This Week in History: 4–10 May 2026
Featured anniversary: 4 May 1970
Four students killed
This week’s feature remembers the students killed at Kent State University on 4 May 1970. Ohio National Guard troops fired during a period of protest against the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. Four students were killed and nine were wounded.
The students killed were Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder. Kent State’s archive records Krause as a nineteen-year-old student from Pittsburgh, giving this national event a direct Pennsylvania connection.
Remembering people within a public event
The names should remain central to the anniversary. A phrase such as the Kent State shootings is necessary for locating the event, but it can also compress individual lives into a familiar historical reference.
The university’s historical resources provide a way to move beyond that compression. They preserve records and context that allow questions about the day, its immediate circumstances and its aftermath to be examined with care.
Remembering a violent event does not require turning every detail into an illustration of a present argument. It requires establishing what happened, distinguishing evidence from assumption and allowing the people affected to remain more than symbols.
Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder were students before their names became part of an event’s history. Keeping those names present is a small but necessary discipline. The archive gives remembrance a place to begin with people, records and the circumstances of the day.
Sources and further reading
Kent State University Libraries · Kent State: May 4 Visitors Center
Artwork notes
Editorial illustration from the Chronicle collection; not a photograph of the historical event.
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