Denis Smith wrote the following, to commemorate a date that is notorious to those of us who recall the Kent State Massacre, when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed college student protesters:
May 4, 2020, marks the 50th anniversary of the deaths of four students at Kent State University. The shootings by a contingent of the Ohio National Guard, which were ordered into the city by Ohio Governor James Rhodes, were in response to rioting that took place on the campus in protest to the escalation of the Vietnam War and the destruction of the campus ROTC building.
At the time, many people felt that Rhodes inflamed the situation when he said that the students were worse than the “Brown Shirts” of the Hitler era. Rhodes, who holds the distinction of being one of only seven four-term governors in the history of this nation, is still a divisive figure a half-century after the Kent State Massacre, where in addition to the four dead, nine other students were also severely wounded and one paralyzed.
In December 1982, a 6 foot- 6 inch tall bronze statue of Rhodes was dedicated on the grounds of the State Capitol in Columbus. It didn’t take long for the statue to be vandalized and hit by a car in 1983, according to Wiki. It was later moved and placed in front of the entrance of the Rhodes State Office Tower, where it remains.
Which brings me to this nugget.
We relocated to the Columbus area five years after the statue was dedicated. In the early 1990s, someone told me that there was a legend about some type of secret message that was contained inside the bronze statute. After Rhodes’ death in 2011, that rumor was confirmed.
Here is an excerpt from the Columbus Monthly Magazine of November 2019:
A Bronze Bombshell
“When James Rhodes died in 2001, a longtime Capitol Square rumor was confirmed. It turned out that the 700-pound bronze effigy of the four-term governor in front of the Rhodes Tower includes a hidden tribute to the four students killed at Kent State University in May 1970.
“There is in fact a message engraved into the bronze on the inside of the statue that makes a statement about the Kent State shootings and the victims,” Ron Dewey, former owner of Studio Foundry in Cleveland, told the defunct Columbus alternative weekly The Other Paper, declining to reveal exactly what the message said. —Dave Ghose”
As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kent State, I for one would love to know what the sculptor Gary Ross engraved on the inside of the statue. Wouldn’t you?
If there is an update to this story from six months ago, I would love to know further details. How many folks would be itching to write the story about hidden hieroglyphics inside this statue?
Denis Smith posted this on his Facebook page. You can see the statue of Governor Rhodes there.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I do not know about the hidden message in the sculpture, but it anyone might know that person is Laura Davis, Professor Emeritus of English at Kent State University and one of the few remaining and longstanding experts on events leading up to and following the May 4, 1970 shooting of students at Kent State.
About a decade ago, I had the good fortune of spending the better part a day with . Laura Davis whose life’s work has been organized around that terrible event.
Laura Davis was a freshman at Kent State when she witnessed the shootings on May 4, 1970. After she graduated and became a member of the faculty and for many tyears engaged in team teaching “May 4, 1970 & Its Aftermath” with Carole Barbato, Ph.D.
She has instigated and collaborated on other projects, including the now well-marked May 4 Walking Tour and the May 4 Visitors Center for orientation to campus resources. In consultation with others she was able to secure project funding from the Ohio Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She played a major role in bringing together documents and oral histories in “This We Know: A Chronology of the Shootings at Kent State, May 1970” and “Democratic Narrative, History, and Memory.”
I was lucky enough to have Laura Davis as my guide at the time she and others were still planning the May 4 tours. I also learned of her other work to over many years, culminating a long-sought National Historic Landmark designation for the site in 2016.
Recall that Vice-President Spiro Agnew labelled the Kent State protesters “Communist dupes comprised of an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.”
Agnew was a verbal machine gun before Trump, and like Trumo his usual target was the mass media.
See this https://www.kent.edu/may4kentstate50
and https://www.library.kent.edu/special-collections-and-archives/kent-state-shootings-may-4-collection
The Rhodes to Hell
Some roads lead to Heaven
But some Rhodes lead to Hell
The centuries might leaven
But never will they quell
If I remember the history correctly, many schools (college and high school) closed down after the deaths at Kent State. One source said 700 schools with millions of students.
It was a far, far different cause from the school closures of 2020, of course.
But an eerie parallel in time.
And, who would’ve thought we’d end up with a Spiro Agnew-type idiot as President now 50 years later? In fact, far, far worse than Agnew.
Agnew had help from that libertarian conservative, William Safire.
Agnew was a party hack. Trump is a malignancy on the body politic. When I saw the photo of him conducting an interview with FOX News inside the hallowed walls of the Lincoln Memorial, right in front of the statue of the Great Man, I had an urge to get very sick. And to say that the media persecuted him–him, the great victim!–worse than even Lincoln. The man has no shame, no brain, no compassion, no soul.
Your last two words prompted me to post this, from Lucinda Williams, who’s originally from just around the corner of your hometown, Lake Charles, LA. If you don’t want to listen to the whole thing, move forward to 7:20.
“Rhodes said that the students were worse than the ‘Brown Shirts’ of the Hitler era.”
Students protesting the Vietnam War were not ‘Brown Shirts.’ They did not have any leaders like Trump, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Rhodes, or Stalin to lead them.
The fascist and Hitler copy cat was Rhodes. Those students were only exercising their FIRST Amendment rights and most of the protestors against the Vietnam War were peaceful protestors.
Trump has his ‘Brown Shirt’ and they wear red MAGA hats and/or t-shirts that “shout” lock her up (without due process of the law).
James Rodes did the world a favor when he died on March 4, 2001. May his soul rot in hell forever. When will the fascist Liar-in-Chief Trumpilstiltksin do the world a similar favor?
A few days later, there was the Jackson State killings, from wikipedia: The Jackson State killings occurred on Friday, May 15, 1970, at Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) in Jackson, Mississippi. On May 14, 1970, a group of students was confronted by city and state police. Shortly after midnight, the police opened fire, killing two students and injuring twelve. The event happened only 11 days after the Kent State shootings, in which National Guardsmen killed four students at Kent State University in Ohio, which had first captured national attention.
In the Kent State massacre, students who just happened to be walking across the campus and had nothing to do with the protests were also killed and wounded.
From the 40th anniversary at Jaskson State:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126426361
“According to a 1970 report from the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest, police fired more than 150 rounds. And an FBI investigation revealed that about 400 bullets or pieces of buckshot had been fired into Alexander Hall. The shooters claimed that there was a sniper in the dorm, but investigators found “insufficient evidence” of that claim.
“The two young men who were gunned down in the melee were Phillip L. Gibbs, a junior at Jackson State and the father of an 18-month-old; and James Earl Green, a high school senior.”
Thanks Diane. I wondered if anyone else recalled what day it was. I really did not know much about it at the time, being 13 and busy milking cows. but I studied it a lot later.
I will never forget that day. Colleges across the nation, including ours, heeded the SDS’s call for peaceful but organized campus protest that Monday mid-morning against Nixon’s expansion of the VNWar into Cambodia, which had happened during the night of Thurs 4/30/70. A Mon am protest meant classes would be nearly empty, which would make a statement. We marched through the campus streets. Sometime in the early afternoon, someone began announcing from the megaphone on a truck-pulled cart of SDS sign-carriers: “They’re killing students at Kent State.”
The war had seemed to be winding down; the expansion was a kick in the gut, & this event was unprecedented, felt like open warfare on the younger generation. It was the week before finals started; graduation was less than a month away. Our campus did not close, but many finals were cancelled, term papers postponed, courses could be opted for pass/ fail. I had friends whose fiancés’ numbers had come up in the lottery that Feb & would be off to boot camp then the front days after graduation– my wedding was all planned for June 5. It was a surrealistic time.
I was a junior in high school, and the memory is seared in my mind. The idea of the state as a violent actor – on a peaceful college campus – was new to me then, but has served as a catalyst ever after. Trump is just a more extreme version.
Now that slave holder statues are being taken down, it seems to me someone responsible for the deaths of 4 dead students at Kent State qualifies as so egregious an act that Rhodes statue is blight on the history of Ohio. If murder doesn’t qualify then it should.