Videos: Kent State Truth Tribunal

By Mickey Huff, May 4, 2020

For the 50th anniversary, Professor Mickey Huff of Project Censored, interviewed academics, socio-political historians, protesters, and massacre survivors on the many issues related to the May 4, 1970 Kent and Jackson State massacres.  Tune into the discussions never before explored about May 4, 1970, and what it means to all of us now.

History Matters. We hope these perspectives enrich your understanding of this important historical event and provide context for where we are as a society today especially on matters of war and peace, civil and human rights, and how we can work together to create a more just and equitable world.

Participants

Peter Kuznick – Professor of history, American University; author of Untold History of the United States with Oliver Stone

Joseph Lewis – Survivor of two gunshot wounds from Kent State on May 4, 1970

David Zeiger – Documentary filmmaker, Sir! No Sir! The Suppressed Story of the GI Movement to End the War in Vietnam

Ira Shor – Author with Paulo Freire of A Pedagogy for Liberation, scholar of critical pedagogy

Joel Eis – Longtime anti-war protester, organizer around draft resistance, and political artist; owner of The Rebound Bookstore

DeRay Mckesson – Author of On the Other Side of Freedom; host of Pod Save the People; civil rights activist at Ferguson; Black Lives Matter

David Swanson – Executive Director, World Beyond War; Campaign Coordinator for RootsAction.org; on the advisory board with Veterans for Peace

Laurel Krause – Allison Krause’s sister, who was murdered at Kent State; director and co- founder of the Kent State Truth Tribunal

With shared formal statements submitted in support of the event from documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and civil and consumer rights advocate and lawyer, Ralph Nader.

“50 years after the Kent State killings, justice still has not been served. The Kent State Truth Tribunal brings us closer to that goal by sharing first-hand accounts with the public. I am grateful for their efforts and hopeful that some day the truth will come out.”

— Michael Moore

“I spoke at Kent State a few days before May 4. The anxieties of the students were plainly evident in the crowded auditorium and throughout a very tense campus. The massacres at Kent State and the black college Jackson State confirmed the worst fears of anti-war and civil rights student protesters on campus — that this was going to be the response of a police state.”

–Ralph Nader, statements on the Kent State 50th anniversary of May 4, 1970.

Mickey Huff, Host and Moderator; is director of Project Censored; professor of social science and history at Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area where he co-chairs the history area and chairs the journalism department. Mickey did his graduate thesis in history, “Healing Old Wounds,” on the efforts of state and university officials to censor interpretations critical of the official narrative around the May 4 events between 1977-1995. He conducted over 20 oral history interviews at Kent for the 25th anniversary and later testified for the Kent State Truth Tribunal in New York City. In 2012, he co-authored with Laurel Krause a chapter for Censored 2013: Dispatches from the Media Revolution, “Kent State: Was It about Civil Rights or Murdering Student Protestors,” which revealed new forensic evidence about May 4 that led Laurel Krause to take the case all the way to the United Nations.

Laurel Krause, Host and Participant; director and co-founder of the Kent State Truth Tribunal

Prapat Campbell, Art Director

Adam Armstrong, Editor

The May 4, 1970 shooting Ohio National Guardsmen photograph is from John Darnell

Gratitude and thanks to Neil Young for his song “Ohio”

Organized by Project Censored and the Kent State Truth Tribunal

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2 Responses

  1. I remember when these killings happened. I remember when the President of the United States called the student demonstrators “bums”. I remember that James Michener, at that time a prominent successful novelist and World War 2 veteran,headed a fact finding panel. The panel eventually unmasked all the official whitewashes of the murders as lies. I remember that William Safire, one of President Nixon’s speechwriters at the time of the killings, heard a high-ranking member of Nixon’s administration (a US Marine Corps combat veteran) sadly remark that the Kent State murders were the result of a deliberate volley of coordinated gunfire ordered by an officer, not a panicky response of individual enlisted National Guardsmen reacting blindly to a perceived threat. Which had been, and still is, the official evaluation. A disgraceful time in American life. Things haven’t much improved since then.

  2. Just watching this in February 2021. Spent April-May 1970 in jail in Ottawa following an anti war demonstration there. During the trial I condemned the persecution and told the court they should not persecute us but stop the US which is killing its own children.

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