The May 4 Task Force held a presentation Feb. 13 honoring the birthday and telling participants about the achievements of Alan Canfora, famous for his decades of activism work after holding a black flag in front of the National Guard and being wounded on May 4, 1970.
Canfora’s activism included helping create the May 4 Task Force in 1975, organizing and participating in Tent City during the summer of 1977 and rallying support for bronze markers in 2021 honoring those wounded on May 4. This was the last project he was personally involved in before his death in Dec. 2020.
Sophie Swengel, a junior history major and chair of the May 4 Task Force, planned the event. Swengel won The Alan Canfora Activism Scholarship, which helped her connect to the task force.
“I never got the chance to meet him, but I was really interested in the task force and all of what they do, and so I had applied for that scholarship,” Swengel said. “[May 4] is just such an important historical event, and I feel that while the university has embraced it over the years, it’s something that Kent State students have always been a part of.”
Canfora had gone to the May 4 protest just a week after attending the funeral of a close childhood friend who was killed in the Vietnam War. The black flag was in honor of his friend.
Roseann “Chic” Canfora, Alan Canfora’s sister and a professor in the School of Media and Journalism, keeps in close contact with the May 4 Task Force and their events, offering advice whenever needed.
She attended the event and expressed her gratitude to everyone who had come.
“Today is [Alan’s] birthday, and it’s bittersweet walking into this room and seeing this multi-generational gathering in celebration of his life,” Canfora said. “I’m so grateful to the students in the May 4 Task Force, that they have carried on the legacy of May 4 and student activism that he was so much a part of.”
After the protest and shooting, Alan Canfora graduated from KSU with a bachelor’s degree in general studies and a master’s degree in library science. He formed the task force during his graduate studies and was director of the May 4 Center beginning in 1989. He was also the director of the Akron Law Library from 2011 until his passing.
“[Canfora’s birthday] gives you something to talk about, to be able to reflect on how far we’ve come since it happened,” Swengel said. “I want students to take away the legacy they have here on this campus and the value of having such great mentors in their own lives.”
The 2025 May 4 Commemoration began with the play “Trial By Fire” performed from Feb. 7 through Feb. 9 and will continue throughout the semester with various events until May 4, where there will be a ringing of the Victory Bell and a moment of silence at 12:24 p.m.
“It’s such a tribute to his work that it continues in earnest four years now after he’s gone,” Canfora said. “To walk in here and see today’s students and yesterday’s students here celebrating his life is really touching for me and I know for my family.”
Aryn Kauble is a reporter. Contact him at [email protected].
