“He aimed toward me, and then his gun goes off. “I put my camera to my eye and trained it on one of the soldiers,” he says. John snapped a photo thinking, “Okay, I’ve got my picture.” A moment later, the soldiers formed a rifle line. He went straight toward the action, where a student in the no man’s land between soldiers and students waved a black flag. On his lunch break, he grabbed a camera and stepped outside. All the other photographers on the student paper had assignments from out-of-town papers, so John, 21, was working in the newspaper office to help process their pictures. John Filo was a senior at Kent State in May 1970, a student photographer who almost missed out on covering the protests because he’d been in the woods taking pictures of teaberry leaves for his senior thesis that weekend. Sandy Scheuer, who was just passing through the area on her way to class, was struck by a bullet that hit her jugular vein. Allison Krause was shot in the chest William Schroeder in the back. “Why is no one helping him?” As the soldiers approached, their guns at the ready, she recalls asking them a question that countless others across the country would soon ask as well: “Why did you do this?” “Doesn’t anyone see what just happened here?” she remembers crying. Other students walked by, too stunned or confused to look. She knelt over his body as blood seeped onto the pavement. Jeffrey Miller, the student she’d been talking to, was facedown on the ground he’d been shot through the mouth. Mary Ann dropped to the pavement and waited until the smoke had cleared to look up. The soldiers seemed to retreat to a nearby hill then, in the next 13 seconds, they fired more than 60 shots.
The two of them watched as another student waved a black flag, taunting the National Guard troops who had been sent in after protesters had burned down the ROTC building two nights before. On her way to join the protest, she struck up a conversation with a guy in bell-bottoms. Mary Ann, in her jeans, white scarf and a pair of hippie sandals someone had given her, headed toward a field where students were gathered. Until, that is, she got to Kent State in northern Ohio, where, on May 4, student protests erupted over President Richard Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia. Seeing the country, meeting new people, sharing music and the occasional joint - the adventure had that feeling of magic from her childhood. Hitchhiking her way across the country, Mary Ann slept in fields, at hamburger shacks, at crash pads, working here and there for money for food, which she shared with other kids who were also bumming around. She is the 14-year-old kneeling in the Kent State photograph at top.
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