Arthur Krause Speaks His Kent State Truth

A Father's Plea for Accountability & Justice, Denied

Today is my father Arthur S. Krause’s 102nd birthday. To celebrate Dad, it gives me great pleasure to present statements including video footage from his legal crusade to make sense of the historic Kent State massacre and the killing of his 19-year-old daughter Allison.

At Kent State University on May 4, 1970, our family member Allison Krause was killed as she protested President Richard Nixon’s Vietnam war. Four students and protesters were killed, nine critically wounded by Ohio National Guard gunfire in response to student protests. 67 bullets in 13 seconds were fired at unarmed students and protesters attending a lunchtime demonstration against the war, Nixon’s recently announced Cambodian invasion, and the military occupation of their Kent State campus.

On May 5, 1970, the day after Allison was killed at Kent State, my parents demanded a credible investigation into the massacre as they commenced legal actions to hold those responsible accountable, notably the Ohio National Guard, the Governor of Ohio and even Nixon.

News of the Kent State Shootings went around the world on radio, TV and in print media with limited details and confusing stories. In the years following the Kent State massacre, agents from the FBI knocked on witness doors to interview, investigate and threaten those who dared to share their experiences conflicting the official narratives. Truth about Kent State was extremely hard to come by. Back then Dad had limited access to Kent State truth, yet he became a leading force in the fight for accountability and an apology for the killing and wounding of student protesters at Kent State. Even though Nixon’s aides promised Dad a thorough investigations into the Kent State massacre, a Federal Grand Jury was never convened.

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On May 5, 1970, the day after the Kent State massacre, Arthur Krause made his first public address for Allison from our family’s backyard, and before international cameras. HEAR his complete statement in the Death of a Decade/KentState at 16:30-18:20 or READ what Dad said about Allison here:

“She was deeply interested in helping people. She truly cared about people and life. On Saturday evening she called home to tell me there was some trouble in the business section of Kent. She said there was some property damage and she was against that. She was not involved in that but she felt they had to demonstrate; she felt they had to do this because there was no other way to express themselves.

She resented being called a bum because she disagreed with someone else’s opinion. She felt the war in Cambodia was wrong. Is this dissent a crime? Is this a reason for killing her? Have we come to such a state in this country that a young girl has to be shot because she disagrees deeply with the actions of her government?

I want something to be done. What I would like to see happen is that my daughter’s death and those of the other three children as well as the wounded, not be in vain. I would like to see Congress investigate the situation and determine who authorized live ammunition to be brought against children by tired and frightened national guard. Also, who approved such an action?

Can Congress find out why our children can’t express themselves?”

In his first public statement my father was seeking answers from the Nixon administration, the State of Ohio and the National Guard. Dad words may help guide participants in today’s emerging protests, and create an opportunity for non-violent, non-lethal responses towards protesters by law enforcement, the U.S. federal government and U.S. military.

Have we come to such a state in this country that a young girl has to be shot because she disagrees deeply with the actions of her government? - Arthur S. Krause

In that first year after Allison’s killing, our family participated in a film project organized by Columbia University film Professor Paul Ronder entitled ‘Part of the Family’: A documentary about three families who lost family members to the Vietnam war. One family’s son was a soldier killed in Vietnam, another family whose son was killed at Jackson State and our family’s loss was for Allison killed in the Kent State massacre.

Arthur Krause at the cemetery, 1971

Please watch my father express his raw emotion as he recounts his experience, his treatment by the U.S. government after the Ohio National Guard shot and killed his daughter Allison Krause.

As Kent State judicial actions made their way through U.S. courts, Dad, with colleagues Peter Davies and the Rev. John P. Adams, continued the fight for Kent State truth and accountability for almost a decade.

In June 1972, a minor burglary occurred in the offices of the Democratic National Committee in D.C.’s Watergate complex. Watergate Hearings in Congress became the nation’s focus as U.S. lawmakers presented Watergate to distract from Nixon’s killing of students and protesters at Kent State and Jackson State. In Nixon’s deal, American leadership offered him the lessor of all evils in having the Watergate burglary be the reason to run him out of office. Nixon was forced to resign from the Presidency in August 1974.

To conclude Nixon’s deal, on September 8, 1974 President Gerald Ford awarded Nixon a full pardon. READ Dad’s response to Nixon’s pardon in this telegram signed by my parents and sent to the President Gerald Ford in the White House:

Dad did not receive any response from his telegram to the White House or from President Ford. Instead, 37 years later Dad’s telegram was re-discovered buried in an obscure file in President Ford’s library in October 2012. Read ‘A Long Awaited Reply’ by Shane Harris for the Washingtonian.

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In 1978 after Dad finished reading Nixon’s recently published memoir, he wrote this memo. Read Arthur S. Krause’s Memo to Richard M. Nixon, published in the New York Times on May 7, 1978:

“A Memo to Mr. Nixon:

In the published extracts from your memoirs, you blame the news media for misinterpreting your categorization of student demonstrators as “bums.” Your remark was made just a few days before my daughter, Allison, was killed at Kent State University, on May 4, 1970, and you say you were “stunned” to learn of her death, and that of the other students shot by Ohio National Guardsmen.

You claim that the days after the killings “were among the darkest” of your Presidency, and that you were “utterly dejected” when you read that I had said, “My daughter was not a bum.”

By reducing what I actually said to this simplistic capsule sentence, you are once again avoiding the crucial question I had asked eight years ago: “Have we come to such a state in this country that a young girl has to be shot because she disagrees deeply with the actions of her Government?”

Your sympathy was such that you had to write personal letters to the parents of the four dead students, even though you “knew that words could not help.” If this is true, then why did you make such a mockery of your private grief for our sons and daughters by publicly implying that they were responsible for their own deaths and their killers blameless?

“When dissent turns to violence,” you told the American people, “it invites tragedy,” but in your letter to my wife and me you expressed the hope that we could “take comfort from the sympathy the entire nation feels.” Words from fellow citizens, who really understood what had happened at Kent State, did help us, but from our President we expected much more than personal condolences and public political condemnation.

Presidential action would have immeasurably tempered our grief and anger at the deliberate shooting down of our children, and on May 16, 1970, John D. Ehrlichman personally assured me that there would be no “whitewash” of what had happened.

In other words, the Nixon Administration was committed to seeing that justice was done if Ohio exonerated all official and guardsmen from criminal responsibility, which a state grand jury did in October 1970.

The cruel duplicity in these claims to personal grief and desires for justice have just been exposed for what they truly are by NBC-TV news.

At a time (November 1970) when you well knew that I was almost begging for a Federal grand jury investigation of the killings, you instructed Attorney general John Mitchell not to convene a grand jury. How, I ask, does this square with your claims of personal sympathy?

You saw the photographs of the four young men and women shot to death at distances of 270 to almost 400 feet, and in your memoirs you say you “couldn’t get the photographs out of your mind.”

Students Protest After the Kent State Massacre

Watergate and the cover-up was your nemesis, but NBC-TV has not shown that your first obstruction of justice occurred six months after Kent State, when you “instructed” the Attorney General of the United States not to convene a Federal grand jury regardless of what the evidence might have warranted.

To learn of your personal veto of a Federal grand jury months before Justice Department officials were assuring me that killings were still under “intensive investigation” is to prove, in my opinion, all the charges leveled against in the Watergate scandal.

There is poetic justice in the fact that your self-serving account of deep sorrow for the death of my daughter, Allison, and of Sandy Scheuer, Jeff Miller and Bill Schroeder, should be published on the eve of NBC’s report on how you truly felt.

Is there to be no end to your deceptions, omissions and outright distortions of historical fact?”

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A driving force behind Dad’s years of judicial effort was his wish to demonstrate to a “skeptical generation that the judicial system works.”

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In 1979 when Kent State legal battles came to an end in civil settlement, our family was awarded our copy of the Kent State ‘Statement of Regret’ (below) and a paltry $15,000 for Allison’s killing.

Despite Dad’s inability to bring accountability and truth in the Kent State massacre, his legal fights forever changed U.S. laws in matters related to Sovereignty of States. That State Officials must not act ‘above the law’ and may be held responsible for their acts. Five years after the Kent State massacre killed Allison, Dad FINALLY WON his Kent State case before the U.S. Supreme Court and was granted the legal right to sue Ohio, it’s governor and military personnel.

Read the Kent State Settlement Statement signed by all harmed in the Kent State massacre.

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As I write this Substack to honor my father, Renee Nicole Good has been shot in the face by an ICE agent on January 7, 2026. We are horrified and send our heartfelt, peaceful condolences to the Good family and her community. Good’s killing painfully reminds us of the killing of student protesters against war at Kent State and Jackson State in May 1970.

Almost 56 years later we watch the current President and those in charge threaten excessive force, deadly force and military violence against unarmed citizens from armies of National Guard, ICE and contractors of the U.S. security state. The day after Good was killed by ICE, two more protesters were shot in Portland, Oregon and seriously wounded. FBI investigations are underway yet once again, when the U.S. government investigates itself, truth is always buried. In 2026 authorities have informed us, any protesting American who disagrees with the President is now considered and treated as a domestic terrorist.

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Dad only lived to 64 years old, succumbing from Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and his toxic disgust from 20 years battling the U.S. for Allison’s right to protest unharmed and her killing without any form of due process, nor accountability for U.S. government and military participation.

His eldest and my sister Allison Krause was shot dead at Kent State by the Ohio National Guard as she protested President Richard Nixon’s Vietnam war and the announced Cambodian invasion.

In the end, Dad’s fight for proper investigation in the establishment of a Federal Grand Jury, and for truth, accountability at Kent State remains to this day ignored and consistently denied by the U.S. government.

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As a bonus, I’ve attached a poem written for my father in 2010 on Thanksgiving during the Kent State 40th anniversary year. When the U.S. Department of Justice refused to examine newly-emerging Kent State forensic evidence regarding the Kent State Order to Fire and the Kent State Tape in 2010, I wrote this poem, and now offer this update:

Arthur S. Krause walks the May 4, 1970 Kent State massacre site

Kent State Truth Emerges Again

The government crossed the line
in the killing of four young people
in the killing of our Allison
as she rallied against the war on May 4, 1970
A civil rights battle on U.S. soil in our times
Kent State is personal for us yet important for all

Arthur Krause knew the importance
of the Kent State Tape
My dad knew it held the truth
of what happened at Kent State
even though back in 1970
and until just recently
truth from the Kent State Tape was locked up
in a jumbled maze of analog antiquity
Dad passed away over 20 years ago
He knew the truth in the Kent State Tape

A patriot and WWII soldier
Dad believed the American dream
When Allison his firstborn
a freshman at Kent State University
was protesting the Vietnam war on her campus
He never anticipated the American apocalypse
our family would endure
at the hands of our government

Like Sandy, Jeff and Bill
our Allison was shot dead at Kent State
Homicide by national guard gunfire
Dad knew they got away with murder
at Kent State University
just after noon on May 4, 1970

Over the next ten years
Dad sought truth and justice at Kent State
demanding to know what happened to our Allison
Taking it to the courts yielded only
road blocks, cover-ups and threats
Every effort to uncover and face
the deadly inhumanity of Kent State
was completely thwarted

A series of seamless stonewalls
Never examining the wrongs of Kent State
No accountability for the killings of Kent State
Not one person or group ever held responsible
Not one apology uttered

Yet governmental claims were consistent:
There was no order to fire
The Guard reacted to sniper fire
The Guard said they felt in fear for their lives

A government-fabricated pack of lies
that has now transformed
into the recorded history
of the killings of Kent State
That is … until 2010
and the examination of the Kent State Tape

40 years after the shootings
the Kent State Tape that Dad held so dear
that was evidence in his court cases
finally examined using
tools of state-of-the-art audio technology
unlocking the true record of what occurred
at Kent State on May 4, 1970

Sounds expertly analyzed by
world-class forensic scientist Stuart Allen
commissioned by the Cleveland Plain Dealer
to explore the Kent State Tape
for the very first time

Whether copy or original is moot
Truth is recorded in the Kent State Tape
A tape does not remember, forget or change its story
The Kent State Tape does not lie

At the Kent State Truth Tribunal in NYC
October 2010 with Stuart Allen examining
Hearing and unraveling the labyrinth of deadly sounds
including shots and national guard commands
and a violent altercation with FBI-paid Terry Norman
all contributing to the massacre at Kent State 1970

The government denied
orders to fire were isolated, heard and verified
orders of Guard, All Right, Prepare to Fire
orders of Guard, Fi-
with the last word of the deadly order stepped on
by a barrage of 67 shots over 13 seconds

At unarmed students changing classes at noon
At unarmed students more than a football field away
At unarmed students rallying against the Vietnam War
At unarmed students rallying against the military occupation of their campus
in a battle where American dissent was also slaughtered

Editors note: Written over Thanksgiving 2010. Entered into the United States House of Representatives Congressional Record on December 14, 2010, Volume 156, sponsored by Ohio Congressperson Dennis Kucinich at the request of Laurel Krause, whose sister Allison Krause was shot and killed as she protested the Vietnam war at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. Laurel is the co-founder of the Kent State Truth Tribunal and director of the Allison Center for Peace.