Don Wildman

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

Music and writing and so forth, all of these things are reflecting this general discontent in the country from whichever side you're coming.

And that has kind of infected the whole feeling of the country.

I'm not the historical part of this, but it's worth the lens.

I do remember how much that had become, you know, as you're becoming aware of things at that age.