Look: Peace mural unveiled ahead of 55th observance of Kent State shootings
KENT, Ohio (WJW) – Sunday marks the 55th observance of the Ohio National Guard opening fire on anti-war demonstrators at Kent State University, killing four people and wounding nine others.
For years, the university attempted to distance itself from that event, but in recent decades, it has welcomed visitors to the May 4 Visitors Center and invited them to visit historical sites around campus, hoping to learn from the legacy of that event.
'It changed the voting age. It changed how the Vietnam War ended and it also was a significant tragedy of what can happen when there are misunderstandings around peaceful change,' said Holly Merryman, associate professor at the university's School of Peace and Conflict Studies.
'The story is always extremely relevant, but especially now. There's so much discord in the world and I think here on Kent State's campus, we understand what can happen when we don't get together and use our voices to dialogue with each other,' said Alison Caplin, director of the visitor center.
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During a renovation on campus, Merryman reached out to Vickie Boatright of BZTAT Studios in Canton, asking if she would help create something appropriate to display at the school.
Originally created as the Center for Peaceful Change following the May 4 shootings, it was intended to help students learn from the tragedy and work in a positive way to help resolve conflict.
The studio worked with young artists, without a template, to create an evolving mural intended to generate conversations and questions about what peace means.
'At one point, they had drawn a lot of peace signs, a lot of hearts and then I went and put chaos over top of it and we talked about how chaos can disrupt things and make things more difficult. Problem words, difficult words are in red. Conflict, hate, anger, violence and chaos,' Boatright said. 'Then they wrote in smaller words over those letters. Words how you get past violence, how you get past conflict, how you get past chaos.'
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On Thursday, at the beginning of a days-long observance of the events of May 4, 1970, the mural was unveiled in the School of Peace and Conflict Studies, entitled 'Visualizing Peace, a work in progress.'
More than a generation after the 1970 shooting, the work intends to help advance the very thing demonstrators were demanding when the shots were fired.
'Peace.'
'You can't deny it happened, and we remember those people who died that day every year and we should because we need to remember the lessons that we learned from that,' said Boatright.
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