The girl in the Kent State photo, and the lifelong burden of being a national symbol
By Published: April 20, 2021 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 ...