May 4 Visitors Center Dedicated by PBS News Anchor, Hollywood Director

Gwen Ifill was 14 when the tragic events of May 4, 1970 unfolded on the Kent State University campus a few hundred miles away from her home in central Pennsylvania.

Ifill, now a news anchor for PBS, visited Kent State for the first time today to help dedicate the university's new May 4 Visitors Center, which tells the turbulent story of the 1960s and the atmosphere that led up to the shootings on May 4, 1970 that left four students dead and nine more wounded by Ohio National Guard fire.

Ifill, who will lead a panel discussion at Kent State today, talked to press beforehand about how she was reading the book Thirteen Seconds: Confrontation at Kent State to prepare for her visit.

"It’s one thing to go from reading the book to suddenly seeing it not only play out in front of you on campus, but watching the profoundly moving memory bank that’s been created here," she said shortly after touring the center. 

The New York City native said most of all she was looking forward to experiencing the site of the shootings in a tactile way.

"I wanted to be able to put it all in physical context," Ifill said. "I read about the description of Blanket Hill, and Prentice Hall, and of course (Taylor Hall). But when you get on campus is when you have a real sense of its reality. This kind of knits it all together in my head."

Ifill joins Oliver Stone, the award-winning director behind films such as JFK and Wall Street, in coming to Kent State to dedicate the visitors center.

The university actually opened the center to the public in October 2012, but the formal dedication came this weekend.

Ifill said she appreciated the museum's effort to tell the story of Kent State in a broader context. She's hopeful today's students will learn from the center the importance of being aware and engaged with the broader world around you.

And Ifill said she believes the visitors center ensures that the spirit of activism and the events of May 4 will remain part of the broader political conversation.

"I think if you ask anybody in this country, if you say the words ‘Kent State’ to them, they immediately have a vision in their heads of that famous photograph of that girl on her knees," she said.

"The challenge it seems to me for a place like Kent State, which is now stuck in the national narrative, is to do something with that," Ifill said. "And that’s what this visitor’s center does. You’ve taken it and done what a university should do, which is turn it into a learning experience."

The May 4 Visitors Center is open in Taylor Hall in the former location of the Daily Kent Stater. The visitors center is open special hours this weekend from noon to 5 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Emily Vincent, spokesperson for Kent State, said as of about 3 p.m. today 250 people had toured the center.