In Kent State’s Shadow, Mississippi’s Tragedy

Time has claimed much of the anger and terror of the night 30 years ago when daily clashes between white motorists and black students ended in a barrage of police gunfire that left two young people dead at historically black Jackson State University.

Today, the bullet-scarred walls of Alexander Hall still attest to the violence that forced Mississippi to look at race relations and at the way its police respond.

May 14, 1970, marked the tragic climax of a week of demonstrations and nightly clashes between students and white motorists harassing them along Lynch Street, a busy thoroughfare that cut through the then-3,500-student campus.

The student protests had started over the Jackson Police Department’s refusal to shut the street.

That night, when students refused to disperse, a police fusillade, set off by the sound of a bottle breaking, killed Phillip L. Gibbs, a 21-year-old Jackson State student, and James Earl Green, a 17-year-old passerby. Both were black.

Ten days earlier, four white students had been killed when the National Guard opened fire on anti-Vietnam War protesters at Ohio’s Kent State University.

“I can still recall the awful screaming and yelling and the gunfire,” said Jack Hobbs, a television reporter who filmed the shooting at Jackson State. “It was deafening. I thought, ‘Oh my God, they’re shooting these kids.’ ”

Like their northern, white counterparts, many of the Jackson State students were angry about the Vietnam War, but in a Southern city divided by a long and bitter civil rights struggle, the unrest was more about simmering racial tension.

Jackson State instructor Gene Young witnessed the shooting as a 19-year-old sophomore and traveled to Kent State on May 4 for a service to remember the victims of both tragedies.

“It’s therapeutic to meet with other people coming to terms with conflict,” Young said. “Students on other campuses suffered great losses also.”

Young said he hopes Jackson State will do a better job of educating a new generation about the shootings. Thousands turned out for ceremonies at Kent State, but fewer than 50 attended a candlelit vigil at Jackson State.

Students today admit they know little about the shooting that made national headlines and history books.

“I think some police shot some guys and they had a riot about it,” junior Erica Wilson, 20, said.

Bert Case, who along with Hobbs had been covering the protests, said a standoff developed when police and the Mississippi Highway Patrol demanded the students disperse after a city dump truck was set ablaze near campus.

When a wine bottle shattered near Case’s feet, officers began shooting at the Alexander Hall dormitory.

“Right after that bottle broke they unleashed a 29-second fusillade, firing shotguns,” Case said.

Officers defended their action, which riddled the dormitory with 275 bullet holes, with claims of a sniper that were never substantiated.

Twelve injured students were taken to a hospital within 20 minutes of the incident. A federal investigation found that ambulances were not called until after officers had picked up their shell casings.