Devo's Jerry Casale was a senior at Kent State University on that day --May 4th, 1970, when National Guard troops fired on a group of protesting students, killing four.
He told Rolling Stone he was one of the "artsy students" whose anti-war beliefs were not in step with the conservative northeast Ohio town.
Casale said he mentored younger students and got to know Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause, two of the four who died.
Governor James Rhodes sent National Guard forces onto the campus. As the National Guard began to break up protests. Casale thought it was just a scare tactic and "power game" -- until the troops began to shoot. He recognized Miller and Krauss, who were mortally wounded, and learned of others being shot.
Looking back fifty years later, Casale believes the Kent State massacre destroyed the student protest movement. "You kill a few students and that really works. The activists left town or went into hiding or joined the Weather Underground. Other kids cut their hair and went to work for their dads, who had been bugging them to get it together. Kent State killed the movement."
Casale was a contributor to the documentary Order to Shoot, which looks back at the most violent student protest in U.S. history.