[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 7174-7175]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   HONORING THE MEMORY OF THOSE MASSACRED 40 YEARS AGO AT KENT STATE 
                               UNIVERSITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Quigley). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Grayson) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. GRAYSON. Mr. Speaker, earlier today, we voted on memorializing 
the tragic events that took place 40 years and 1 day ago at Kent State 
University.
  Most Americans today are too young to remember what happened then, 
but I think that those of us who lived through that time and the many 
others who thought about it or who saw afterwards what happened have 
this picture in their minds.
  This is Mary Vecchio, kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller, at 
Kent State, on that terrible day when four students were shot by 
American soldiers. I think we would honor them by remembering how and 
why they died, and that is what I propose to do now.
  In 1968, Richard Nixon ran for President. He said he had a secret 
plan to end the war. That plan was so secret that, apparently, even 
Nixon, himself, didn't know what it was because, when he was elected, 
he simply expanded the war.
  In November of 1969, the My Lai Massacre exposed to the whole world--
not just to Americans but to the whole world--the sheer brutality of 
the war in Vietnam.
  The following month, in December of 1969, the draft was instituted. 
American college students and others--everyone of a certain age--knew 
that they would have to serve in Vietnam unless the war was ended.

                              {time}  1600

  Then on April 30 of 1970, the first war ever announced on TV, 
President Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia by U.S. forces. 
Almost immediately there were protests at universities all around the 
country, including at Kent State, and those protests grew and grew day 
by day. And the right wing immediately mobilized against these 
protests. In Ohio the Governor, Governor Rhodes, said, ``They're the 
worst type of people that we harbor in America,'' these students 
protesting against the war. ``I think that we're up against the 
strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that's ever been 
assembled in America.'' And President Nixon chimed in by saying that 
the antiwar protestors were pawns of foreign communists.
  So it was that 4 days after the announcement of the invasion of 
Cambodia, there was a protest that took place at Kent State University 
in Ohio, 20,000 students collected, assembled peaceably to protest, and 
the National Guard was called in to drive them away.
  First, the National Guard attacked them with tear gas. The students 
took the tear gas canisters and threw them back at the National Guard. 
The National Guard drew its bayonets and charged the students and 
forced them to a different location, but they still didn't disperse. So 
at that point they shot them. Four Americans died that day, including 
Jeffrey Miller.
  The protests continued. In fact, they grew. Almost a thousand 
universities were shut down all across the country. For the only time 
in American history, we had a national student strike everywhere in the 
country. At Jackson State 10 days later, two more students were shot by 
the National Guard, shot dead.
  And the thing that I remember most at that time is this sign, written 
on a bed sheet and dropped from a dormitory window outside of New York 
University in New York, this noble sign: ``They can't kill us all.''
  Let's take a closer look. ``They can't kill us all.''
  Then, as now, together, both times, there are people all around the 
world and especially people in America who want to live in peace, who 
think that no war is better than two wars, who think that we voted to 
end war, not to continue it. And for all those people, we know in our 
hearts they can't kill us all.
  There are people who think that we should be concentrating on 
education and not war, and we know they can't kill us all. There are 
people who think that we should be concentrating on our health, our own 
bodies, improving our living standards, rebuilding America, instead of 
war. And they can't kill us all. There are people who believe, not only 
in America but all over the world, that we should be striving every day 
toward peace, toward peace, not toward war. And they can't kill us all.

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