Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio

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By Derf Backderf

A Choose to Read Ohio selection. On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard gunned down unarmed college students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University. In a deadly barrage of 67 shots, four students—Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder, and Sandra Scheuer—were killed and nine others were shot and wounded. A few days prior, 10-year-old Derf Backderf saw those same Guardsmen patrolling his nearby hometown, sent in by the governor to crush a trucker strike. Using the journalism skills he employed on My Friend Dahmer and Trashed, Backderf conducted extensive interviews and exhaustive research to explore the lives of these four young people and the events of those four days in May when the country seemed on the brink of tearing apart. Use the Choose to Read Ohio toolkit for Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio to plan book discussion groups or library programs. Visit Derf Backderf's website. Book jacket image and book description courtesy Abrams. Used with permission.