Susan Hill, Oral History

Recorded: May 4, 1995
Interviewed by Connie Sickels
Transcribed by Kate Medicus 

My name is Susan Hill. I now live in Oberlin, Ohio, and am an owner of a second-hand bookstore. In May of 1970, I would have been about nine years old and I was living in Akron, Ohio. I grew up in Akron. My parents were both public school teachers.

And, just thinking about all this, I think one of the things that gets overlooked in kind of the local atmosphere of what was going on then was there was a very violent Teamster's strike in Akron just previous to the shootings here. And it had--it was--anti-Union movement where the National Guard had been called out to protect the scabs--the strike breakers. Akron was a big trucking center and it was--there were--several truck terminals in Akron all of which were within a couple miles of where I lived. And one of the things I remember very vividly: my Mom taught at a school that practically overlooked the one terminal; she taught at David Hill School in Akron. And the children there were ordered off the playground because the National Guard needed the playground to protect, supposedly, citizens here from being involved in this very violent trucker's strike. The truckers were--the strikers--were armed, supposedly, but we never knew the truth of that. There was a lot of rock throwing going on and it built up this very tense atmosphere locally. I don't think Kent could have escaped it just being ten miles away. You know, there was a whole kind of pity-for-the-poor-Guardsmen attitude among the people that my parents associated with. These poor Guardsmen had been hassled by the Teamsters and then, of course, came the orders for them to come to Kent. And here it was, you know--everything that was reported in the local media, in the Akron Beacon Journal, seemed to be very pro-Guardsmen, anti-Teamsters. Even though Akron was a very strong Union town for many years, this was the breaking point of the Unions. After 1970, the Unions in Akron were always seen as the enemy, whether it was a Teamsters' strike or a rubber strike or any of those kind of things. It was always the "bad" Union guys, which, you know, as a history student, later on, I had to learn for myself that that wasn't the way it was always. My parents both attended Akron U[niversity] and, like I said, they were both full-time public school teachers in '70.

May 4th: I just remember this kind of incredible quiet, "We don't want to talk about that." Eveything was closed down in Akron, it seemed, I mean, I don't have an exact memory of it because I was so young. But, I remember the next day, for some reason, we drove down to the Akron U[niversity] campus. And, the students at Akron who were also then being quite guarded, because there was this idea that whatever infiltrating rabble-rousers were at Kent were going to immediately go to Akron and cause trouble. The students were being guarded, but all they were doing was standing on Jackson Field--the athletic field--flying white kites as a peace symbol.

Um, it took me, you know, a long time to realize what happened here. I went to graduate school here in the mid-'80s, which was a very conservative time here, and became involved with a lot of groups here and, you know, like I said, it took me time to figure out what was going on. I got involved, then, in helping to make sure that there was going to be a memorial built when all the memorial controversy went on with the Taberner design. And I've been coming to the memorial services since I was a grad. student here and came back five years ago and now I'm here today.

 

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