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Jackson State Holds Commencement For Class Of 1970

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On Saturday (Might 15), Jackson State College held a particular graduation ceremony for the Class of 1970.

The initially scheduled graduation for HBCU class was cancelled 51 years in the past resulting from shootings by metropolis and state cops that resulted within the deaths of two Black male college students — 21-year-old JSU pupil Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and 17-year-old highschool pupil James Earl Inexperienced. The shootings additionally injured 12 others. The deaths occurred throughout racial justice protests on the college’s campus.

Jackson, Mississippi Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and state Sen. Hillman Frazier of Jackson each apologized on Saturday for the shootings.

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“As James Baldwin as soon as wrote: ‘After we can not inform the reality about our previous, we grow to be trapped in it,’” Lumumba mentioned, in accordance with WJTV12. “I consider, as a metropolis, we should publicly atone for the sins of our previous and proclaim a brand new identification of dignity, fairness and justice.”

Graduates that yr acquired their diplomas by mail. On Saturday, 74 of the 400-plus donned caps and robes and stood within the highlight to obtain the popularity denied to them over half-a-century in the past.

The Might 15, 1970, shootings at JSU have been largely overshadowed by elsewhere violence involving legislation enforcement throughout which Ohio Nationwide Guardsmen shot and killed 4 Kent State College college students amid a Vietnam Warfare protest simply days prior.

Lumumba mentioned the Jackson Police Division officers “unjustly gunned down two harmless younger Black males, terrorized and traumatized a neighborhood of Black college students and dedicated one of many gravest sins in our metropolis’s historical past.”

Jackson is at present 80 % Black, however in 1970 it was a majority white metropolis and police division.

Frazier, who was a Jackson State pupil in 1970, mentioned he had gone to dinner that evening and was delayed in returning to campus. He believes he may need been harmed or killed alongside together with his pal Gibbs throughout the gunfire, if not for the delay.

“The state of Mississippi by no means apologized for the tragedy that occurred on this campus that evening — by no means apologized,” Frazier mentioned. “So, since I’m right here representing the state of Mississippi in my position as state senator, I’d prefer to subject an apology to the households, the Jackson State household, for the tragedy that occurred that evening as a result of they took very precious lives.”

Gibbs and Inexperienced have been awarded posthumous honorary doctorate levels, which have been accepted by their sisters. The commencement befell on a avenue that was become a pedestrian zone named the Gibbs-Inexperienced Memorial Plaza.

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