The Deadliest School Attack in American History Happened in Michigan

Most folks think school violence is a modern horror. It isn’t. The deadliest attack on a school in American history happened in a small Michigan farming town almost a century ago — and far too few people know it.

On the morning of May 18, 1927, the village of Bath, just northeast of Lansing, was a community of about 300 people. A few years earlier, the new Bath Consolidated School had brought all the area’s children under one roof. Building it had meant higher property taxes, and one man — a farmer named Andrew Kehoe, who also served as the school board’s treasurer — had grown bitter about the cost, and about losing a local election.

Over several months, using quiet access to the building during repair work, Kehoe hid hundreds of pounds of explosives beneath the school. He had already killed his wife, and that morning he set his own farm ablaze. Minutes later, a timed charge tore through the school’s north wing. Thirty-eight children and several adults were killed, and about 58 people were hurt. When rescuers rushed in, Kehoe drove up in a truck packed with shrapnel and explosives and set off a final blast, killing himself, the school superintendent, and others. Searchers later found roughly 500 more pounds of dynamite that had failed to detonate — he had meant to destroy the entire building. In all, 45 people died.

The country sent help and money. U.S. Senator James Couzens personally gave $75,000 toward a new school. Bath rebuilt, and it endured.

Today the old school is gone, but the town has not forgotten. A memorial park marks the site, and a bronze plaque lists the names of those who were lost. Bath remembers them, and so should we.