Forty-six years ago, four students were shot and killed by the National Guard amid demonstrations at Kent State University.
Samaria Rice, mother to Tamir Rice, was the keynote speaker.
Samaria Rice recounted the story of her son's death when he was shot and killed by Cleveland police officers outside Cudell Recreation Center in 2014.
A Kent State student group invited Samaria Rice to speak as part of their "Black Lives Matter" theme to commemorate the 1970 campus killings.
Here are 10 quotes from Rice's speech Wednesday:
"My son was laying on the ground and I tried to go for him and I was trying to charge police and trying to get to my son. But they told me to calm down."
"That was the most horrific day of my life, sending two children out to play that day and only one coming home."
"I was thinking that the prosecutor was actually on my side after being thrown into this situation. I was kind of oblivious of what was going on in America until it happened to my son."
"We are stilling having some issues in America, more issues than I can ever imagine with the police killing unarmed citizens, majority black, and just killing Americans, period."
“All of us standing together and unifying, that would set an example for the government. Say listen, look, we aren’t going to take this anymore.”
"America has a lot of work to do. I need to say that racism is a disease. You are not born with racism. You are taught racism. Let's start looking for cures for racism as we are other diseases because that is a disease.”
"He went to a school that was very diverse, and for the children to come up to me and tell me, 'I'm sorry for your loss,' it crushed me. …That’s so devastating and I just embraced it."
"We're still wanting justice for these four babies that were killed. At the end of the day, they're still someone’s baby. I was just blown away that they haven’t received justice yet."
"My job is to make them [government and police officials] uncomfortable. I don't sugar-coat anything. I can't be bought and sold. I'm the real deal Holyfield."
"America needs some changes, some cleaning up. If they don’t clean it up, it's going to collapse."
