The Kent State Massacre by Barbara Dane Lyrics

Brothers, listen to my story
Sisters, listen to my song
Gonna sing of four young people
Who are now dead and gone
Two of them were twenty
And two were just nineteen
Just stepping out to meet the world
Like so many you have seen

It was in Kent State, Ohio
On a Monday afternoon
The air was full of springtime
The flowers were in bloom
It was a scene of terror
That none will soon forget
Young students stood with empty hands
To face the bayonets

Alli Krause and Sandy Scheuer
Marched and sang a peaceful song
Like Bill Schroeder and Jeff Miller
They did not think it wrong
They laughed and joked with troopers
And some to them did say:
We march to bring the GIs home
And we are not afraid
No warning were they given
No mercy and no chance
The air was filled with teargas
The troopers did advance
Suddenly they knelt and fired
The students turned and fled
Fifteen fell at that moment
And four of them were dead

On the campus they were murdered
In the springtime of their lives
As angry sorrow swept the land
Their friends and parents cried
They’d hardly learned to struggle
But witness they will be
They died for those in Vietnam
Also for you and me

But while we march and mourn today
There's much more we must do
We must teach ourselves to organize
And see the struggle through
Blood flowed upon the 4th of May
And we'll know it's color well
'Til we sink this murdering system
In the darkest pits of hell