Schools

May 4 Center Gets $300,000 Grant

Money from National Endowment for the Humanities will support permanent museum on May 4, 1970 shootings

The museum to remember the May 4, 1970 shootings at Kent State University got a big boost to help create a permanent exhibit on the events.

The National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities, awarded $300,000 towards the effort recently.

The grant supports the project "Making Meaning of May 4th: The Kent State Shootings in American History." The money will help establish the long-term exhibit on the fatal shootings of four students and wounding of nine others by Ohio National Guard troops.

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Emily Vincent, a spokesperson for the university, said the grant award is not final yet.

"It is not officially awarded until all of the revised materials are turned in and approved," Vincent said in an email. "Then, the award will be official, most likely in a few weeks."

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The museum will be located in Taylor Hall, not far from the spot where the shootings took place.

Laura Davis, faculty coordinator for May 4 initiatives, submitted the grant with Kent State communications professor Carole Barbato. Both worked with two other Kent State professors, Jerry Lewis and Mark Seeman, last year to help land the 17-acre site of the shootings on the National Register of Historic Places.

Davis said the museum will have an interior gallery to immerse visitors in the crucial 24 minutes leading up to the shootings.

"The visitor's center is going to have a permanent, museum style exhibit," she said. "And it is going to tell the story of May 4 contextualized in the decade of the 1960s."


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