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Jerry M. Lewis is professor emeritus of sociology at Kent State
University. As a Kent State faculty member in 1970, he witnessed
the May 4 shootings while serving as a faculty marshall. Since
then, Lewis has been involved in researching,...

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Jerry M. Lewis is professor emeritus of sociology at Kent State
University. As a Kent State faculty member in 1970, he witnessed
the May 4 shootings while serving as a faculty marshall. Since
then, Lewis has been involved in researching, memorializing, and
lecturing about the tragedy,

Despite the substantial literature which exists on the Kent
State shootings, misinformation and misunderstanding continue to
surround the events of May 4. For example, a prominent
college-level United States history book by Mary Beth Norton et al.
(1994), which is also used in high school advanced placement
courses contains a picture of the shootings of May 4 accompanied by
the following summary of events: "In May 1970, at Kent State
University in Ohio, National Guardsmen confronted student antiwar
protestors with a tear gas barrage. Soon afterward, with no
provocation, soldiers opened fire into a group of fleeing students.
Four young people were killed, shot in the back, including two
women who had been walking to class." (Norton et al., 1994, p. 732)
Unfortunately, this short description contains four factual errors:
(1) some degree of provocation did exist; (2) the students were not
fleeing when the Guard initially opened fire; (3) only one of the
four students who died, William Schroeder, was shot in the back;
and (4) one female student, Sandy Schreuer, had been walking to
class, but the other female, Allison Krause, had been part of the
demonstration. Distributed by Tubemogul.

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