8. A Tragic Photo That Left its Mark on the 1970s
By the early 1970s, millions of Americans were protesting the Vietnam War. Protest was particularly fierce on campuses. There, a recent change that ended college deferments, which had previously exempted most college students from the draft and service in Vietnam, added fuel to the fire. The backlash reached a fever pitch after President Nixon announced a widening of the conflict on April 30th, 1970, with American military operations in Cambodia. The following day, protests and demonstrations swept campuses across the country, including that of Kent State, in Ohio.
On May 4th, about a thousand National Guardsmen were on Kent State’s campus. When students held an antiwar rally, they were met with tear gas. Some students threw back the canisters, as well as rocks. Things escalated, soldiers advanced on the students, and about thirty Guardsmen opened fire. Within seconds, four students met a tragic end, and nine were wounded. A student and part-time photographer, John Filo, captured a shot of fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio, as she cried over a fatally wounded twenty-year-old Jeffrey Miller. It was printed on the front page of the New York Times, went on to win a Pulitzer Prize, and became a symbol for the lost innocence of a nation’s youth.
