Don Wildman

But there was an even more substantial theme to this in that many people, you know, the silent majority was awakened by Richard Nixon's election.

There was pushback in a big way happening in America against this at the time, right?

Yeah.

Speaking of center, I mean, this will take place geographically in the relatively center of the country in the Midwest.

Where is Kent State University exactly?

It's northeastern Ohio, right?

Conservative part of the world, very Midwestern, traditional manufacturing base, working class jobs and so forth.

A lot of those people are not going to be agreeing with those students who they see as privileged people and youngsters without responsibility who are taking it upon themselves to essentially protest their now involvement in the war directly because suddenly the draft deferment is gone.

What is specifically at hand here at Kent State University?

Are they protesting Cambodia specifically, the involvement in Cambodia?

Exactly.

And place it against the backdrop that I mentioned before, which is we've been going through these cycles of protest for a long time now.

It's been on the news, been covered a lot.

And it's not just the war.

It's women's liberation coming up.

It's all sorts of things that are happening along the way.

And so Americans have a knee-jerk reaction to it of either support or rejection.

but it's really a part of life.

What happens at Kent State is unique for many reasons, but one of them is it wakes us up to, oh my gosh, you know, something much more serious than had begun to be the norm as far as these protests goes happens here.

It's now worked its way deep into the culture