If I told you about that time in May 1970 when law enforcement officers opened fire on American college students, your mind would probably drift to Kent State University, in which four students where shot and killed at an anti-Vietnam War protest. But eleven days after Kent State, there was another instance, and it has flown under the radar for almost 50 years.
While Jackson State is perhaps best known as being Walter Payton's alma mater, the university has a long history as one of the larger Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Founded towards the end of Reconstruction in 1877 in Natchez (as the Natchez Seminary), the school relocated to Jackson in 1882 and was renamed Mississippi Negro Training School. Jackson State also went by Jackson College for Negro Teachers, Jackson State College, and, finally, Jackson State University in 1974. The band, the Sonic Boom of the South, is one of the most famous, as well as the Prancing J-Settes danceline.
Named after Reconstruction-era congressman John R. Lynch (Mississippi's first African-American Speaker of the House and one of the first African-American congressmen - 1873-1877 - ever), Lynch Street cut the Jackson State campus in half. On the evening of May 14, 1970 - ten days after Kent State - a group of about 100 black students gathered on Lynch Street apparently to protest the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia though there were also demonstrations against Mississippi governor John Bell Williams, as they had done for several consecutive nights.
Williams is an "interesting" cat. A former WW2 pilot who graduated from Ole Miss' law school and would go on to be Mississippi's youngest congressman, elected to the House of Representatives at 27. Williams was a democrat who gave a dramatic speech on the floor of the House of Representatives criticizing the Supreme Court's decision to desegregate schools in Brown v. Board of Education and called it "Black Monday" and encouraged Southern states to attempt to nullify the ruling, having apparently not learned that the South attempting to nullify a federal order was batting .000 over the course of American history.
As the Democratic Party became the party of civil rights, Williams drifted further away. He fundraised and endorsed Barry Goldwater for the 1964 election, delivering 87% of Mississippi's vote to Goldwater. The Democratic Party stripped him of party leadership in 1965. He was re-elected in 1966 and ran for governor in 1968.
Fifteen years after the Brown decision, Mississippi still had a dual public school system in which white kids went to one school system and black kids went to another. Separate yes, equal no. After the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Mississippi leaders chose (and by "chose" of course I mean, "reluctantly accepted") a freedom-of-choice method of letting any student go to any school in their district. "Freedom of choice - what can be more American? Or more democratic?" they yelled, conveniently forgetting that black families who chose white schools for their kids were regularly intimidated following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
It was mainly a method designed to allow for token integration and more to avoid lawsuits. The 1968 Green v. County School Board saw the Supreme Court rule that this method was ineffective and, thus, no longer an out to resist integration. The next year the Supreme Court ruled in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education that all schools in the South (but with a very clear side-eye to 30 Mississippi school districts) had to terminate the dual school system. And so, Governor John Bell Williams said in early 1970 that he would simply use his power to create a private school system to make sure the white kids were educated separately. The Klan held an anti-integration rally in Meridian. White parents in Hattiesburg protested the federal order to integrate immediately.
Schools integrated, but only in theory. At DeKalb High School, white students went to classes in a separate wing from black students and changed classes based on whether the bell was a "white bell" or a "black bell."
So there was more to the gathering on Lynch Street than American involvement in Cambodia. Along Lynch Street, white motorists passing through the middle of campus had a history of harassing Jackson State students going to class. The police were called on the night of May 13 when students threatened to burn down the ROTC building. The gathering threw rocks at the cars of white people driving through campus.
At about 9:30pm on May 14 a report made its way through the group of about 100 students that Charles Evers - brother of Medgar Evers, the first African-American mayor of a biracial Mississippi town (Fayette) in the post-Reconstruction era who had been elected in 1969, and the NAACP's 1969 Man of the Year - had been assassinated, with his wife. A student, not enrolled at Jackson State, set a dump truck on fire. The crowd jeered at the firemen, who requested police backup.
Seventy-five Jackson PD officers and Mississippi State Troopers cordoned off 30 blocks around Jackson State's campus and marched, armed with "carbines, submachine guns, shotguns, service revolvers, and some personal weapons," towards Alexander Hall, a large dorm for women. There was a standoff and of course reports differ as to what happened to set it off. There was a report that claimed there was a sniper in the dorm (investigators later found "insufficient evidence" of that claim). Another said there was a shot fired, but the direction of the shot was undetermined. Others said a bottle was thrown, causing a large pop.
Regardless, at 12:05am on May 15, 1970, police opened fire for over 30 seconds on the dorm and the crowd. When the cease-fire order was given, 460 bullets were found in Alexander Hall, and 160 in the stairwell area alone, where students were trying to enter the building. Two were dead and twelve more were injured.
Philip Lafayette Gibbs, 21, a pre-law major from Ripley, Mississippi with an 18-month old son, had been shot in the head four times.
James Earl Green, 17, was a senior at Jim Hill High School and was taking a shortcut home from the grocery store where he worked when the shooting took place. He was shot in the chest.
Ambulances were not called until the police picked up their shell casings. The city police and state troopers left campus and were replaced by the National Guard. Jackson officials denied that city police were involved. The Jackson City Council ruled to close off Lynch Street to thru-traffic and rename Lynch Street "John R. Lynch Street" to denote the former Congressman from Mississippi. After Lynch Street was closed, a plaza was built near Alexander Street, named Gibbs-Green Plaza in honor of the two who had died.
In June 1970 President Nixon established the President's Commission on Campus Unrest. After testimony from faculty, staff, administration, and students, no one was arrested or convicted of a crime related to the attack.
While the attacks at Kent State and Jackson State were officially the result of an anti-war protest that escalated, it's worth mentioning that there are many different tensions to which people respond: what many felt was an unnecessary war, or racial inequality and generations of targeted aggression, frustrations over both led to deaths at multiple college campuses in 1970.
