Kent State : death and dissent in the long sixties /

Grace (history, Erie Community College) has written a history of dissent at Kent State University from the early 1960s to the early 1970s from a unique perspective. Holder of a PhD in US history, he is also one of the nine students wounded in the May 1, 1970, demonstration at the university. Grace spends more than half of his thoroughly researched study examining protest at Kent State prior to the events of May 1. In the early 1960s, much of the energy of the small number of protestors was aimed at discrimination against black students in off-campus housing. By the mid-1960s, the Vietnam War attracted a number of antiwar protestors--mainly children of working-class parents with a union background, but still a relatively small percentage of Kent State students. By 1970, a large number opposed the war and demonstrated against it. Grace criticizes university administrators for their consistently negative attitude toward protest and is sympathetic toward his colleagues who did protest. And he clearly sees the Ohio National Guard firing on students as a criminal act. The research is exhaustive, with 90 pages of notes, many based on interviews. For major public and university libraries. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. --Anthony Owens Edmonds, Ball State University