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An unofficial news blog for Neil Young fans from Thrasher's Wheat with concert and album updates, reviews, analysis, and other Rock & Roll ramblings. Separating the wheat from the chaff since 1996.
So is the song "Ohio" "an anthem for our times?". While the jury may still be out, our readers here were somewhat divided on the answer. Regardless, the CSN&Y song "Ohio" is a powerful song still resonating 56 years later.
Thrasher's Wheat has been observing the anniversary of this event for decades now, sadly.
We can only continue to ask the pertinent question: "How many more?"
Tedeschi Trucks Band did their first-time cover of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s song “Ohio” on the opening night of their residency at Beacon Theatre, New York City on March 10, 2026.
Given the popularity of my post on the song “For What It’s Worth (Stop, Hey What’s That Sound)” by Buffalo Springfield, which is now close to 4,000 views and rising (available here), I have to conclude that people are desperately searching for a way to make meaning out of what’s happening around the world and in their own countries.
In particular, I suspect that people are trying to figure out some way to respond to what they feel are steps in an egregiously wrong direction—perhaps even illegal, immoral, unethical, or tyrannical—by those in charge of running things, without risking themselves, their family, friends, and communities, or their way of life in doing so.
My post on the song “Ohio” is now starting to get the same attention—a song written and put out by Crosby Stills Nash & Young in the immediate aftermath of the Kent State Massacre in 1970, which was soon thereafter followed by the Jackson State Killings.
If you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve been feeling a strong sense of deja vu for a while now. We have been here before. We have been through something eerily similar to this. That’s why I’m sharing the “Ohio” post below, so you can see why I’m saying that.
I do believe in my heart, mind, and soul that, as Martin Luther King declared in his remarkably inspiring sermons and talks using the title of a famous gospel song as his key message, “We Shall Overcome.”
As Dr. King explained, we shall overcome not simply because we wish to do so. We shall overcome because “somehow the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice” and because “truth crushed to earth will rise again.”1 If you need inspiration in these difficult times, here it is:
And here it is in the song whose title he cited, “We Shall Overcome,” sung by the glorious Joan Baez. (You can find the other two iconic versions, one by gospel legend Mahalia Jackson and the other by the famous folk singer-activist Pete Seeger, here and here.)
Herewith, without further ado, my previous post on the tragic events provoking the creation of the song “Ohio” by Crosby Stills Nash & Young.
This is a fantastic song in so many ways. Thank you, Neil Young and CSNY.
54 Years Later: "Ohio", Kent State, Student Protests & The Tin Soldiers March On | #MayTheFOURBeWithYou
School Shootings ... "How many more?"
53 years ago, on May 4, 1970 at ~12:25 PM, a school shooting took place on the campus of Kent State University, Ohio.
Remember those days when students were brave enough to march in the streets and end a war?
Now that today's college students have been safely muzzled by crippling
loan debt and "woke" education, there is little need for authority to teach students a lesson
similar to that educational day of May 4, 1970. It's been 50 years
since shots rang out across a college campus, leaving four dead in Ohio and the lives of so many of that generation changed forever by the day's events.
And so, the tin soldiers march on and on... in Vietnam. Balkans. Iraq. El Salvador. Afghanistan. Libya. Syria. Yemen. Ukraine. Sudan. Palestine.
Why Neil Young’s “OHIO” has earned it’s place on the National Recording Registry
Kent State University on May 4, 1970
Library of Congress Exhibit photo by Howell Posner
Original photo by photojournalism student John Filo
The following letter to the Library of Congress regarding "Why Neil Young’s “OHIO” has earned it’s place on the National Recording Registry" is by Howell Posner.
As a permanent exhibit at the Library of Congress, there is the infamous photo of the distraught woman next to the students body. Surely if that photo is part of a permanent exhibit piece, the the song "OHIO" should be inducted into the National Recording Registry as a work of Recorded History.
Why Neil Young’s “OHIO” has earned it’s place on the National Recording Registry
Dear Library of Congress,
The Kent State shooting remains a watershed moment in American history. On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine Kent State students. 52 years after members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on college students, Young's "Ohio" remains the most evocative pop-culture response to a defining moment in American history.
The impact of the shootings was dramatic. The event triggered a nationwide student strike that forced hundreds of colleges and universities to close. Kent State reverberated throughout the final years of the Vietnam War and the passage of the 26th Amendment in 1971, which lowered the voting age to 18.
H. R. Haldeman, a top aide to President Richard Nixon, suggests the shootings had a direct impact on national politics. In The Ends of Power, Haldeman (1978) states that the shootings at Kent State began the slide into Watergate, eventually destroying the Nixon administration. Beyond the direct effects of the May 4, the shootings have certainly come to symbolize the deep political and social divisions that so sharply divided the country during the Vietnam War era.
PBS is America’s largest classroom, the nation’s largest stage for the arts and a trusted window to the world. It’s When Music Makes History (WMMH) program highlights 12 songs including “OHIO” that “have become inseparably intertwined with an historical moment. “ The National Recording Registry has five of this Program’s songs on it’s list. We ask that Ohio be elected to its rightful place on the Registry as well. As stated on the WMMH Program, “Just weeks after the May 1970 massacre of anti-war protestors at Kent State University, Neil Young wrote the song Ohio and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young rushed out a recording of the single.” https://www.pbs.org/video/ohio-kdniv4/
Author Dorian Lynskey writes in the book 33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day: "Ohio" is perhaps the most powerful topical song ever recorded: moving, memorable, and perfectly timed. But it turned out to signify the end of the era of protest songwriting which had begun with the folk revival rather than a thrilling rebirth."
A significant article in The Cleveland (Ohio) Plain Dealer describes the importance of the song : "Neil Young's 'Ohio' evokes strong images of May 4, 1970 shootings at Kent State" by Mark Dawidziak: https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2010/05/neil_youngs_ohio_evokes_strong.html
It was more than just another protest song. "It was the quickest and best reaction to Kent State, with Neil Young acting as 50 percent songwriter and 50 percent journalist," said David Bianculli, a pop-culture historian who teaches at Rowan University and regularly contributes to NPR's "Fresh Air."
Ohio was a cry of anguish, penned by Neil Young after seeing in that week’s issue of Life Magazine pictures taken at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. "It's still hard to believe I had to write this song. It's ironic that I capitalized on the death of these American students. Probably the most important lesson ever learned at an American place of learning. David Crosby cried after this take (of recording the song), "Neil’s Young’s comments in the liner notes of his Decade album.
"This is an event that now is in every history book," said Carole A. Barbato, a Kent State University professor of communication studies who team-teaches a course on May 4. "Wherever you live, even though your environment obviously shapes how you perceive things, you're probably as aware of the shootings at Kent State as those of us in Northeast Ohio. And even though this still would be in the history books, the pop culture certainly does perpetuate that. "Ohio" was entering the pop-culture consciousness within three weeks of the shootings.
"I'll tell you what that song meant," said Bianculli, author of the recently published "Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour." "After the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, you felt kind of helpless as a young person. It seemed that when someone had your voice, that voice was silenced, usually by violence.”
"Then you have Kent State, and college kids are actually fired upon. And when you just might start to be thinking, you don't dare have a voice or there is no voice, from the radio comes this voice of solidarity and outrage. (OHIO) It wasn't just a pop song."
"After 1970, that doesn't happen again. It didn't need to happen again, mostly because it didn't need to happen there. And that's what Neil Young's song spoke to."
We thank Librarian of Congress and the National Recording Preservation Board for their consideration of electing Neil Young’s OHIO (1970) to the National Recording Registry.
Sincerely,
Howell Posner
53 Years Later: "Ohio", Kent State & Tin Soldiers Still Marching | #MayTheFOURBeWithYou
School Shootings ... "How many more?"
53 years ago, on May 4, 1970 at ~12:25 PM, a school shooting took place on the campus of Kent State University, Ohio.
Remember those days when students were brave enough to march in the streets and end a war?
Now that today's college students have been safely muzzled by crippling
loan debt and "woke" education, there is little need for authority to teach students a lesson
similar to that educational day of May 4, 1970. It's been 50 years
since shots rang out across a college campus, leaving four dead in Ohio and the lives of so many of that generation changed forever by the day's events.
And so, the tin soldiers march on and on... in Vietnam. Balkans. Iraq. El Salvador. Afghanistan. Libya. Syria. Yemen. Ukraine. Sudan.
52 Years Later: "Ohio", Kent State & Tin Soldiers Still Marching | #MayTheFOURBeWithYou
52 years ago, on May 4, 1970 at ~12:25 PM, a school shooting took place on the campus of Kent State University, Ohio.
Remember those days when students were brave enough to march in the streets and end a war?
Jeffrey Miller - Age: 20
Shot @ 90 Yards From National Guard
Now that today's college students have been safely muzzled by crippling
loan debt and "woke" education, there is little need for authority to teach students a lesson
similar to that educational day of May 4, 1970. It's been 50 years
since shots rang out across a college campus, leaving four dead in Ohio and the lives of so many of that generation changed forever by the day's events.
And so, the tin soldiers march on and on... in Vietnam. Balkans. Iraq. El Salvador. Afghanistan. Libya. Syria. Yemen. Ukraine.
51 Years Later: "Ohio", Kent State & Tin Soldiers Still Marching | #MayThe4thBeWithYou
51 years ago, on May 4, 1970 at ~12:25 PM, a school shooting took place on the campus of Kent State University, Ohio.
James Allen Rhodes - Governor of Ohio (1963 – 1971) &
Richard Milhous Nixon - 37th President of the United States (1969 - 1974)
Remember those days when students were brave enough to march in the streets and end a war?
Now that today's college students have been safely muzzled by crippling loan debt, there is little need for authority to teach students a lesson similar to that educational day of May 4, 1970. It's been 50 years since shots rang out across a college campus, leaving four dead in Ohio and the lives of so many of that generation changed forever by the day's events.
And so, the tin soldiers march on and on... in Baton Rouge. Baltimore. Ferguson. Minneapolis. Louisville. Our hometowns.
"13 seconds in Kent Ohio" - A tribute to those hurt or injured at Kent State Ohio on May 4th 1970. Song By Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and performed by Dala.
Kent State Massacre Evidence
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 11/15/73 document
via Kent State Truth Tribunal
(Click photo to enlarge)
On April 3, 2013,Kent State Truth Tribunal’s submission to the United Nations was posted ONLINE at the UN Human Rights Committee website.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 11/15/73 document (above) shows the shipment of 12,000 weapons within possession of the Ohio National Guard (ONG) including weapons used to kill and wound student protesters at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 with commentary on the destruction of 12,000 weapons.
Kent State Massacre Evidence
US Dept of Justice letter 11/19/73
via Kent State Truth Tribunal
(Click photo to enlarge)
So what really happened at Kent State, Ohio in 1970?
Based on last week's U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation report, we still might never know. Or will we someday learn the awful truth of that tragic day that left 4 dead in Ohio?
It seems that the key to the truth lies with Terry Norman.
In recently discovered film of the Kent State Shooting in 1970 (1:07.40 thru 1:08), FBI informant provocateur Terry Norman (photo at top) is the young man in the light colored sports jacket. Earlier that day Norman's mentor, Detective Tom Kelly from the Kent Police had attempted to have Norman's gun approved for carrying on campus during the demonstrations, but that approval never came so it's KEY that the video clearly shows Norman handing over his gun to Detective Kelly.
Mangels wrote in the Plain Dealer, “Norman was photographing protestors that day for the FBI and carried a loaded .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model . . . five-shot revolver in a holster under his coat for protection. Though he denied discharging his pistol, he previously has been accused of triggering the Guard shootings by firing to warn away angry demonstrators, which the soldiers mistook for sniper fire.” [4. Mangels, “Kent State Tape Indicates Altercation and Pistol Fire Preceded National Guard Shootings (audio),” Plain Dealer (Cleveland), October 8, 2010, http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2010/10/analysis_of_kent_state_audio_t.html.]
Video footage and still photography have recorded the minutes following the “sound of sniper fire,” showing Terry Norman sprinting across the Kent State commons, meeting up with Kent Police and the ONG. In this visual evidence, Norman immediately yet casually hands off his pistol to authorities and the recipients of the pistol show no surprise as Norman hands them his gun. [5 [5.] Kent State Shooting 1970 [BX4510], Google Video, at 8:20 min., http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3727445416544720642.]
From forensic evidence expert Stuart Allen's analyses of the Kent State Tape in 2010, we learned that Norman shot that weapon at the May 4th demonstration as he was attacked & beat-up by students who saw his gun. (More on Terry Norman ~ Does Terry Norman Hold the Key to Kent State?.)
Watching these Kent State videos without sound, Norman's gun hand-off coupled with the post-Kent State Tape analysis, we now understand the importance of this interaction caught on video & at many other sources.
Norman's pistol 'created the sound of sniper fire.'
In response to the DOJ whitewash report Congressman Dennis Kucinich issued a statement:
“The letter also failed to indicate any efforts to reconcile the evidence in the recording with any prior statements about the incident made by FBI paid informant, Terry Norman, who was on campus that day and was known to have brandished a gun that might have created the sounds caught in the recording.
“While I appreciate the response from the Justice Department, ultimately, they fail to examine key questions and discrepancies. It is well known that an FBI informant, Terry Norman, was on the campus. That FBI informant was carrying a gun. Eye witnesses testified that they saw Mr. Norman brandish that weapon. Two experts in forensic audio, who have previously testified in court regarding audio forensics, found gunshots in their analysis of the audio recording.
Kent State Massacre - (Find The Cost of Freedom; Vietnam) + Nixon/The fall of Saigon - YouTube
Did an FBI informant discharge a firearm at Kent State?
Declassified FBI files show the FBI already had developed credible evidence suggesting that there was indeed a sniper and that one or more shots may have been fired at the guardsmen first.
Rumors of a sniper had circulated for at least a day before the fatal confrontation, the documents show. And a memorandum sent to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on May 19, 1970, referred to bullet holes found in a tree and a statue — evidence, the report stated, that “indicated that at least two shots had been fired at the National Guard.”
Another interviewee told agents that a guardsman had spoken of “a confirmed report of a sniper.”
It also turned out that the FBI had its own informant and agent-provocateur roaming the crowd, a part-time Kent State student named Terry Norman, who had a camera. Mr. Norman also was armed with a snub-nosed revolver that FBI ballistics tests, first declassified in 1977, concluded had indeed been discharged on that day.
Then there was the testimony of an ROTC cadet whose identity remains unknown, one of the pervasive redactions concealing the names of all the FBI agents who conducted the interviews and of all those whom they interrogated. Although presumably angry over the demonstrators’ destruction of the campus ROTC building, the cadet’s calm, precise firsthand account nonetheless carries a credibility not easily dismissed.
Before the fatal volley, the ROTC cadet told the FBI, he “heard one round, a pause, two rounds, and then the M-1s opened up.”
The report continued that the cadet “stated that the first three rounds were definitely not M-1s. He said they could possibly have been a .45 caliber. … [He] further stated that he heard confirmed reports of sniper fire coming in over both the National Guard radio and the state police radio.”
The cadet also told the FBI he observed demonstrators carrying baseball bats, golf clubs and improvised weapons, including pieces of steel wire cut into footlong sections, along with radios and other electronic devices “used to monitor the police and Guard wavelengths.”
Did an FBI informant precipitate the shootings?"
Why is understanding the Kent State Ohio Massacre critical?
To understand the events of May 4, 1970 at Kent State and the four dead in Ohio, is to understand much of what has happened in our history before, during and after.
In the intervening years, there have been a wide range of commissions, studies, research and theories of what actually led to twenty-eight Ohio National Guardsmen shooting into a crowd of anti-war protesters at Kent State University which left four college students dead on the ground.
Photo by Kent State photojournalism studentJohn Filo
"History never exactly repeats itself.
But its currents are never far from the present. As today’s protesters and police employ bolder tactics, the Kent State and Jackson State anniversaries should remind us that deadly mistakes can and do happen. It is the government’s responsibility to wield proportionate force, not to over-arm police and place them in a position where they could panic with deadly results."
~~ Steven Rosenfeld, Will a Militarized Police Force Facing Occupy Wall Street Lead to Another Kent State Massacre? | Civil Liberties | AlterNet
Despite many official denials, there have always been persistent theories that the National Guard was actually provoked into the shootings by a belief that they were being fired upon themselves and therefore were acting in self defense.
What follows is a brief recap for those less familiar with the The Kent State Massacre, followed by the latest developments.
The spring of 1970 was a time of significant unrest on college campuses protesting the Vietnam war and President Richard Nixon's announcement of a new American invasion of Cambodia, provoking an escalation in anti-war protests. The anti-war protest movement culminated with the Kent State Massacre which resulted in hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closing throughout the United States due to a student strike of four million students. The official President's Commission on Campus Unrest concluded that"the indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable."
Twenty-eight Ohio National Guardsmen fired sixty-seven rounds in thirteen seconds, leaving four students dead
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Minneapolis, MN 1970
"They were about to walk out on stage and were spending a moment warming up."
Photo by Henry Diltz
Immediately after the Kent State shooting on May 4, 1970, Neil Young composed the song "Ohio" after looking at photos appearing in Life magazine and then taking a walk in the woods. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young went to the studio and recorded the song which was released to radio stations shortly after the killings.
Life Magazine (May 15, 1970) issue which inspired Neil Young to write the song "Ohio"
A rather significant article in The Cleveland (Ohio) Plain Dealer "Neil Young's 'Ohio' evokes strong images of May 4, 1970 shootings at Kent State" by Mark Dawidziak:
It was more than just another protest song.
Ohio was a cry of anguish, penned by Neil Young after seeing pictures taken at Kent State University on May 4, 1970.
But 40 years after members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on college students, Young's "Ohio" remains the most evocative pop-culture response to a defining moment in American history.
"This is an event that now is in every history book," said Carole A. Barbato, a Kent State University professor of communication studies who team-teaches a course on May 4. "Wherever you live, even though your environment obviously shapes how you perceive things, you're probably as aware of the shootings at Kent State as those of us in Northeast Ohio. And even though this still would be in the history books, the pop culture certainly does perpetuate that. "Ohio" was entering the pop-culture consciousness within three weeks of the shootings.
"It was the quickest and best reaction to Kent State, with Neil Young acting as 50 percent songwriter and 50 percent journalist," said David Bianculli, a pop-culture historian who teaches at Rowan University and regularly contributes to NPR's "Fresh Air."
"I'll tell you what that song meant," said Bianculli, author of the recently published "Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour." "After the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, you felt kind of helpless as a young person. It seemed that when someone had your voice, that voice was silenced, usually by violence.
"Then you have Kent State, and college kids are actually fired upon. And when you just might start to be thinking, you don't dare have a voice or there is no voice, from the radio comes this voice of solidarity and outrage. It wasn't just a pop song."
...
"After 1970, that doesn't happen again. It didn't need to happen again, mostly because it didn't need to happen there. And that's what Neil Young's song spoke to."
Thanks Ken D.
"Ohio" 45 Atlantic Records Single (w/ "Find The Cost of Freedom")
by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - May 1970
Laurel Krause -- is the sister of Allison Krause, one of the four students who died on the Kent State College campus in Ohio. From Kent State Truth Tribunal
On May 4, 1970 my sister Allison was shot to death around noon as she protested against the expanding Vietnam War and the US military occupation of her college campus, Kent State University. Ever since May 1970, American leadership, Kent State University and US government agencies involved in the Kent State Massacre planning, the execution and the aftermath have never claimed that the murders at #KentState were at the hands of the US government … or that it was even murder at all.
To restate this conundrum, US military bullets killed and injured American students at a peace rally. The US troops shot armor-piercing bullets from American war weapons, killing four students, critically wounding nine yet ever since that day, American leadership has never referred to or reflected on the fact that young people and protesters were shot dead by US military personnel with US military weapons. A drastically different view (fostered mostly by #truth) will forever be held by most of the Baby Boomers, the real target on this great US government onslaught. Just after Kent State, EVERYBODY KNEW they meant to #kill at Kent State … and 10 days later in a related show of force, two additional American students were shot dead at Jackson State University, with the tally at six students in May 1970.
This long-gone American history show us how the US government has gotten away with murder against American young adults and protestors … now going on 44 years.
Neil Young was so shaken by photos of the four unarmed students killed by military gunfire at Kent State that he wrote "Ohio" for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young right away. By the end of the week, it was playing on the radio. That was 1970. Now, in 2014, outrage over police brutality has become much more widespread, inspiring protests and "die-ins" nationwide for Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two unarmed black men killed in confrontations with cops. Days ago in Brooklyn, two NYPD officers were murdered while sitting in their patrol car. But this year will end without a defining protest song. ... "I think a lot of it is just due to fear of being blackballed and not making a living," Questlove of The Roots told Billboard, referring to the backlash the Dixie Chicks faced in 2003, when Natalie Maines told an audience that the band was "ashamed" that President Bush was from Texas."We were like, 'Man, if a white woman can lose her career in the United States for speaking up for what's right, then shit, we'll get the electric chair.' I think that was the bottom line. And that just really rendered America silent."
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