Rolly Brown, Oral History

Recorded: May 22, 2026

Interviewed by Liz Campion

Transcribed by 3PlayMedia

 

[00:00:06.92] [Interviewer]: This is Liz Campion speaking on Friday, May 22, 2026. As part of the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project, we are recording an interview over the phone today. Could you please state your name for the recording?

 

[00:00:24.44] [Rolly Brown]: Rolly Brown.

 

[00:00:25.56] [Interviewer]: Thank you, Rolly. I would like to begin with some brief information about your background, so we can get to know you a little bit better. Could you tell us where you were born and where you grew up?

 

[00:00:37.72] [Rolly Brown]: I was born in Cleveland and I grew up in Euclid.

 

[00:00:42.76] [Interviewer]: And what year did you first come to Kent State University?

 

[00:00:48.24] [Rolly Brown]: 1967.

 

[00:00:49.92] [Interviewer]: And what brought you to Kent State?

 

[00:00:54.64] [Rolly Brown]: Well, going to college was the normal thing that I was expected to do. And that, combined with the Vietnam War, made it a good idea to be in college. And Kent was affordable and not too far from home.

 

[00:01:13.88] [Interviewer]: What was your major when you were a student?

 

[00:01:18.16] [Rolly Brown]: English.

 

[00:01:18.92] [Interviewer]: Were you involved in any student organizations? And if so, can you describe your roles in those organizations?

 

[00:01:27.96] [Rolly Brown]: You mean before the shootings?

 

[00:01:31.02] [Interviewer]: Yes.

 

[00:01:32.91] [Rolly Brown]: No.

 

[00:01:33.40] [Interviewer]: Did you live on or off campus? And if so, where?

 

[00:01:40.64] [Rolly Brown]: During my first year, I lived in Eastway Clark Hall. Second year, I lived in Tri- Towers in—I don't even remember the name of that hall. And then after that, I lived off campus in an apartment.

 

[00:01:59.43] [Interviewer]: Can you describe your views on the Vietnam War when you first arrived on campus?

 

[00:02:06.85] [Rolly Brown]: Yeah, I was very anti-war. I was, essentially, a pacifist and I probably would have been even if I thought that there was some justification for the war, I probably would have still been anti-war.

 

[00:02:28.85] [Interviewer]: How would you describe the prevailing attitudes or mood amongst the students in that spring of 1970 prior to the shootings?

 

[00:02:38.89] [Rolly Brown]: Spring of 1970, I always think that the student body at that time was still very conservative politically. There were only a small percentage of students who were politically active. I was aware of and certainly had friends and acquaintances who were involved with SDS or whatever. But I was just never a joiner myself.

 

So yeah, I thought that we were still, those of us who were—well, I mean, you'd have to describe our little subculture. And this was largely people who had been in Tri-Towers during the '68-’69 year who were essentially considered freaks. We were a small minority, and we certainly felt like the great majority of the student body was much more conservative and straight-laced.

 

[00:04:04.18] [Interviewer]: A question about Tri-Towers. Was it, at the time, co-ed? And was it predominantly freshmen? Or was it kind of a mix of classes?

 

[00:04:14.90] [Rolly Brown]: I think it was a mix of classes. It was not technically co-ed. There was a men's dorm and a women's dorm, each of which was like suites with four people in them. And then there was Leebrick, which had solo rooms, and there was a men's side and a woman's side. But I don't think at that time it was normal for there to be cohabitation, or however you want to describe that.

 

[00:04:54.98] [Interviewer]: You describe a little bit about the attitudes or the moods amongst those students. Can you talk about how politically involved or active you would describe yourself at the time?  And did you participate in any protests or political organizations?

 

[00:05:09.70] [Rolly Brown]: So, what was the question again? My own involvement. I was never somebody who joined organizations. I would be involved in political demonstrations. I can't remember how many or—it wasn't like the centerpiece of my life, but I would say I was politically aware and I was principally left wing, I would say, if we wanted to use that kind of terminology.

 

[00:06:11.27] [Interviewer]: Was your family aware of the protests that were taking place on campus or around campus? And if so, did any of them communicate their feelings about the protest or the war?

 

[00:06:24.03] [Rolly Brown]: My family was just me and my brother and my mom. My brother was—I think he had already moved to Canada, at that point. And my mom probably was not aware of the protests until after the May 4^th weekend.

 

[00:06:47.13] [Interviewer]: Do you remember the environment in your classes in that spring of 1970 before May 4?

 

[00:06:55.87] [Rolly Brown]: I don't remember it as being any different than it had been during my first couple years of school. So that was my junior year. And it was not—Kent was definitely not a political hotbed at that time. I just felt like my classes were about what you'd expect in college classes.

 

[00:07:29.81] [Interviewer]: Okay, that makes sense. How do you feel that music, culture, and arts influenced activism at the time?

 

[00:07:44.07] [Rolly Brown]: That's a hard one to answer. I mean, I'm a musician by trade. And so, I like to think it has an influence. I certainly think that after Kent State, Neil Young's song, “Four Dead in Ohio,” has kept the idea of what happened at Kent alive, even though, at the time, we thought of it as smacking of cultural appropriation. It was our event, it was our trauma, and somebody else was writing a song about it. But in retrospect, I'm glad he wrote it.

 

[00:08:25.50] [Interviewer]: Prior to the shootings, what was your sense of how local Kent community members perceived the Kent State students?

 

[00:08:35.24] [Rolly Brown]: I think that there was probably the usual tension between townies and, you know, town and gown, as they would say. And that what was alive in the culture at large was this, maybe not as bad as it is today, but it was a kind of politically and media manipulated adversarial nature between people who consider themselves conservative and people who were anti-war.

 

[00:09:23.92] [Interviewer]: Can you walk me through your memories of the weekend leading up to May 4, including any events you may have witnessed downtown and the ROTC fire?

 

[00:09:35.48] [Rolly Brown]: Yeah. And I should tell you, I probably should have sent you this, but if you have Susie Erenrich's book, The Cost of Freedom, there's an article I wrote in there. But I'm glad to talk you through all of this.

 

So, on the afternoon of Friday, May 1st, there was a demonstration on the Kent Campus, right on the front campus. And Abby Hoffman was there. I forget who else. I, and a friend, had dropped mescaline and were at the demonstration.

 

The demonstration was about the bombing of Cambodia by Nixon. And so, we were there for the afternoon. I don't remember anything violent or kind of like notable happening during that afternoon.

 

That evening, I was—there was a restaurant called Aladdin's, which was on Main Street, just kind of between where the Kent Stage now is and the corner of Main and River [Streets]. And there was then, and there still is, a local musician named Alice Bevan who I played music with for many years. And we were performing there as a duo that evening. And the way the restaurant was set up was that there was really no stage so, they put a couple tables together and we were standing up on the tables, which meant that we could see over the semi curtains out to the street. But the people who were sitting in the restaurant couldn't.

 

[00:11:44.36] [Interviewer]: So you had a really good vantage point?

 

[00:11:47.70] [Rolly Brown]: Yeah. And we knew that things were getting—like on our breaks, we did—I know we were going to do three sets or whatever. On our breaks, we went out the back door and went over to Orville's, which is—I can't remember. We all called it Orville's, but I think it had a different name, its actual name [editor’s clarification: also known as Walter’s Cafe, but referred to as Orville’s for its original owner, Orville Seaver]. But it was the bar that was most frequented by longhairs, as it were. And we saw that people were pretty rowdy on the street out there, and they were dancing in the streets and blocking traffic.

 

And it was just—it was like a general extension of what had happened, of the fact that the demonstration had happened in the afternoon. It was a continued agitation over the bombing of Cambodia, in my opinion, because other weekends, that had not happened. So, I assumed that it happened as an extension of the students’ anger over the bombings.

 

And we would go out on our breaks and just see what was going on, and we could see that was happening. Somewhere during the evening, and I don't remember the exact time, we saw out the window onto Main Street, Orville’s was on River Street. Is that the name of the street, River Street?

 

[00:13:23.78] [Interviewer]: I'd have to—Water Street.

 

[00:13:26.86] [Rolly Brown]: Water Street, Water Street. Yeah, that's what I meant. It's been a long time since I've spent much time in Kent. So, Orville’s was on Water Street. But we could see on Main Street and we started to see groups of students moving along the street.

 

And we saw that windows were getting broken and whatever. And we were up on stage and we just said, we're going to take a break now, and we'll be back after the revolution. And we just put our guitars in their cases and went outside to join in what was going on.

 

And when it became clear that it was going to be a major riot, we wanted to get back into the restaurant and get our instruments, which of course, had value to us. And at first, they wouldn't let us in. The guys were afraid to open the door. But we swore at them a little bit and made it clear who we were.

 

So, they let us get our guitars and we got out of there. And what happened, essentially, the students were demonstrating in the streets in the center of Kent. And then they called in a tactical police team from, I think it was from Akron. That team started at the south end of Water Street and moved up in formation.

 

And then, as students—what happened, this is my assessment of what happened. This was started. By the time the tactical police got there, it was midnight and the bars closed. So, all of the people who had been in the subterranean bars—JB's and The Loft or whatever they were all called, on Water Street, came out not knowing any of this had been going on.

 

And they were the conservative student body and started getting beaten by police. And essentially, the students started heading up Main Street towards the campus, where at that time, I'm not sure how it is now, but at that time, that's where all the frat houses were.

 

[00:15:58.12] And as they went up that hill, their frat brothers who had not been down in the bars, saw them getting beaten by the police. And it's always been my opinion that the whole attitude towards politics changed that night, not because of we the hippie students, but because of the SWAT team, that they just showed who they really were. And the students suddenly understood something about oppression. And that was that.

 

I frankly don't remember where I spent that night. I guess, I must have gotten back to my apartment, which was, I don't remember the name of the streets or anything, but it was kind of back off of north of Main Street. I'm in one of those little back streets off of the street that goes out to Brady Lake. Now I can't remember the name of it.

 

And then the next day, everybody who is political, I mean, it was already a big mess. So, everybody was political gravitated over to Tri-Towers or people went out on the student, the not the Commons, but the actual front of the university that fronts on Main Street.

 

And then I know that I ended up at Tri-Towers by the early evening. And we went down to The Commons and saw the—there were already police and I don't remember where the National Guard was then. I guess they must have been there because later—anyhow, what happened was the ROTC building got torched. And that was exciting.

 

And, at some point, the forces of law enforcement were moving through there, and we had to get out of there. We left across Main Street from the main campus. And there were helicopters overhead with spotlights. And it was kind of pretty scary. And we were scared to be out on the streets. And there were three of us and, honest to God, I don't remember who my two friends were who I was with. You have to realize I'm an old man now!

 

[00:19:03.53] So anyhow, a couple—there were three or four women who were kind of out on their porch watching what was happening, and they said, hey, you guys can come in here. So, we went into their house and we actually slept on their living room floor. They let us stay there overnight.

 

And that was right up the street. I forget which of the side streets it was on, but it was on one of the side streets that was across from the campus and running perpendicular to Main Street. And then, that was—hang on. Now I'm trying to reframe all of this.

 

You might do better reading the article, which I wrote 25 years ago. It may be closer to reality. I might be conflating that. That might have been Sunday night that that happened. On Sunday around, I think around mid-afternoon or late afternoon or maybe even early evening, everybody was on the campus on that front part of the campus right on fronting on Main Street.

 

And that was when the National Guard mounted a phalanx coming across that lawn to arrest or beat up people. And that's when we fled across the street. So that must have been Sunday night.

 

And that means that Saturday night, I might have spent at Tri-Towers, because I remember being at Tri- Towers, going to The Commons, having the ROTC building burn down. And, I think, then we went back to Tri Towers and hung out there for the night.

 

[00:21:08.34] [Interviewer]: To go back a little bit because you witnessed the ROTC fire, can you share your vantage point or any memories you had specifically, maybe the size of the crowd or how authority figures may have been responding?

 

[00:21:27.23] [Rolly Brown]: My remembrance of it is that I was on the hill behind where the [Victory] Bell is. And I could see there were a lot of students there. It was a big crowd. I do not have a remembrance of what law enforcement was doing at that point.

 

[00:22:01.77] [Interviewer]: Yeah, absolutely. That's fine. Can you talk—

 

[00:22:07.67] [Rolly Brown]: I would also say that, the ROTC building—calling it a building was being very optimistic. I mean, it was an old kind of structure which had been built during, I guess, at the end of World War II or something, and had been scheduled to be torn down long since. So, it wasn't like we burned down the new Student Union or something like that. It was an old clapboard building. And we vented our frustration on it.

 

[00:22:52.39] [Interviewer]: And correct me if I'm wrong. It was a wooden structure, correct?

 

[00:22:57.27] [Rolly Brown]: Yeah. Wooden structure. Kind of my remembrance of it, clapboard is that kind of wooden siding. That's how I remember it.

 

[00:23:08.35] [Interviewer]: Can you talk about your first reaction to seeing the National Guard arrive onto campus?

 

[00:23:21.51] [Rolly Brown]: It's an interesting question. I'm sure I was not happy about it. We felt, I think, as a group, the people with whom I would keep company, felt that it was our campus and we had a right to protest on it. And we didn't want them there. It's as simple as that.

 

[00:23:49.20] [Interviewer]: How did you interpret their actions and presence prior to the shootings?

 

[00:23:58.12] [Rolly Brown]: Could you ask that again? I couldn't hear it clearly.

 

[00:23:59.88] [Interviewer]: Yeah, absolutely. How did you interpret the Guard's actions and presence prior to the shootings? Did you witness any violence? Were there conversations with the Guardsmen? Any kind of recollections you might have?

 

[00:24:14.72] [Rolly Brown]: I did not witness any violence. I think there were conversations. Some of it, I know in retrospect. I've seen pictures of friends of mine standing around with the Guardsmen maybe on Saturday or whatever. Everybody who was part of that Kent thing knows about Allison Krauss offering the flower to a soldier and stuff like that.

 

So, I didn't feel that the National Guard—I mean, each of them was individuals. Some of them may have wanted to kill us right then. How do I know? But there was not the feeling that they were aggressively trying to hassle us or anything like that.

 

And of course, we understood that many of them were in the National Guard so they weren't sent to Vietnam. They had joined the National Guard because they couldn't go to college for whatever reason. But they didn't want to go into the Army.

 

[00:25:43.33] [Interviewer]: Yeah. It's a very good point. As the weekend wrapped up, can you walk us through the events of Monday May 4, 1970?

 

[00:25:57.25] [Rolly Brown]: I can do my best. So I was at the—I think, let me think about—there was a general opinion that we would be at the [Victory] Bell at noon and there would be a demonstration there. I do not know since there was no cell phones, no internet, I'm not sure how we all knew that. Mental telepathy, maybe—anyhow.

 

So I was there at noon, and I was there with people who rang the Bell at noon. And in my memory, there's two people who stand out. And they were both kind of big, tall guys. And I'm not sure both of them were there or just one of them was there, but I think both of them were there. And I'm loathe to name names just because I know that all of you with the May 4th project, your intentions are pure. But we do live in a surveillance state.

 

[00:27:20.40] [Interviewer]: I understand.

 

[00:27:24.06] [Rolly Brown]: We'll leave it at that. But I was there when they rang the Bell. People started to come. There were maybe a dozen of us there at noon. And then people were coming. And within a half hour or an hour, my sense of time is not real great. I saw a big—there was obviously a big crowd. And then the National Guard was across the field from us with their Jeep and their soldiers lined up. And we're kind of standing in front of where the burned-out hulk of the ROTC building sat. And I remember the guy coming out of the Jeep and reading the Riot Act, “You must disperse, blah, blah, blah.”

 

And I remember that we didn't disperse and that they started marching and they started throwing tear gas canisters. And then, we were kind of chased up the hill and I had tear gas in my eyes. So, I went into a dorm. And I'm not sure what the name of the dorm is, but it was right near Taylor Hall. I thought it was Dunbar, but I think it wasn't. I think it was a different dorm. Anyhow, I was actually standing at a water fountain washing, trying to wash tear gas out of my eyes, when I heard the shots.

 

And we heard the shots and we didn't—there were a lot of people in the dorm. There were a lot of people who had retreated in there. And we didn't immediately know what had happened, but we knew something had happened. And it wasn't long before it was made clear to us. We didn't know. All we could hear was what people were screaming. And so probably we knew that some people had been shot, and we knew that some people were dead. But we didn't know more than that.

 

[00:29:40.43] I didn't immediately leave the campus. We still started—we essentially stayed out there. And then, it became clear that we'd better get out of there. So, we left. I remember walking around the town kind of dumbstruck.

 

And eventually, I got together with two or three friends and it was—I don't know how we found this out either, but it was made clear that we had to evacuate the town. Not just the campus, but our apartments and wherever you lived.

 

So, we got in a car. My friend had a bright red Mustang. And he had put these big decals of the American eagle on the doors. And if you would have seen what a bunch of long-haired hippies we were, you would know that there was irony in us putting it there. Not a genuine patriotic thing, you know.

 

So, we were trying to get out of town. They had roads blocked off. And in Ravenna, we were stopped at gunpoint by guys with rifles who wanted to search the car and make sure we didn't have weapons. Because, at that point, nobody knew—for all they knew, the shootings had been perpetrated by the students.

 

I'm sure the townspeople were scared out of their minds, that there there'd been a gunfight on our campus and they didn't know that the only people shooting were the government. And I know that before we left town, I had an English teacher in my freshman year who I really liked a lot, a really, really lovely woman. And I knew where she lived. She lived in Hudson. And her name was Elizabeth Hoobler.

 

[00:32:09.29] And I went to—I forget who else was with me, but we drove to her house. And when she saw us, it was very clear that she was terrified, that from what they had been told, they assumed that students had gone mad and rioted and the whole thing was the students’ fault.

 

And I'm going to put in the little sidebar right here. The year before Kent happens, you probably know about what was called the Music and Speech event. And I was at the Music and Speech event, too, and I was one of the students who was locked inside the building.

 

And we were trapped in there. And it was the Music and Speech Building so, there were televisions. So, we were watching the news. And while we were trapped inside and surrounded by law enforcement, the Cleveland local news was saying, students at Kent State have taken over the Music and Speech Building and refused to come out.

 

So, that right there made it very clear to me that, when I went to visit Elizabeth Hubler, she probably had not been told the straight story. So, I talked to her long enough to assure her that we were not, in fact, crazy and that the National Guard had murdered four students. And then got out of there because I could tell she was just terrified to have us anywhere near there.

 

And then after that, the Ravenna thing happened. And once they let us go, we just drove back up to Cleveland. And I went to my home in Cleveland. And what I did after that, along with a fellow Kent student of mine, a guy named Bill Bloom, who lived in Cleveland Heights, we started an organization. We got permission from Case Western Reserve University to use space on their campus. And we started an organization called Kent in Exile.

 

And got the word out that it was a place where people had been—people who had been evacuated from this town of Kent who were students could come and meet up and try to figure out what was going on, what we were going to do.

 

[00:35:04.46] And that went on for two or three days. We had meetings there. I know that I spoke at a rally at what was then, I think, was still Cuyahoga Community College, what became Cleveland State. I'm not sure if it was Cleveland State yet. But I spoke at a rally there. And I know that I was filmed and saw it on the news wherein they didn't allow—the voiceover gave the usual government thing of students incendiaries, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, instead of listening to what I was actually saying. And that further on, we went out to Oberlin, which had always been thought of as a very political college in Ohio, and spoke with activists there and stuff like that.

 

[00:36:04.68] [Interviewer]: I want to go back a little bit to May 4, if that's okay. I have a few questions that I wanted to ask. You talk about when you were in the dorm washing your eyes out from the tear gas. Do you remember any sights or sounds after you left the dormitory after the shots were fired?

 

[00:36:31.19] [Rolly Brown]: I just have this vision of people moving away from the area where the murders took place and going back and regrouping behind the cars in the parking lot. But only that's the only memory I have of it.

 

[00:36:56.70] [Interviewer]: At what moment do you think you realized that the situation had become deadly and that people had indeed been killed and wounded?

 

[00:37:06.19] [Rolly Brown]: I think within minutes. We heard the shots. Once I could see again, we went back out of the dormitory. We were outdoors. And of course, the people who had been there were screaming about it.

 

So, I think that within minutes, we knew what had gone down—something about what had gone down.

I didn't know who had been killed or anything. And I knew Jeff Miller and I knew Sandy Scheuer.

 

[00:37:44.83] [Interviewer]: Did you know them from Kent State or were there previous relationships there?

 

[00:37:50.83] [Rolly Brown]: No, I knew them from Kent State. My first girlfriend at Kent State had been roommates with Sandy when they were freshmen. And Sandy was also somebody who hung out in The Pit, which was that central lounge in Tri-Towers.

 

I never thought of her as political. And she was kind of—I would describe her, I mean, I'm sure that a lot of really nice things were said about her after she died. I would describe her as being kind of a ditzy person. She didn't strike me as—she didn't strike me as being serious enough to have political opinions.

 

[00:38:39.89] [Interviewer]: Because of that, were you surprised that she was one of the victims of that day?

 

[00:38:45.51] [Rolly Brown]: Absolutely. Yeah. And Jeff, I knew peripherally. We knew each other to say hi and shake hands or whatever. I didn't really know him as well as—if you thought of there being a general freak community at Kent that had multiple little subcultures which often overlapped, there were good friends of his who were good friends of mine. But he was not a good friend of mine. But he was—I liked him. He seemed like a nice guy.

 

[00:39:33.40] [Interviewer]: You talk about, shortly, the order to evacuate. What do you remember about the university's efforts to continue coursework after the shootings?

 

[00:39:45.36] [Rolly Brown]: I don't remember anything about that.

 

[00:39:47.34] [Interviewer]: Probably a little bit of a haze after everything.

 

[00:39:51.06] [Rolly Brown]: Yeah. And I believe, I mean, I believe for my classes, I think we were all given incompletes or something like that. But I'm just kind of semi guessing.

 

[00:40:03.08] [Interviewer]: Do you have any memories of how the media responded to the shootings?

 

[00:40:09.84] [Rolly Brown]: Yeah. I mean, I kind of touched on that when I gave you that sidebar about Music and Speech. The media in general was following the most conservative approach.

 

They were not going to come out and say—there was nobody in the corporate media who was going to come out and say the National Guard murdered four students today. Instead, they were going to say students rioted on the campus. The National Guard felt threatened, blah, blah, blah. And so, they're going to get the government version of what happened. Did they also really listen to the students’ version? I don't know.

 

[00:41:10.29] [Interviewer]: Yeah. After classes were able to resume, were you at all hesitant to return to Kent State University?

 

[00:41:20.29] [Rolly Brown]: I wouldn't call it hesitant. I would say I came back to Kent knowing that I wouldn't stay for long. I took one course during the fall quarter and took an incomplete for it. And I took one course during the winter quarter and took an incomplete for it. And what we were doing all that time was a bunch of us were figuring out how we were going to, all four or five of us, leave Kent and move somewhere. And we ended up moving to Cape Cod. And that was it.

 

I felt very strongly that the way I would have described it then was the things I needed to learn at Kent State were things I learned on the street and not in the classroom. And the lesson of that was I didn't need to be in any fucking classroom.

 

[00:42:28.73] [Interviewer]: When you did come back to Kent State, do you recall if faculty, staff, or administrators addressed the events publicly, or even privately, once returning on campus?

 

[00:42:45.13] [Rolly Brown]: I don't remember much about it publicly. And I would have to say that I was bitter and resentful enough that I would probably not be a good person to talk to about it. I certainly had one English professor, Bernard Jermann, who was totally on the side of the students.

 

And who actually—when we spoke to him after the—it must have been that fall, because it was after the ROTC building had burned down. He essentially said, “Yeah, burn the fucker down.” And he was, as I felt that—and he had been a long-time teacher at Kent. But he was also a kind of wild character. And he had been the head of the English Department at some point and—long story. But he seemed very disillusioned with organized education at that point, with college.

 

[00:43:53.30] [Interviewer]: Do you recall if Bernard was present at the shootings or if he was in the classroom? Or any memories like that?

 

[00:44:04.48] [Rolly Brown]: I do not. I don't think he was present at the shootings, but I don't know.

 

[00:44:12.14] [Interviewer]: To rephrase an earlier question I asked, what was your sense of how local Kent community members perceived the Kent State students after May 4?

 

[00:44:27.22] [Rolly Brown]: I kind of don't know. I think that part of the thing about college towns and townies is that they don't mix. So, it's not like—I mean, nobody attacked us. But we had never spent much time around townies. And townies didn't spend much time around us.

 

During that year leading up to May 4, there was a little music store right next to the Kent—to what was then the Kent movie theater. I think the music store was where the Kent co-op was years later. I'm not sure if it's still there. And I taught guitar there. So, I did have students who were townies. But that was before. After that that was not a deal, I don't think.

 

[00:45:39.81] [Interviewer]: You talked about co-chairing Kent in Exile. Can you describe how you pursued activism after the Kent State Shootings and what messages you were trying to convey?

 

[00:45:54.99] [Rolly Brown]: I was trying to convey—I don't think my message changed. My message was—like I said before that I would be considered a left-wing, I would say what I really am is a humanist. And that means that I do not—I believe in trying to do what is most benevolent for the greatest number of people. And that war is never that.

 

And so, I was always going to be anti-war. I was a conscientious objector. And I had a low lottery number so, I would have been called up. This is just a demonstration of how the government and how the society at large felt about this stuff is that my lottery number would have had me getting called up during my year of exposure; I would have been called up in December.

 

And, as it happened that year, that because the draft boards and the military felt so disliked, they didn't have a draft call in November and December. But they still tried to call up the COs [conscientious objectors].

 

And I would have ended up having to do alternative service. I was trying to figure out how to do it when I got a letter saying that the ACLU had brought a lawsuit which had been adjudicated, such that they could not call up COs—conscientious objectors, if they weren't calling up soldiers at large. But it was that kind of spitefulness towards people who were not hawks.

 

[00:48:15.37] [Interviewer]: How had the anti-war movement and the Kent State Shootings inspired or shaped your work as a musician and an artist?

 

[00:48:26.72] [Rolly Brown]: I think that it had a great effect on me as a musician. I think, I mean, I came into it—the fact that I was never a member of SDS or something like that did not mean that I was not politically active on some level and part of that was being part of the whole protest movement musically from the time I was in high school.

 

And so, when I performed, I had already always been performing songs by Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan and other New York City communists, New York City folk singers, who were speaking out against the war with their music.

 

And to this day, I mean, now perform now as a solo, but I also perform with a duo called Magpie, which Susie [Erenrich] probably also tried to connect you with. It's Terry Leonino and Greg Artzner. And Terry was also there at the shootings. And Greg was in town, but he was not there.

 

And just in February, we were scheduled to play at the Kennedy Center and do an evening of the songs of Phil Ochs and the protest movement of the Sixties. We, of course, pulled out of that and did that concert in D.C. at a different location, at a church.

 

And Magpies’ music, when I first played with them back in the late Seventies, they did a wide variety of stuff. But over the years, they've become more and more political. And I, certainly, I'm glad to perform with them and record with them, knowing that a lot of the material is going to be very political.

 

[00:50:43.18] [Interviewer]: We've touched on how May 4 and its aftermath impacted you on a professional and even political level. How has it impacted you on a personal level?

 

[00:50:58.14] [Rolly Brown]: I think that even before Kent State, but starting with the Music and Speech [protest]—Music and Speech was a similar event which fortunately did not end in murder, it just ended in a bunch of people being imprisoned and tried and harassed.

 

But I think from that time on, I would never trust a government. And I would say that events in the last couple decades have borne that out pretty well. I think that I would have never—like my professional life has been devoted to things which I think, humanistically, are what I want to be doing.

 

So, in addition to being a musician, I also went to school and became an acupuncturist. So, I practiced acupuncture for thirty years, forty years. And I teach Tai Chi, which is a Chinese martial art. But like Muhammad Ali, I see no discrepancy between not wanting to kill people and studying a martial art, which also has a spiritual aspect to it.

 

So, for me, my life since Kent, I don't know what it would have been like otherwise. I was raised in a Jewish family which understood political oppression and was against any of that kind of stuff from the get- go. If Kent had never happened, I would still be anti-war. I would still be—I probably would still be untrusting of the government.

 

But certainly, what happened at Kent State did not make me feel all warm and fuzzy about the government and about corporate America and about—one of the things I say in that article that Susie published is that most of the people who I still know from having been with them at Kent, a large majority of them did not end up working in any kind of large corporate structure.

 

A lot of them ended up being self-employed, like I've been mostly, and/or working as therapists or some kind of health-promoting way of being in the world. I think that for those people as well as for me, I think that that's one of—if there's something to be learned from Kent State, it's to not support that world any more than you have to.

 

[00:54:16.87] I mean, we're all inextricably tied into this web. Sometimes you just have to stick your finger down your throat and use Amazon or whatever. But you just do the best you can to live—in the end, that's all you can do. All you can do is the best you can to live the life that's best.

 

My wife, who was not at Kent and who passed away several years ago, was also very politically active. And once Donald Trump was elected, we became totally political animals all over again and basically went to rallies and met with groups and made phone calls and filled out postcards and all of the fairly ineffectual things that our culture and government allows us to do, which don't seem to do any good. That's what we did for these past few years. I have not missed a No Kings march. I've lost count of the number of rallies I've been to since 2015. And sometimes singing at rallies and stuff like that.

 

[00:55:46.76] [Interviewer]: Have you returned to campus to attend any of the commemorative events or memorials? And if so, can you describe the feelings you had in attending those events?

 

[00:55:57.44] [Rolly Brown]: Yeah. I have been back to Kent—I don't have a number, but probably ten times and never in the first 30 years. I probably started going back for maybe the 30th reunion and have gone back periodically since then.

 

I have performed there with Magpie probably five times, maybe six, maybe three times hired by the university to be part of the commemoration, and another three times—like this year, we did a concert, this year and last year, we did a Sunday night concert at the Kent Stage.

 

And then one year, we did a concert at—there's a little concert venue down on Water Street. I forget what it's called. The Western Reserve something or other. So, I've been back. I have done those things. I also have—if you're interested, I can send you the link I wrote—for the 50th commemoration, I wrote a song from my current point of view about Kent.

 

[00:57:32.89] [Interviewer]: Yes, I would love it if you could send that to me.

 

[00:57:36.29] [Rolly Brown]: I'll send you a YouTube link for it. So, yeah. And there have been some years when I've gone back, like last year, not this recent one. Last year, there was a big SDS reunion and there was a big reunion of people from The Pit who were my friends. And so, I walked into the restaurant. I forget the name of the restaurant downtown, Laziza, or something like that.

 

[00:58:10.63] [Interviewer]: Yep, Laziza, yeah.

 

[00:58:12.65] [Rolly Brown]: And up on the top floor, there's this huge twenty tables in a big square with about thirty SDS people. And then right behind that, there was another few tables with about fifteen of my friends.

 

Not that the SDS people weren't—some of them were my friends and some of them were not. And that was great. And those things are very—they're very reassuring and comfortable to be with those people who went through that with you and who have remained friends for all these years.

 

[00:58:59.90] [Interviewer]: Yeah, that's incredible.

 

[00:59:04.38] [Rolly Brown]: Last year was the 55th and this year was the 56th. And there was nobody there. I mean, I was there with Alex and I was there with Magpie because we played at the Kent Stage. And I saw Chic Canfora and a couple of other people. But mainly most of the people who usually are there who I know have not come this year.

 

And I thought that the presentation this year was excellent. But I was disappointed to not see more of my friends there. And both disappointed personally and disappointed at the fact that not that many people cared enough to come out.

 

[01:00:00.66] [Interviewer]: You touched on it a little bit, but what lessons do you hope future generations will take away from what happened that day?

 

[01:00:10.98] [Rolly Brown]: Oh, my God. I'm not sure. I'm a pretty pessimistic person. And I've just spent the last few months doing a really deep dive into the works of Mark Twain. And if you go beneath the thin veneer of him as a kind of a funny humorist, there's a real dark side to his view of human nature. And it's a side with which I find it hard to disagree.

 

I don't know that—what I really feel is that and a lot of what I felt over these past years, especially during the Trump era, is that there really is this constant battle in the world between good and evil. And defining good is what I defined as humanism, and even beyond humans to animals, if you like.

 

But at least doing the least harm to human beings and defining evil as the kind of greed that makes people impervious to empathy and compassion and just all too happy to kill other people so they can have more money than they can ever use.

 

And what I feel is that's never going to change. It's never changed so far, and it's probably not going to change anytime soon. However, that it is imperative that the people who have a point of view for goodness keep pushing back against the people who are just greedy and evil.

 

And if there's a lesson, the lesson is—I have friends who are much more radical than I am. And I can't disagree with them. It's like I say, good. Somebody has to be as radically left-wing as you are. I'm not that. But somebody has to be because somebody has to keep pushing back.

 

And as a long-time—when I went—it took me thirty years to get a bachelor's degree after I began Kent in 1967 and left in ‘71. And when I did get it, because I was a Tai Chi sifu and an acupuncturist, I got it in Eastern Studies.

 

[01:03:00.60] So I have the strong understanding of what yin yang is and how there are forces in the universe which are oppositional but are part of the same thing. And those things—that is a constant battle. But both sides have to be engaged.

 

 And part of what you learn from that is the pendulum swings. And so, right now in the United States, do we think the pendulum is going to swing in another four years? It may be. It may be that the pendulum will swing in 50 years, at which point I will probably not be involved.

 

But it will swing in the same way that after the Gilded Age, which was very much every bit as corrupt as Trump is now, the Gilded Age in the 1890s and early 1900s was just as bad. And then, eventually you got FDR and all of this stuff that Trump is working hard to take away. You get that stuff because the pendulum swings.

 

And there's no way to tell whether that swings because of some seismic changes in the universe that we can't begin to understand, or whether it's because people gritted their teeth and worked really hard to get things to change.

 

[01:04:41.41] [Interviewer]: Yeah, it's the importance of being engaged and being educated about what's going on around you. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about that we haven't covered today?

 

[01:05:02.97] [Rolly Brown]: Let me think for a second. Charlie's about to start barking again. Every time—I live in semi-rural, Bucks County in Pennsylvania. And he is totally berserk about lawn mowers.

 

So, where I live, there's always a lawn mower going, like the drapes are closed and you can't see it. Anyhow. So, that sidetracked me. Is there anything else I want to add? I don't think so. If there was, my Swiss-cheese brain just lost track of it.

 

[01:05:53.09] [Interviewer]: All right. Well, I want to thank you first and foremost for participating in this project and your generosity in sharing the story. It's so important to share this unique perspective. And I just want to thank you again for participating.

 

[01:06:09.09] [Rolly Brown]: You're welcome.

 

[End of recording]

×