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History of the United States II / Unit 15   USH2 2142 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds

Kent State and Jackson State

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The idea

On May fourth, nineteen seventy, at Kent State University in Ohio, National Guard troops fired on protesting students, wounding nine and killing four; two of the dead had been crossing campus on their way to class. On May fifteenth, at Jackson State, a college for African Americans in Mississippi, police fired shotguns into a crowd protesting the invasion of Cambodia outside a women's dormitory, wounding twelve and killing two young men.

In practice

Two campuses eleven days apart, one photograph known across the world and one shooting far less remembered.

Where people slip

The Yawp records six students killed in the two protests, and names Kent State as the more famous. The misreading remembers one shooting and forgets the other. The anchor names both; the course teaches both, and the difference in memory is part of what is taught.

Your place on the trail

Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.

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