Jackson State: A Tragedy Widely Forgotten
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126423778
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by Whitney Blair Wyckoff
May 3, 2010
A group of angry students. A burst of gunfire from authorities. Young
lives cut short.
It sounds a lot like the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970, but it
happened 10 days later at a predominantly black college in the South.
Police fired for about 30 seconds on a group of students at Jackson
State in Mississippi, killing two and wounding 12 others.
The tragedy was the culmination of increasing friction among
students, local youths and law enforcement. On the evening of May 14,
African-American youths were reportedly pelting rocks at white
motorists driving down the main road through campus frequently the
site of confrontations between white and black Jackson residents.
Tensions rose higher when a rumor spread around campus that Charles
Evers a local politician, civil rights leader and the brother of
slain activist Medgar Evers and his wife had been killed, according
to Lynch Street: The May 1970 Slayings at Jackson State College. The
situation escalated when a non-Jackson State student set a dump truck on fire.
Police responded to the call. A group of students and non-students
threw rocks and bricks at the officers. Police advanced to Alexander
Hall, a large dorm for women.
According to a 1970 report from the President's Commission on Campus
Unrest, police fired more than 150 rounds. And an FBI investigation
revealed that about 400 bullets or pieces of buckshot had been fired
into Alexander Hall. The shooters claimed that there was a sniper in
the dorm, but investigators found "insufficient evidence" of that claim.
The two young men who were gunned down in the melee were Phillip L.
Gibbs, a junior at Jackson State and the father of an 18-month-old;
and James Earl Green, a high school senior.
Jackson State Today
The event continues to leave a mark on the university. Even today,
passers-by can see the bullet holes in the women's dorm. A plaza on
campus commemorates the victims of the shooting.
All Jackson State students learn about the shooting in a mandatory
orientation class, and professors evoke the event as a teaching tool.
C. Liegh McInnis, who teaches creative writing and world literature
at Jackson State, says the story of the shooting is integrated into
the curriculum of several liberal arts departments.
In McInnis' own freshman composition class, students are required to
see the bullet holes in the women's dorm themselves while researching
a critical analysis paper about the shooting.
On Thursday, Jackson State held a 40th anniversary memorial to pay
tribute to the victims of the shooting. The event brought back 24
alumni who attended Jackson State in 1970, some of whom had been
injured that night.
"The tragedy showed the resolve of the students," McInnis said.
McInnis said all of the alumni who had traveled from places like
Houston and Detroit ended up being leaders in their fields and
their communities.
"What the shooting did is that it showed, even through this heinous
act, black intellect could not be stopped," McInnis said.
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