After landing troops on the battlefield of South Vietnam with huge amounts of war expenses, Washington D.C. incessantly acclaimed for a liberal democracy in this small Asian country. However, that illusion was quickly shattered by hard facts: slaughters, piled-up bodies, villages being destroyed, farms being burned by bombs. US soldiers were awakened only to find that they came here just to kill people rather than building a new world on which they were preached. Strong will and belief in independence and justice of Vietnamese people made the Americans more skeptical about the real purpose of this war. And then along with depression, fatigues of soldiers in the battles were anti-war movements rising in America. The war was not only limited in Vietnam, but it also took place in America, on the streets, in schools, universities, and slipped in every family. It had torn America with deep divisions in political circles, in social classes and above all in our hearts. The year 1970 was considered to be the culmination of this movement with protests across the country, which attracted millions of Americans regardless of race, age, gender. They asked the government to quickly withdraw all troops home, end this unjust war. Above all was the protest of tens of thousands of students at Kent State University in May 1970. The Kent State Massacre was said to be nationwide influential event, which was a result of new mass media technology that allowed people to view the war from home, with the biggest protest of students in American history, and it also affected the face of the Vietnam War.
What happened at Kent State University? This is a question that many Americans were asking following the crisis on the Kent campus. In the days preceding May 4, 1970, protests, disruption and violence erupted on the university grounds. These acts were the students' reaction to President Nixon's invasion of Cambodia, aiming at cut off supply routes from North to South Vietnam.