Ohio Guard shooting; Filo's Pulitzer photo; inset of Filo & Mary Vecchio in 2010

‘Day the ‘60s Died’ along with 4 Kent State students

PBS’ “The Day the ‘60s Died” will deal with May 1970 when American seemed at war with itself and was killing its children at 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 25 – WVIZ (Channel 25) and PBS Western Reserve (WEAO, Channels 45/49).

President Richard Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and Gov. Jim Rhodes sending Ohio National Guard to Kent State led to four KSU students killed -- Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder -- and nine wounded and the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War for America.

The PBS program interviews those who were there: students and Guardsmen, young soldiers fighting in the Cambodian jungle, construction workers battling anti-war demonstrators on Wall Street, survivors of the police shootings at Jackson State College, staff of the Nixon administration trying to manage a war in Indochina amidst an uprising at home. White House adviser and Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan; Mark Rudd, co-founder of the radical anti-war student group Weatherman; former Kent student and current columnist for The New York Times Gail Collins; and student protester and Jerry Casale, founder of the band Devo.

During May 1970, frustration and anger split American society apart, and we still live in the aftermath of that rift. 

That horrendous day brought Kent State’s John Filo a Pulitzer for his photo of Mary Vecchio over a fallen student.