We Shall Not Be Moved: The May 4th Coalition, the "Gym Struggle" at Kent State University of 1977 and the Question of Ultimate National Control of the Vietnam Era

We Shall Not Be Moved narrates the story of the Kent State student-led May 4th Coalition and its efforts to maintain untouched the site of the Ohio National Guard’s shooting of thirteen Kent State students.

The story is told in a local context of the group’s development and motivations during a long-term conflict between the group, its supporters, the university administration. The story is also told in a much larger context of national polarization over the meaning of the Vietnam War and the peace movement and the preferred historical narrative about the Vietnam era. The book concludes that the May 4th Coalition lost its struggle to save the May 4th site because Americans determining the Vietnam narrative did not believe the protest of 1970 should be honored with saved land.