Brian VanDeMark

Things got worse that night because protests had reignited and confrontations occurred between guardsmen and students, which restarted this friction and animosity, which is going to carry over until the next morning of May 4th.

Well, it basically said, the governor has said that assemblies of more than two people are prohibited.

The scheduled rally against the war on the morning of May 4th is prohibited.

And yet, approximately 2,500 students showed up on the commons of the campus.

to assert their constitutional right to free speech and dissent.

And that is the setting to what will occur later that morning.

The Guard is deployed, and it's led by Robert Canterbury, who he and his forces are outnumbered 30 to 1.

30 to 1.

So if you're one of those roughly 100 guardsmen confronting 2,500 students,

you can see how they must feel insecure, anxious, and vulnerable.

And he tells them to load live ammunition into their rifles and then fails to inform the students who are assembled there that that's been done, directly contradicting the National Guard regulations to do so.

I mean, the recklessness of that, to me, is absolutely appalling.

To tell the guardsmen to load their rifles with live ammunition is bad enough, but then not to inform the crowd of students who are there that that's been done is inexcusable.

Mm-hmm.

Well, they were deployed throughout the town of Kent and surrounding areas of Portage County, as well as on campus.

Well, the students had assembled in the Commons, which was an open area in the center of campus.

And Canterbury, who's the ranking National Guard officer on the scene that morning, as I already mentioned, ordered the guardsmen to load their rifles with live ammunition, which to me was unwise and reckless.

And then he failed to inform the students that that had been done.

And then he sends out, I believe it's a Kent State University police official to use a bullhorn to tell the students to disperse, which they don't because in their opinion, and the Justice Department of the Nixon administration later said they had a constitutional right to express their opinions about the war.

And that escalates the emotional level.