What Happened? (Summary)

Richard Nixon became in charge of the issues during the Vietnam War in 1969. There were thousands of troops in Vietnam that were struggling to stay alive. Nixon knew that it would be nearly impossible to "win" the war and he didn't want to upset the public by making the war escalate but he didn't want to completely withdraw. Nixon decided to withdraw 150,000 troops from Vietnam in 1971. Later after he publicly announced he was going to withdraw troops, he announced the invasion of Cambodia. Nixon was making the American and South Vietnamese forces invade Cambodia in order to wipe out the sanctuaries that were being used by the North Vietnamese. After Nixon's announcement about invading Cambodia, Kent State University in Ohio had many students protesting about this. In their protests they burned down the ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corp). This angered the Governor of Ohio who, in response to the burned down ROTC, had the National Guard go to Kent State University to help control the protests. The National Guard began shooting into the crowd where the protesters were which managed to kill 4 students and injure 9 others. After this incident called the May 4th shootings, universities all over America began protesting. The protests caused universities to close down for as long as a year. The Kent State incident angered many Americans, causing riots all across the country.