Clear warnings show confrontation could have been avoided

Imagine the headline that day, May 5, 1970.

The Post ran a story so important that it ran above the name of the paper. "Four killed in Kent State clash" was the headline.

The National Guard had killed four civilians. Their deaths shocked a campus, a city, a state and a nation, but the shots that killed four Kent State University students could not have come as a surprise.

The times were different in the years surrounding 1970. National news covered the pages of local newspapers. The United States was fighting in the Vietnam War, and many U.S. citizens did not support their country's involvement. The nation was on the verge of primary elections. Protesters gathered to oppose military action in Vietnam and to support women's and minorities' rights. Riots had been surfacing across the nation to represent its people's discontent.

The shooting did not have to happen - at Kent. It could have happened farther away. It could have happened even closer. It could have happened on College Green. Easily.

The following is an excerpt from an editorial that appeared in the Friday, May 1, 1970, edition of The Post:

We almost blew it last night.

We almost let our emotions and pranks and tempers and too many other things get the best of us.

At about 11 p.m. some students started a fire on Union Street outside Baker Center. They fed the flames with garbage from a large bin and finally - to the applause of many students - an American flag was used as kindling.

These people acted foolishly.

Others reacted foolishly.

And we came very close to an ugly internal confrontation that could have developed into something we would have all regretted...

The time for that has far from arrived and we cannot allow the seeming glory of a militant confrontation to preoccupy us...

The authors did not know how right they were.

Three days later, The Post's top story reported that the Ohio National Guard used tear gas and rifles with bayonets to break up the previous night's 2,000-person disturbance on the Kent State campus.

On the eve of Kent's fatal shooting, five students were injured, including one "whose hands and face were slashed by a National Guardsman's bayonet," according to the story.

Kent State President Robert I. White issued a statement Sunday, May 3, including these words: "First, Kent State University has been disastrously hurt. The hopes of all on campus have been placed in jeopardy and whether or not any part of the loss can be retrieved depends upon immediately responsible actions from all quarters of the university community."

White did not know how right he was.

He continued, "We must show to the nation that Kent State University has more to it than the ugliness it has seen in our midst."

But the next afternoon, that ugliness again erupted onto Kent's campus, resulting in four deaths and 11 injuries.

If only they had known.