Shelby Amato- Assignment 4

This was a photo that shocked a nation. Sometimes mislabeled as a picture of Columbine or a student shooter's victims, it's a photo of students shot down by our own national guard during a protest of the Vietnam war. As you could infer, the boy on the ground is dead. His name is Jeffrey Miller and he was involved in the student-led protest. The girl next to him is screaming in fear. 

This was a photo that won a pulitzer prize for defining an era. College students across the country led protests against the Vietnam war, which instituted a draft not known for thirty years, and was wildly unpopular. At Kent State University, one such protest led to a massacre. The National Guard made (debatably unlawful) moves to disperse the crowd of protesters, and fired on them when they refused- killing four people and injuring nine. Of the four dead, only two were actually involved in the protest, while the others were simply walking to class. 

I thought of this picture because the girl's face has always stuck with me. Her grief is so drastic that it looks fake and overdramatized. But the emotion and the movement of the photo resonates with me, it is one of few famous photographs that truly resemble a snapshot of life- a scene that you could step into.