Brothers, listen to my story,
Sisters, listen to my song.
Gonna sing of four young people
Who are now dead and gone.
Two of them were twenty,
And two were just nineteen,
Just stepping out to meet the world
Like so many you have seen.
It was in Kent State, Ohio
On a Monday afternoon.
The air was full of springtime,
The flowers were in bloom.
It was a scene of terror
That none will soon forget.
Young students stood with empty hands
To face the bayonets.
Alli Krause and Sandy Scheuer
Marched and sang a peaceful song.
Like Bill Schroeder and Jeff Miller,
They did not think it wrong.
They laughed and joked with troopers,
And some to them did say:
We march to bring the GIs home,
And we are not afraid.
No warning were they given,
No mercy and no chance.
The air was filled with teargas,
The troopers did advance.
Suddenly they knelt and fired,
The students turned and fled.
Fifteen fell at that moment,
And four of them were dead.
On the campus they were murdered,
In the springtime of their lives.
As angry sorrow swept the land,
Their friends and parents cried.
They’d hardly learned to struggle,
But witness they will be.
They died for those in Vietnam,
Also for you and me.
But while we march and mourn today,
There's much more we must do.
We must teach ourselves to organize,
And see the struggle through.
Blood flowed upon the 4th of May,
And we'll know it's color well
'Til we sink this murdering system
In the darkest pits of hell.
Sisters, listen to my song.
Gonna sing of four young people
Who are now dead and gone.
Two of them were twenty,
And two were just nineteen,
Just stepping out to meet the world
Like so many you have seen.
It was in Kent State, Ohio
On a Monday afternoon.
The air was full of springtime,
The flowers were in bloom.
It was a scene of terror
That none will soon forget.
Young students stood with empty hands
To face the bayonets.
Alli Krause and Sandy Scheuer
Marched and sang a peaceful song.
Like Bill Schroeder and Jeff Miller,
They did not think it wrong.
They laughed and joked with troopers,
And some to them did say:
We march to bring the GIs home,
And we are not afraid.
No warning were they given,
No mercy and no chance.
The air was filled with teargas,
The troopers did advance.
Suddenly they knelt and fired,
The students turned and fled.
Fifteen fell at that moment,
And four of them were dead.
On the campus they were murdered,
In the springtime of their lives.
As angry sorrow swept the land,
Their friends and parents cried.
They’d hardly learned to struggle,
But witness they will be.
They died for those in Vietnam,
Also for you and me.
But while we march and mourn today,
There's much more we must do.
We must teach ourselves to organize,
And see the struggle through.
Blood flowed upon the 4th of May,
And we'll know it's color well
'Til we sink this murdering system
In the darkest pits of hell.
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