While watching it, I remember thinking to myself, why didn't I know about this historic event. And then it once again dawned on me! Specific details behind late breaking news events didn't travel quickly through the jungles of SE Asia.

Check the last sentence no stones.

[WombRaider]

I'm still wondering how the 60s died in the 70s...

[JD Barleycorn]

You want to go there? Okay, what is the first number? It's a "ONE". How many number do you count in a series? Ten, like this; One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine....oh, oh that is only nine. So you have to say ten to finish the series. So eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and twenty ends the second set of ten numbers. So the decade of the 1960s would go like this; ready? sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four, sixty-five, sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, and seventy would be all the years of the 60s decade.

Think back to 2000 and Y2K. A lot of people (mathematicians and the like) contended that the 20th century ended on December 31, 2000. That the first year of the 21st century was 2001.

I know that this is over your head but then you're an idiot.

[Guest040616]

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

Today was the 45th Anniversary of Kent State Riot: the day the '60s died.

Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

You want to go there? Okay, what is the first number?

JDIdiot, do you really want to go there?

With that said, I understand why you said what you did. And quite frankly, the thought has merit!

The 1960's was a decade marked by civil disobedience. I believe you were trying to say, the 1960's "era" officially "died" with the Kent State riot. An argument could be made for that. But if that were actually true, couldn't a stronger argument be made for the 1960's "era" ended following the May Day Riot's of 1971?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_May_Day_Protests

Or perhaps another riot beyond May Day, 1971?

The point being, Kent State was not the last of the 60's era demonstrations and riots. They extended well beyond April of 1970.

The technical point that WR was trying to make would be that Kent State was the first 60's era riot that actually took place in the 1970's.

From that technical standpoint, you were wrong in saying that the 1960's ended with the Kent State riots.

Fuel for further thought: Instead of saying that the '60's died with the Kent State riots, why don't you go hide in a deep, dark, padded bunker, that has been carefully dug under the missing Malaysian Airlines 777 and carefully camouflaged by shrubs and netting on some remote island?

Out in the middle of nowhere!

Problem solved!