May 4
More than 100 reel-to-reel audio recordings pertaining to the May 4, 1970, Kent State University shootings and their aftermath are now accessible through the Kent State University Special Collections and Archives’ digital repository. Some of the recently digitized items include previously inaccessible audio recordings of radio call-in forums, a speech by Kent State President Robert I. White the day after the shootings, a press conference with six students who met with President Richard M. Nixon just days after the shootings, the Scranton Commission hearings and a speech made by Dick Gregory at the Kent State Memorial Service in 1971.
Kent State University holds its 46th annual commemoration of May 4, 1970, with events taking place April 26 through May 4. The annual commemoration, hosted by the May 4 Task Force, provides an opportunity for the university community to gather and remember those who were lost and injured during the tragedy and also reflect on what May 4 means today.
Collaboration includes radio reports and documentary film
The WKSU newsroom looks back at two significant historical events, presented in collaboration with Western Reserve PBS. As the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War approaches, Western Reserve PBS (WNEO/WEAO) joins with a national PBS effort to examine ramifications that are still being felt today of that deadly conflict. A focal point of the public television station’s coverage is a broadcast on April 28 of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Last Days of Vietnam, directed by Rory Kennedy and part of PBS’ American Experience program.
The documentary film May 4th Voices: Kent State, 1970, created by Kenneth Bindas, Ph.D., professor and chair of the history department, and David Hassler, the director of the Wick Poetry Center, is a recipient of the 2014 Oral History Association’s Oral History in a Nonprint Format Award. The Oral History Association is an organization that seeks to bring together all people interested in oral history as a way of collecting and interpreting human memories to foster knowledge and human dignity.