“The law says they can do it, and they did it”

In 1972 the families of Phillip Gibbs, James Earl Green, and three students injured in the Jackson State shootings, filed suit against Mississippi, its former governor, the city of Jackson and its mayor, leadership of both the highway patrol and city police, and the patrolmen and policemen who had fired their weapons. White defense attorneys worked to recast the police and Jackson’s white citizens as the shooting’s victims and coupled presumed black criminality with accusations about civil rights activism. Jackson’s black community was not surprised when the all-white jury found for the defendants. A federal appeals court disagreed, finding law enforcement officers had overreacted in an “excessive and unjustifiable use of force” but maintained no damages could be paid because the state and its officers were protected by “sovereign immunity.” When the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case, the last legal recourse of the Jackson State victims ended.

“A well conceived scheme to maintain racial segregation”

Chapter 1 situates Jackson State College in the racial history of Mississippi, emphasizing the struggle it faced against white supremacy and the balancing act its leadership performed. Determined to preserve the school, its presidents, both white and black, were forced to accept elements of racial containment. When protests emerged in Jackson in the 1960s, the Board of Trustees ensured that Jackson State’s president, Jacob Reddix, controlled student activism. When students joined Jacksonians to protest segregation in the city, he expelled them. When students voiced their political opinions, he dissolved the Student Government Association. During Freedom Summer, the Board of Trustees tightened restrictions on students. The smallest protest or rumor prompted white Jacksonians to condemn the campus as a breeding ground of criminals. In 1967 a new president, John A. Peoples, relaxed some restrictions on student life, even as the increasing influence of Black Power began to be felt on campus.

Conclusion: “It was not a story to pass on”

The May 1970 shootings at Jackson State had an enduring impact for many of its victims. Many dedicated themselves to fighting the racism that had killed James Earl Green and Phillip Gibbs. others ensured the story would not be forgotten. For some the injuries and trauma were long-lasting. Their tragic experiences were not unique, but part of a long history of state violence against communities of color, a history routinely absent from most white Americans’ educations and consciousness. Ongoing state violence against people of color—both police shootings and the growth of the largest prison system in the world—has required evading the history of white supremacist violence and an ongoing embrace of the law and order narrative. The conclusion illustrates how the role of race in the shootings at Jackson State provides context for understanding more recent police shootings and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“Largely unknown to the American public”

The tragedy at Jackson State never gained the traction the Kent State shootings did. The public was informed about the story due to significant coverage in major media. The investigations, grand juries, and trial continually returned the events to the public eye. Nevertheless, the episode did not gain a place in the nation’s public memory. Chapter 6 explores the twin processes of remembering and forgetting the shootings, especially the important role played by attitudes about race and its meaning in determining their course. Struggling to protect the memory of the Jackson State shootings, many people framed those who died as martyrs to the cause of racial justice. However, a white liberal preference for the student narrative, which allowed the negation of race, facilitated the nation’s public amnesia about Jackson State. A simplistic narrative of racial progress in which the shootings made a better future possible also facilitated the amnesia.

Introduction: “Everybody knows about Mississippi goddam”

The introduction offers an overview of the shootings of May 15, 1970, and the effort by students to protect the evidence and memory of what happened. An HBCU in the most racially repressive state, Jackson State College opened in the midst of the counterrevolution against Reconstruction and was determined to provide a first-rate education. The school struggled against white supremacy from the beginning. Activism following World War Two, the Brown decision, and the civil rights movement produced an epic backlash, including violence against activists, leading to the growing dominance of Black Power as an organizing philosophy. Activism on campus had long been repressed by the administration, acting on behalf of the all-white Board of Trustees, but by the end of the decade the campus was changing, influenced by Black Power and a new president, and opportunities to grow and express racial consciousness emerged. It was this campus law enforcement assaulted.

“Buckshot, rifle slugs, a submachine gun”

Chapter 3 details the events culminating in the shooting deaths of two young African Americans and the wounding of twelve others. On May 13, 1970, police responded to students throwing rocks at the vehicles of white motorists. Trouble resumed the next evening. Although, law enforcement later claimed there was a sniper, the shootings were entirely unwarranted, and resulted from their mistakes and failures as they rushed through their protocols, skipped important steps, and substituted a hyper-militarized response for careful planning. Their inability to distinguish between a handful of people engaging in property destruction and the majority of peaceful students as well as their abrogation of the basic rules of crowd control heightened the risk of violence. But it was their racism, and their false belief that the students posed a dangerous threat, which made it possible for these heavily armed officers to pull the trigger on unarmed African American students.

“Wake up brothers and sisters”

Chapter 2 explores the convergence of forces that led to the 1970 shootings at Jackson State, beginning with the shooting of local activist Benjamin Brown in 1967 and then the tensions between conservatism and reform on campus from 1967 to 1970. Even as a new racial consciousness emerged on the campus after the ascension of John Peoples to the presidency, Jackson State remained largely isolated from the growing antiwar and student activism on campuses nationwide. Civil rights gains, student activism, the antiwar movement, urban rebellions, and the growing appeal of Black Power, though, had produced near-hysteria among white Mississippians and a broader backlash in white communities nationwide, a mood President Richard Nixon tapped into with his Southern Strategy and his deployment of racially veiled law and order rhetoric. In such a context, law enforcement in Jackson felt empowered to answer even limited unrest on the campus with force.

“They killed a bunch of black kids”

Following the shootings at Jackson State College, students, police, government officials, and reporters fought for control of the story. Three primary narratives emerged. The first one accurately understood the shootings as another example of state violence against African Americans. The second sympathized with the victims, but emphasized their identity as students, linking the shootings at Jackson State and Kent State ten days earlier. A third counter-narrative, a racially infused account focused on law and order, blamed the young people at Jackson State for the violence. These narratives influenced the investigations, commissions, and legal proceedings, where the competing understandings had tangible stakes. A mayor’s bi-racial committee and the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest both demonstrated substantial understanding of the racialized causes of the shootings but had no legal standing. Alternatively, federal and county grand juries used the law and order narrative to demonize the students as criminals and justify the shootings.