"Bring the War Home," which had been a rallying cry of the anti-Vietnam-War movement, was transformed on May 4, 1970 into a macabre irony when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on student anti-war protesters at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine. Many, certainly not all, of the anti-war student activists were chauvinist, privileged, white men.
Those cadres of the movement got a lot wrong then, but as the LGBT, environmental, and anti-war movements that followed have proven, they also had some core beliefs that were right. And while those 1960s activists most assuredly won't achieve anything close to the idealism they purportedly believed in at that time, their kids just might.
When the War Came Home by Bill Newman tells that story.
Bill Newman has been a civil rights and criminal defense attorney since 1976 and the director of the western Massachusetts office of the ACLU since 1987. He hosts a weekday radio talk show on WHMP and its affiliated stations in the Pioneer Valley, writes a regular column for the Daily Hampshire Gazette newspaper, and creates -- and is the voice of -- the Civil Liberties Minute®.