“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.”
– Neil Young, Ohio
Neil Young’s Ohio and the Isley Brothers soulful version that meshes Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun,” always evoke a chill when I hear them. As 2014 winds down and we greet 2015, a poignant 45th anniversary looms ahead – the May 4, 1970 shootings at Kent State University that I only recently discovered are linked to my family.
Members from Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity engage in outdoor activities on Student Commons, 1968-71
Image Credit: Lafayette Tolliver
I come from Shaker Heights, Ohio. I was born into a family of six children: three brothers and two sisters. Our family was a military family, Dad a career Air Force officer. The Akron/Cleveland area was our hometown. My father and my three brothers all attended Kent State University. Kent, nestled between Cleveland and Akron, was a sleepy Ohio college town until that tragic day in May when the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four students and wounded nine others all protesting the Vietnam War. This unspeakable tragedy, delivered another gut punch to America’s identity. Nixon was still in office, the war in Vietnam had sneaked into Cambodia and Laos, and we were still bleeding out from the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Campus protests across the country were becoming increasingly violent as state and federal law enforcement sought to quell the “subversiveness.” On May 15, 1970, eleven days after Kent State, several students were killed by police, protesting the war at Jackson State College, a predominately Black school in Mississippi.
Unidentified students attend football game, 1968-1971
Image Credit: Lafayette Tolliver
From 1968-1971, my brother Lafayette “Lafe” Tolliver attended Kent State University. Lafe and my brother Stephen were founding members of Black United Students (BUS) – a student activist group. Stephen, who was two years older than Lafe, was an Army ROTC cadet majoring in criminal justice who would later go off to Vietnam. Lafe was a photojournalism major and worked for the Kent Stater newspaper and the Chestnut Burr yearbook. Lafe never went anywhere without his Canon camera. Lafe and Stephen are nearly twenty years older than me. I knew little of their teen and college years growing up. I vaguely knew that Lafe and Stephen were at Kent State during those chaotic times and Lafe’s contribution to history.
On October 18, 2014 – homecoming weekend at Kent State – the photo exhibit “Coming of Age at Kent 1967–71: A Pictorial of Black Student Life” premiered. This exhibition of photographs by my brother Lafe documented the black student experience at Kent during the late 60s and early 70s at the height of the black campus movement. In the talk about the exhibit came the revelation that Lafe and other black students, on night of May 3, 1970, went around to various Kent dormitories warning the white students about confronting the Ohio National Guardsman. The black student’s warnings were met with disbelief and skepticism that the National Guard would harm students. My brother and the other students of BUS knew too well of police confrontations (sounds familiar, right?). They also instructed other black students they came across to stay away from the protest.
Lafayette Tolliver with his Canon camera
Photo Credit: Gabriel Tolliver
For 40+ years, over a 1,000 negatives, clippings, photographs – including photos from the aftermath of this tragedy (some of which were recently included into the KSU May 4th Memorial) – sat in Lafe’s attic. Other than Black Panther Party imagery, we see little of black college student life and events during that turbulent time. This chapter of my brother’s life illustrates the importance of documenting a culture and one’s craft, to show that we are here, were there, and that black lives matter.
The selected images are from the Lafayette Tolliver collection, which primarily highlights black student life at Kent State University, 1967-1971.
About the author: Gabriel To
lliver is a producer, writer, and director. A veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom 2009-2010, Gabriel lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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