“Flowers are better than bullets.” – Allison Krause, one of the four students killed by government troops on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio on May 4th, 1970
By Doug Draper
Posted May 4th, 2026 on Niagara At Large
The four students killed by government troops on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio on May 4th, 1970
I was finishing up one of my last years in high school in the spring of 1970 and like a lot of my peer sat the time, I was bursting with youthful hope and idealism.
In my mind and I believe in the minds of so many others, we were the generation that was going to end all wars, end gender and racial oppression, end dictatorial rule in government and create greener, safer and more affordable communities for all of us to live in.
And we were going do it free of violence and with chants of “we shall overcome” and “give peace a chance.”
Then on one sunny spring day in May, 1970, a regiment of armed U.S. National Guardsmen (very reminiscent of the masked ICE squads roaming the streets of United States today) shot and killed four unarmed students on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio during a protest against an ongoing War in Vietnam that had already slaughtered tens-of-thousands of young Americans drafted to fight in it and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese men, women and children.
A monument to the four slain students, sitting near the place where they were shot, and photographed by Doug Draper on an earlier anniversary of the shootings.
So here we are, more than five decades later, and the worst of humankind continue to do everything they can to threaten our democratic freedoms and the struggle for a better world for all. Here we are in this age of Trump.
Yet people have not given up.
We have recently witnessed the good people of the twin Cities of Minneapolis-St.Paul receiving a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for standing up against the ICE goons that terrorized their communities and in broad daylight, gunned down two Americans.
The people of those twin cities are also being nominated, and rightfully so, for a 2026 Nobel Peace Prize by editors of The Nation Magazine and wouldn’t it be wonderful if they received it over Trump who is one of the last individuals on this earth who should receive such an award.
We also have people in other regions of the world, including right here in Niagara, rallyng together for democracy and the common good.
So the good news is that the deaths, way back then, of those four students on the campus of Kent State University were not in vain.
Two peas in a pod when it comes to gutting public services and attacking democratic institutions
Call me naive if you want but all of these 56 years later, I continue to believe that if enough of us try, we can overcome the attacks on our democracy and on everything we value in a civil society by Donald Trumps of this world and by others like him, including Ontario’s totalitarian Premier Doug Ford.
We can do that if we put whatever other differences we have aside and lock arms together.
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Never Give Up Hope – Doug Draper, Niagara At Large
To hear and watch a video of for the song Ohio, written shortly after the Kent State killings by Neil Young and performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, click on –
For more remembrances, click on – https://laurelkrause.substack.com/p/allison-krause-had-the-nerve-to-question
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