Fire in the Heartland: The Kent State Story documents the historic 1970 uprising of students at Kent State University, which ended in an unprecedented assault by the National Guard that resulted in four deaths, told by those who experienced it and were leading the charge in the 1960s and 1970s against racism, state violence, and the Vietnam War.
On May 4 1970, thirteen young Americans were shot down by the National Guard in a shocking act of violence against unarmed students. Jeffery Miller, Sandy, Scheuer, Bill Schoreder, and Allison Krause were all killed while peacefully demonstrating against violent injustices wrought by the government that would take their lives, showing in graphic allegory the ways in which violence the US government commits abroad is brought home. Immediately following the tragedy, the largest student strikes and protests in history swept across 3,000 campuses nationwide, punctuated ten days later by the shooting of Black students at Jackson State College in Mississippi, where another two students, James Earl Green and Philip Lafayette Gibbs, were killed, and an additional twelve wounded. Despite the similar nature of the Jackson State shooting, it predictably failed to generate the press coverage that Kent State received.
The film illustrates how this student protest did not suddenly arise out of thin air. It followed years of a growing and vibrant movement led by campus groups such as Black United Students and Students For a Democratic Society, and was built upon the work of the 1961 housing protests, the Freedom Rides, the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention protests, and opposition to police violence in a system of apartheid. At a moment when the continuing racist violence against African Americans in the United States overlapped with the continued perpetration of one of the most morally dubious and violent wars in US history, which resulted in the deaths of over 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 US soldiers, the relationship between government violence abroad and at home become impossible to ignore. While students demonstrated, Ohio governor Jim Rhodes espoused vitriolic rhetoric that dehumanized the protestors and primed the general public against them, setting the foundation for the forthcoming violence.
Centering harrowing, first-hand accounts from over 20 voices of those at Kent State who lived through civil rights and anti-war movement alliances of black and white students starting from 1960, Fire in the Heartland presents an immensely personal and intimate perspective on this culture-shifting American tragedy. At a time when campus protests, and their consequent state suppression, are back in the center of American discourse in a way they haven't been in over 50 years, this film is a crucial opportunity to be further informed by history, and thus offer critical context to pressing current events.
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT: "I was a student at Ken State University from 1968 to 1970. I grew up there and then. I celebrated and suffered the events of the 1960s and 70s with my friends and colleagues who are featured in this film. Together with the wonderful young people of the present generation, to whom we owe so much, we have made a film that tells the personal stories of those who grew up in that era.
I can't adequately explain what it was like to live through it. How does one explain an era when music, art, literature, and politics were transformative and at times, yes, revolutionary. How could I or anyone else tell you what it was like to suffer the existentialist nightmarish body blows of the murders of those we believed in our hearts were the ones who could lead us towards the deliverance of our society and the realization of the just democracy that so many of our parents had seemed to abandon all hope of?
And yet, through all of this, we experienced the thrill of being part of a community of our own making, one of challenging art, music, literature, and protest that celebrated life and sought to change the world. Whether or not, or just how much, in the end, we succeeded, I cannot tell you. I can say we are a better people in many ways. We reach out and do small but great things in the world. But real change, I wonder.
I hope this film tells a story that enlightens people just a little bit about the days of the sixties that are hidden or not well known, that were real and not perfect, but that in the end, were celebratory and risky and maybe even, a little bit righteous in doing so."
— Daniel Miller
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