On the 50th anniversary, America's still not fully recovered from the wounds of Kent State

On May 4, 1970 — 50 years ago this Monday — a tree trunk may have been the only thing that prevented Alan Canfora from becoming the fifth fatality in a violent episode that both rattled America and reshaped its history, the shooting barrage by Ohio National Guardsmen into a crowd of student protesters at Kent State University.Canfora was a 20-year-old undergrad at the Ohio public university just east of Akron, and a campus leader in the anti-Vietnam War protest movement. Still emotional and angry after attending the funeral days earlier of a childhood friend who’d been killed in Southeast Asia...