With the trial of George Floyd over, and a year of protests around the world, the Miami Herald offered a fascinating look back fifty years to the shooting of Viet Nam war protesters at Kent State.

Many of you may recall the iconic picture above either when it happened or perhaps (for younger readers) in history books, but I’ll wager that no one knows what happened to the girl in the picture (or what may happen to the witnesses in the George Floyd killing) which makes this article – a slight deviation from articles about the “law” – all the more interesting if not fascinating as it describes how one event can change the course of a lifetime.

From the Miami Herald:

Last May, when Mary Ann Vecchio watched the video of George Floyd’s dying moments, she felt herself plummet through time and space — to a day almost exactly 50 years earlier. On that afternoon in 1970, the world was just as riveted by an image that showed the life draining out of a young man on the ground, this one a black-and-white still photo. Mary Ann was at the center of that photo, her arms raised in anguish, begging for help.

That photo, of her kneeling over the body of Kent State University student Jeffrey Miller, is one of the most important images of the 20th century. 

Taken by student photographer John Filo, it captures Mary Ann’s raw grief and disbelief at the realization that the nation’s soldiers had just fired at its own children. 
The Kent State Pietà, as it’s sometimes called, is one of those rare photos that fundamentally changed the way we see ourselves and the world around us. Like the image of the solitary protester standing in front of a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square. Or the photo of Kim Phuc, the naked Vietnamese girl fleeing the napalm that has just incinerated her home. Or the image of Aylan Kurdi’s tiny, 3-year-old body facedown in the sand, he and his mother and brother having drowned while fleeing Syria.

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