The Nation : Legion Opposes Memorial

The American Legion of Ohio condemned a proposed memorial to the 13 Kent State University students who were killed or wounded when National Guard troops fired into a campus crowd of anti-war demonstrators in 1970. The 1,300 delegates representing 142,000 member veterans at the Legion’s state convention in Cleveland approved a toned-down resolution declaring the planned monument “an insult to the patriotic veterans who served their country honorably.” An earlier version had called the project a memorial to terrorists and suggested that the four protesters who died were felons. “Why should a memorial be built to a situation where there was civil disobedience?” said Legion spokesman Douglas Weakley.