Most of us have heard of the Kent State Massacre of May 4, 1970, in which four students were killed by the National Guard for protesting the American invasion of Cambodia. However, the fallout of this massacre has received much less attention.
9.30pm, on May 14, 1970, reacting to a rumour that Charles Evers had been assassinated, black students from Jackson State College in Mississippi rioted in protest against institutionalized racism, the war in Vietnam, and the death of their fellow students at Kent State. This was frustration long in the making, and, after whites complained loudly enough to the police and mayor’s office, another American Campus tragedy was set into motion.
When a fire broke out from the riot, a fully-armed brigade of State Police and National Guard forces were called in to hold off the crowd for the safety of the fire fighters. After the blaze was put down, the guard remained on campus and, for reasons unknown, the police spread out with weapons drawn.
At 12.05 am on May 15th, the seventy police officers opened fire on the protestors.
Some say they gave warning, but others claim the gunfire came out of the blue. In either event, after a volley lasting 30 seconds, two students were dead, and at least twelve more were shot. Scores more were wounded in the trample fleeing the guns, and many, many more were traumatized. It was later estimated that more than 460 rounds of ammunition were pumped into the crowd of 70 to 100. 160 bullet holes were counted in the outer wall of the staircase on Alexander Hall, a dormitory, and can still be seen there today, as a silent tribute to these horrific events. The police stopped to retrieve their shell casings before they left the scene.
21-year-old pre-law student (and father of one), Phillip Lafayette Gibbs died instantly with four gun shots to the head and torso. High school senior, 17-year-old James Earl Green, a bystander, was shot and killed by a single shotgun blast to the chest. He had just been passing by, when the action caught his attention. He had just stopped to look.
No arrests have ever been made in connection with these deaths.
The event is sad and frightening, but the fact that it has been so well lost from public memory is even worse. The Kent State Massacre was perpetrated on white kids from the suburbs and therefore it is a newsworthy tragedy; it takes little imagination to guess why the Jackson State Massacre, which took place on a black campus and affected the lives of black youth in the act of protesting racism and violence, has not been as memorialized as much as it deserves. Are we less concerned when young black men are killed?
Let us all remember that these black students were also protesting the deaths of their white compatriots at Kent State, and let’s hope that this act of compassion and co-operation can grow to work both ways.
It is in part to people like the Jackson State protestors that we owe our current freedoms, and it is through their example that we continue to seek better lives for ourselves and future students.
Shall we overcome?
2 comments:
Wow. It's neat how I have never ever ever heard of this before.
Yeah. I didn't hear about, either, for a long time. Hence the post... Just doing my small part.
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