Jeffrey Miller, Kent State Victim, Died on May 4, 1970

The Life of Jeffrey Miller
(March 28, 1950 – May 4, 1970) was a student at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio when he was shot and killed by Ohio National Guardsmen in the Kent State shootings. At the time of his death, Miller had recently transferred to Kent State from Michigan State University. While at Michigan State, Miller pledged Phi Kappa Tau fraternity where his older brother had been a member.

The Death of Jeffrey Miller
Miller was shot after lobbing a tear-gas canister back at Ohio National Guardsmen at a protest against the Vietnam War. He was facing the Guardsmen while standing in an access road leading into the Prentice Hall parking lot at a distance of approximately 270 ft. A single rifle bullet entered his open mouth and exited at the back of his head at the base of his posterior skull, killing him almost instantly.

John Filo's iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, the most famous picture from the event, features fourteen-year-old runaway Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over Miller's body.

Three other students were killed in the shootings: Allison Krause, Sandra Scheuer, and William Knox Schroeder. The shootings led to protests and a national student strike, causing hundreds of campuses to close because of both violent and non-violent demonstrations. The Kent State campus remained closed for six weeks. Five days after the shootings, 100,000 people demonstrated in Washington, D.C., against the war and protesting the killing of unarmed students on a college campus.

Miller was buried in Hartsdale, New York. A memorial has been erected at Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School, the school that replaced Miller's high school in Plainview, New York. Miller's mother had been a secretary to the principal of J.F. Kennedy H.S. in the 1960s. There is a Kent State Memorial Lecture Fund at MIT established in 1970 by one of Jeffrey Miller’s childhood friends.