Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

8. Preached that the United States government must be overthrown now. (Michener, 1970, p.
237).
The governor, James A. Rhodes, also flew to Kent. He was making his way from Cleveland, where he
had been campaigning for generally pro-war Republicans (Best, 2010). Governor Rhodes had berated the
student protesters at Kent State. He basically called them savages that were anti-American. His description
of the protestors was that they were “worse than the brown shirts and the communist element, and also the
night-riders and the vigilantes. They are the worst type of people that we harbor in America” (U.S.
President’s Commission on Campus Unrest, 1970, p. 254). Rhodes promised to eradicate the problem by
any amount of lawful force and legal means necessary. He said that “every force of law would be used to
deal with them” (Hensley & Lewis, 2010, p. 55). He then stated that he was going to obtain a state of
emergency by means of a court order, which he never went through with.
The statements made by Rhodes raised the antagonistic attitudes of students towards authority figures,
governmental officials, and perhaps “America.” Rhodes should not have insulted the students by comparing
them to radical groups, such as Nazis and Communists, no matter how extreme their methods were. They
were exercising their rights as Americans to protest a war they did not believe in. By doing that, Rhodes
basically claimed that an American right that the students were practicing, in the form of protesting, was
not American, and the right to protest was considered synonymous with anarchy. Rhodes also created a lot
of confusion by stating that there was a state of emergency, yet not following through with obtaining the
necessary paperwork; this made people, especially the National Guard, believe that martial law was in
effect and, therefore, congregations and rallies were not permitted. This is the major factor and
misunderstanding that led to the students being gunned down by the National Guard the following day.
Ronald Kane, the prosecutor in the surrounding Portage County, had a meeting with James Rhodes
and gave Rhodes the idea to shut down Kent State University, at least temporarily, which Governor Rhodes
declined to do. If Rhodes would have permitted the university to shut down, at least during that tense time
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