Kent State Shootings

In above Corbis photo, Mary Vecchio is seen running at the rightmost corner

John Paul Filo’s Pulizer Prize Winning Photo [altered photo, below left]

Sixty-seven rounds of ammunition were fired over 13 seconds. They killed four students, wounded nine others, resulting in one permanent paralysis. It was May 4th 1970. The scene was Kent State University in Ohio. Unpopularity of the Vietnam War was at its peak that spring, and with the invasion of Cambodia a week before, the tension was fever-pitch. The Ohio National Guard fired at students protesters.

Among the most potent images to emerge from the incident is this photo of 14-year-old runaway from Florida Mary Vecchio wailing over the body of Jeffrey Miller, one of the slain students. John Filo was in the student photography lab when the shots rang out. He ran outside. “I didn’t react visually,” he recalled. “This girl came up and knelt over the body and let out a God-awful scream that made me click the camera.” Other photographers also captured the scene from other angles.

Filo’s photo reached AP via a small Ohio daily. The New York Times used it on the front cover, three columns wide. NBC’s Huntley Brinkley Report held the image on screen for seven seconds, in silence.  It would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize.

The bullets were supposed to be blanks, the shooters later testified that they used the real ones because they were in fear for their lives, which was doubtful based on their distance from the protesters. “Triggers were not pulled accidentally at Kent State”, Time magazine wrote.

The tragedy at Kent stateset off a nationwide student strike participated by no fewer than eight million students. Two thirds of colleges in New England closed. In California, Governor Ronald Reagan closed 121 colleges of the state education system. Hundreds of colleges and universities came to a standstill.

Vecchio was accused by Florida’s Governor Claude Kirk of being planted by the Communists. She later ran away from home again, sent to a juvenile home, and was arrested for loitering and marijuana possession. She later admitted that the picture “destroyed my life”. An editor had airbrushed the fence post above Ms. Vecchio’s head out of the photo in the 70s and the altered photo has been reprinted in many magazines since.

Rosa Parks in Montgomery Bus

“People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in…. When I declined to give up my seat, it was not that day or bus in particular. I just wanted to be free, like everybody else.” — Rosa Parks.

Yet, it was an unintentional protest. Around 6 p.m. on Thursday, December 1, 1955, in downtown Montgomery, Rosa Parks paid her fare and sat in an empty seat reserved for blacks. As white-only seats in the bus filled up, the bus driver demanded that she gave her seat up. When Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her. Two hours after her arrest, the long-time NAACP activist was released on $100 bail. By midnight, a plan had been hatched for a citywide bus boycott, to which a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King Jr. would later be elected to direct. The boycott lasted 381 days, until the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on buses was illegal. Although Parks was not the first black bus rider in Montgomery to refuse to give up her seat, but Parks’ case became the one the legal challenge was based upon, and it was the case’s success, rather than Parks herself, that ignited the modern civil rights movement.

On Dec. 21, 1956 — the day after the supreme court decision — United Press International staged a photo-op of Mrs. Parks sitting in front of a white man on a different bus. Similar photo opportunities were arranged for Martin Luther King Jr. and black leaders riding the newly integrated Cleveland Avenue bus, but the journalists and members of the civil rights community wanted an image that would dramatize what had occurred and asked reluctant Mrs. Parks to pose for the picture. Ironically, the picture UPI intended as showing the bus integration came to symbolize Park’s protest, which happened over a year before. (Other famous photos of Parks, a mug shot and a picture of her being fingerprinted, don’t date to Dec. 1, 1955, either. They were taken on Feb. 22, 1956, after about 100 black Montgomery residents were indicted on charges that they violated a local antiboycott statute.)

A UPI journalist Nicholas Chriss posed as the hard-eyed white man behind Parks.

Founding of the PRC

October 1st 1949. Mao Zedong inexplicably arrived an hour early at the red-lacquered Gate of Eternal Peace, entrance to the 500-year-old palace of China’s emperors. He had chosen a symbol of ancient power to declare his new China. The man in charge of preparations, a loyal soldier named Guo Ying, 24, who had been fighting with the communists since he was 13, seated Mao in the former emperor’s waiting room and fetched him a bowl of apples. There Guo learned that Mao, in his haste, had forgotten the ribbon that each new leader pins to his tunic.

Just outside, in Tiananmen Square, 300,000 people squinted through a yellow haze of soot to see the man who, after two decades of fighting, had routed the American-backed forces of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. As Mao waited, Guo dispatched a comrade to find a piece of red satin and write “chairman” upon it in gold. That crisis averted, Mao stood on the rostrum above a massive portrait of himself and announced in his peasant brogue, “The central government of the People’s Republic of China is established!” “Long live Chairman Mao!” answered the crowd, which began cheering soldiers fresh from battle as they marched in the new country’s first military parade. Guo stood behind Mao and wept for “a victory won with the blood of millions of revolutionaries.”

From Time Magazine’s 80 Days that changed the world.

The above photos were taken by Xu Xiaobing (1916–) and Hou Bo (1924–), a married couple well known for their portraits of Communist leaders from the 1930s to 1950s. Hou Bo was Mao’s personal photographer from 1949 to 1961 and her studio portraits of Mao became the basis for  many paintings, posters, and banner images of Mao that were reproduced everywhere.

The Gulf of Tonkin

August 2, 1964. It marked the beginning of the U.S involvement in South East Asia. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was presented as the justification for the large-scale involvement in Vietnam. On that fateful August day, the destroyer USS Maddox engaged three North Vietnamese torpedo boats; two days later the Maddox and a second destroyer, USS Turner Joy reported a second torpedo engagement from North Vietnamese vessels.

In response, the Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian government considered to be jeopardized by “communist aggression.” The resolution included the authorities to commit of US forces without a declaration of war and to use them without consulting the US Senate. The above photo [USN NH 956 11] taken on Maddox during the first attack was produced for the congressional hearings for the resolution.

In fact, the second incident was a false alarm. The sonarmen on two destroyers apparently reported some other sound (possibly ship’s own propeller beat) as a ‘torpedo attack’. Just a few days after the incident, Johnson commented privately: “For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.” Nonetheless, it didn’t prevent Johnson from escalating in Vietnam. Riding high on public’s rally effect, Johnson would handily win over his Republican challenger, hardliner Barry Goldwater in November. All because of a mishandled signal beep.

Teddy’s charge up San Juan Hill

It was the awakening of a sleeping giant. Since the end of the civil war, the United States had been ready to assert its authority internationally. A revolution in Havana gave it an opportunity in 1898. Then came USS Maine incident, and a vast yellow journalism fallout. Newspapers that accused the Spanish of oppression in their colonies, agitating American public opinion. The Spaniards, lording over an empire that is anything but, responded lackadaisically to the U.S. invasion of the Philippines and Cuba. The war is over in four months, and resulted in America’s first colonies–Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam in exchange for the lives of 460 soldiers, an infinitesimal amount compared to the Civil War, in which tens of thousands were often killed in a single day.

As assistant secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt encouraged intervention in Cubaa. He raised an all-volunteer regiment known as the “Rough Riders”. Their finest hour came on July 1st, 1898, during the Battle for San Juan Hill, the bloodiest campaign of the war. Although it resulted in 205 dead and 1,180 wounded Americans and the Spanish suffered very little lost, it was a major strategic and media victory. The above picture was taken by William Dinwiddie shortly after the hill was captured became the iconic photo not only of the war but also of the rising American determination and colonial power.

“It’s been a splendid little war,” wrote John Hay, the U.S. Ambassador to England wrote to his friend, Teddy Roosevelt–the hero of the Spanish-American War. However, to Roosevelt and his rough riders, it had been as bloody as any other war. Famous names like Stephan Crane, Clara Barton and William Jennings Bryan were forever entwined with this ‘little war’ but the biggest star was, of course, Teddy Roosevelt. Forever a proponent of a large navy, Roosevelt managed to prove not only its importance but also his leadership skills. Within a year, he was the governor of New York, then Vice President and eventually President on McKinley’s assassination.

Trudeau’s Pirouette

Buckingham Palace, May 7, 1977. Known for his cavalier flamboyance, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau drove sport cars, dated celebrities (of both sexes, it was alleged) and was also accused of using an obscenity during debate in the Canadian House of Commons, to which he oft went wearing sandals. But his most controversial moment was when the photographer Doug Ball caught him spinning a pirouette behind an oblivious Queen Elizabeth during a G7 summit Conference in London, England. “The picture expresses his maverick anti-conformism, his democratic disdain for aristocratic pomp,” noted Ball.

Years later James Coutts, one of Trudeau’s aides, noted that far from being spontaneous, the pirouette, like many other attention-getting gestures, had been planned and even rehearsed by the prime minister: “He planned it hours before because he strongly opposed the palace protocol that separated heads of state from heads of government. The well-rehearsed pirouette was a way of showing his objection without saying a word.”

He was iconoclastic, but maintained good relations with the Great Britain and the Queen, articulating his own vision of federalism, and first balancing, then dismantling Quebecois liberation movements. In a sense, he indeed proved to be a transformational leader he promised to be when he first campaigned amidst a movement known as Trudeaumania — a political equivalent of the paroxysms evoked by the Beatles.

And thus began Canada’s own Camelot Years. He punched above his country’s weight on the international stage, and his staid countrymen, while discomfited by his and his wife’s antics, kept sending him back to 24 Sussex Drive, the official residence of the Canadian Premiers which he occupied for nearly 16 years.

The Oka Face Down

The Oka Crisis, a land dispute between the Mohawk nation and the town of Oka, Quebec in 1990, provided Canada with a series of most iconic photos in her history. It also resulted in three deaths, and would be the first of a number of violent conflicts between Indigenous people and the Canadian Government in the late 20th century.

The photo taken by Shaney Komulainen of Pte. Patrick Cloutier, a perimeter sentry standing his ground against the verbal abuse of Mohawk Warrior Brad Larocque, a University of Saskatchewan economics student was one of the most iconic Canadian pictures. Shaney noted, “I was only 27 years old. I was painting the walls in my new apartment when I heard what was happening.” She, along with many other journalists and photographers, quickly traveled to the area. She “snuck through the woods” to the disputed area at the Sacred Pines and “was faced with the hostile showdown between soldiers and natives.”

The Immolation of Quang Duc

In 1963, after suppressing internal revolts, President of South Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem was widely seen as a totalitarian. Though he depended largely on US aid, Diem refused to be counselled by them on his handling of the war, which was leading to genocide. In June, Buddhists revolted at Hué and Saigon, which Roman Catholic Diem used military force to disperse.

On the 21st, the monks showed their anger by a rally in Saigon. A 73-year old Thich Quang Duc sat crossed legged in the centre of a human circle. A monk poured gasoline on him. With a look of serenity, Quang Duc struck a match at 9:22 AM. As flames engulfed his body, he made not a single cry or a muscle. In his will he wrote to President asking him to be kind and tolerant towards his people.

Journalist Malcolm Browne’s photographs of his self-immolation were seen on the front pages of newspapers worldwide — except on the New York Times, whose editors deemed the photos too graphic to be put on the front page. John F. Kennedy noted that “no news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one”. One won the 1963 World Press Photo of the Year. Although Diem’s decline and downfall had already begun, the self-immolation is widely seen as the pivotal point. Diem was later assassinated. After Diem’s death, America tried to influence their puppet leaders entirely – they could not risk another Diem – thus plunging the entire region into disaster.

Bonus Army March

The news media called it a ‘Bonus Army’–the assemblage of some 43,000 marchers including 17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups, who protested in Washington, D.C., in spring and summer of 1932. They demanded their bonus cash-payment redemption of their service certificates granted to them eight years earlier via the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924. These bonds had the maturity of twenty years, and could not be redeemed until 1945. However, the coming of the Great Depression destroyed the economy, leaving many veterans jobless.

The march, which set the precedent for the political demonstrations and activism that took place in the U.S. since, was nonetheless brutally suppressed by U.S. Army troops under Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton. Though probably all were legitimate veterans, MacArthur was convinced that at least 90% of them were fakes. And he refused even to read the President’s direct orders that he not use force. This brutality disgraced Herbert Hoover and contributed to him losing the presidency. However, his successor Franklin D. Roosevelt still refused to redeem their certificates and offered them work in building highways. In 1936 Congress overrode Roosevelt’s veto to allow the veterans to redeem their certificates early. The Bonus Army’s greatest legacy was the G. I. Bill of July, 1944, which helped veterans from the Second World War secure needed assistance from the federal government to help them fit back into civilian life, something the World War I veterans of the Bonus Army had not received.

With the advent of photojournalism in the 30s, the march of Bonus Army was well documented especially by veteran Army Signal Corps photographer Theodor Horydczak who chronicled their camp site on the Mall. The most iconic photo of the event (above) was taken on July 28th 1932,  the day when the forceful police evacuation of the marchers began. It was taken by Joe Costa of the N.Y. Daily News as one of the patrolmen was taking the flag out of the hands of the marchers. The ultimate amalgamation of defiance, tension and struggle, the picture was one of many Costa took as bricks flew all around him and even hit him.

The Assassination of King Alexander

In picture 2, the king on the left, the minister on the right

Colonel Piolet on horseback attacks the assassin

It was the first assassination to be caught on news cameras. The assassination of Alexander, first King of Yugoslavians, by Vlado Chernozemski, an experienced marksman in the employ of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) would have been forgotten had it not been for the multitudes of still- and reel- cameras.

A superstitious man, Alexander usually refused to go out on Tuesdays because three of his family members died on Tuesdays. However, on Tuesday 9 October 1934, had no choice; he was arriving in Marseille on the Yugoslav cruiser Dubrovnik, to start a state visit to France to strengthen the two countries’ alliance in the Little Entente. While being driven in a car through the streets along with French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou, Vlado Chernozemski, stepped from the street and shot the King and the chauffeur. The king was wearing his customary bullet-proof vest under his admiral’s uniform, but the mortal bullet went through his back. Because Alexander’s mortal wound was in his back, experts surmised that a bullet from one of Alexander’s wildly firing bodyguards probably killed him. He had been on French soil for less than five minutes.

Barthou was accidentally shot by a French policeman and died later. Immediately after assassinating King Alexander, Chernozemski was cut down by the sword of a mounted French policeman, Colonel Piolet, and then beaten by the crowd. He died in custody that evening and was laid to rest in a Marseilles cemetery in the presence of two detectives and a grave digger. The cameraman, Georges Mejat of Fox-Movietone News, captured not merely the assassination but the immediate aftermath; the body of the chauffeur (who had been killed instantly) became jammed against the brakes of the car, allowing the cameraman to continue filming from within inches of the King for a number of minutes afterwards. To add the dramatic flourish, he focussed on the submachine Mauser gun Chernozemski used to kill Alexander as the gun was being picked up by a gendarme.

Alexander was among the most hated dictators in Europe, and it was eventually discovered that a half-dozen other would-be assassins of various nationalities were waiting in Marseilles that day. He was a despotic man who declared himself King-Dictator, and abolished the constitution. He used murder as an instrument of government, outlawed all political parties and began persecution of Jews. When the famed Croatian intellectual Milan Sufflay was murdered by his secret police, even Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann joined in the international chorus of condemnation. By the time of his death, more than 19,000 Croatians had been sentenced to prison for up to twenty years or more and over two hundred had received the death penalties; hundreds more “committed suicide,” died of illness in prison or were shot by gendarmes in the “suppression of rebellion.”

Gerald Ford and his toaster

Gerald Ford shows off his English muffin-making skills in 1974.

Ford was an ordinary American; for the only man who assumed the nation’s highest office without being elected to the Presidency or the Vice-Presidency, it is an apt moniker. He lived in Northern Virginia and toasted his own English muffins before commuting to work in Washington. After the larger-than-life presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, America readily embraced this humble man.

When the press discovered that Gerald Ford continued to toast his own English muffins in the White House kitchen, buttered them himself, and served himself orange juice before he entered the Oval Office, it was the most heart-warming moment of Ford’s presidency. However, this ‘toasted-muffin phase’ of the Ford presidency ended abruptly on the Sunday morning that Ford issued a full pardon to Nixon.

The Paris Commune, 1871

Commune de paris, la colonne vendôme à terre”, Bruno Braquehais, 1871

Francois-Marie-Louis-Alexandre Gobinet de Villecholle Franck, the Destruction of Vendrome Column, 1871

It was a short-lived madness–1871 Paris Commune. A reactionary measure in the wake of France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. During a week [Semaine Sanglante (“Bloody Week”)], 20,000 Communards were executed and 7,500 were jailed or deported.

The column at Place Vendrome was erected by Napoleon to celebrate the victory of Austerlitz; Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker was originally atop the column but the statue was torn down and replaced a few times after that. During the Commune in 1871, the painter Gustave Courbet proposed the column to be disassembled and re-erected in the Hôtel des Invalides, arguing, “Inasmuch as the Vendôme column is a monument devoid of all artistic value, tending to perpetuate by its expression the ideas of war and conquest of the past imperial dynasty, which are reproved by a republican nation’s sentiment, Citizen Courbet expresses the wish that the National Defense government will authorise him to disassemble this column”.

On April 12, 1871, the dismantling of the imperial symbol was voted, and the column taken down on May 8, with no intentions of rebuilding it. The bronze plates were preserved. After the assault on the Paris Commune by Adolphe Thiers, the decision was taken to rebuild the column with its statue of Napoléon. Rather than pay 323,000 francs for its re-erection as he was ordered, Courbet fled to Switzerland. During 1873 – 1874, the column was rebuilt at the center of Place Vendôme with a copy of the original statue on top.

In addition to the abovemost picture entitled, “Commune de paris, la colonne vendôme à terre”, Bruno Braquehais took 109 pictures during the Commune, which he published in a book, “Paris during the Commune”. Tragically, these pictures of various Parisians posing with Communards were used to identify and condemn the ‘rebels’, who were then punished or executed by the government.

The Commune would also give rise to another type of photo crime. Eugene Appert hired actors to re-stage the events of the Commune and photographed them; then he pasted the heads of the prominent Communards onto the photo and re-photographed the scenes. This handful of contrived images, sanctioned by the government, were complied in the book, “Crimes of the Commune”.