On May 4, 1970, at 12:24 p.m., Ohio National Guard troops turned in unison at the Pagoda to face the Prentice Hall parking lot, and for 13 seconds 28 guardsmen fired 67 shots toward demonstrators, spectators, and passersby. They killed Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, William Schroeder, and Sandra Scheuer, and wounded Joseph J. Lewis, John R. Cleary, James Russell, Thomas M. Grace, Alan Canfora, Dean R. Kahler, Douglas Alan Wrentmore, Robert Follis Stamps, and Donald Scott Mackenzie. The shootings were called “unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable” by President Richard Nixon's Commission on Campus Unrest. Just after midnight on May 15, Mississippi patrolmen and Jackson police killed Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green and wounded dozens at Jackson State College. Since 1971, Kent State students have linked the events with the slogan “Long live the spirit of Kent and Jackson State.”
