May 4 50
More than 1,000 photos of Black student life have been digitized and are waiting for members of the Kent State community to help identify them.
Deadline reports that a new movie inspired by the shootings at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, is in the works and will be released next year.
Kent State was more than 100 miles away from Philip Middleton Williams’ high school and his home in Perrysburg, but the May 4, 1970, shootings, which killed four students and wounded nine, reverberated through his psyche and brought the Vietnam War front and center. Williams was inspired by the May 4 events to write and produce a play "The Sugar Ridge Rag."
Daffodil Hill became a part of the May 4 Memorial that brought both sides together, but groundskeepers struggle to keep it thriving now.
As key supporters and organizers of the May 4 Candlelight Walk and Vigil, Michael and Kendra Pacifico say the event is the time when people can put their politics aside to honor those who died and were wounded on May 4, 1970.
Kent State University has scheduled a variety of programs, events and exhibits for this year’s remembrance of May 4, 1970, to honor the four students who were killed, the nine students who were wounded and the countless others whose lives were forever changed when the Ohio National Guard fired on Kent State students during an anti-war protest.
Tammy Clewell, Ph.D., professor in Kent State University’s Department of English, will give the inaugural lecture of the Jerry M. Lewis May 4 Lecture Series with her presentation “Remembering the Contested May 4 Memorializing Process.” The lecture and luncheon will be held at 11:30 a.m. on Monday, May 2, in the Kent Student Center Ballroom.
Presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham, whose knowledge of politics, history, religion and current affairs makes him one of America’s most prominent public intellectuals, will appear the evening of May 4 for Kent State University’s Presidential Speaker Series. Meacham will bring his unique perspective and provide historical context to the issues and events impacting our daily lives when he speaks about civil discourse at the Kent Student Center Ballroom.
How long does a single traumatic event affect a person’s mental health? Kent State graduate student Emily Rabinowitz’s research on this topic was recently published in the peer-reviewed Stress & Health: Journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress. Her paper “The 50th Anniversary of May 4, 1970, Is Associated With Elevations of Distress but No Increase in Mental Health Symptoms” was published in the November 2021 issue.
Sixty-nine K-12 educators from more than 250 applicants across the nation remotely explored May 4 with the best scholar-experts to develop lesson plans for their students in two summer sessions. Workshop faculty included witnesses to the shootings, surviving casualties of the shootings, K-12 experts, a member of the Ohio National Guard present during the shootings and experts on movements of the 1960s. During these sessions, educators learned about the event and the wide range of resources on May 4. They worked on lesson plans to incorporate these materials into their classrooms. Now these materials are online for educational use.