Hundreds of Kent State University students, faculty, staff, alumni and community members gathered to pay their respects and to remember.A week of steady downpours soaked the historic field where students and Ohio National Guardsmen had faced off during an anti-war protest on May 4, 1970, at Kent State that eventually led to soldiers opening fire, killing four students and wounding nine others. Still, more than 700 people gathered at the site and participated in the annual commemoration.Speakers included Julian Grimes, president of Black United Students; Sophia Swengle, president of the May 4 T...

Despite rain, Kent State University continued its commemoration to honor the memory of May 4, 1970 with the annual candlelight walk and vigil on campus.This cornerstone of the commemoration began in 1971. Participants carried candles as they gathered on the Kent State Commons and in the Prentice Hall parking lot....

Kent State University Associate Professor of Geography Jennifer Mapes, Ph.D., has studied the events of May 4, 1970, through the lens of a map maker. “On Prospect Street, Lilian Tyrrell’s daughter comes home from kindergarten and asks, ‘Mommy, is there a war on?’ There was, of course, just not in Kent,” Mapes told the audience that filled the Kent Student Center Ballroom on May 2.“On Stow Street bridge, a National Guard checkpoint keeps high school student Diane Williams from going home after attending Chippewa Lake Appreciation Day,” Mapes continued. “At the corner of Main and Water, 12-...