Steeped in the Blood of Racism

This book recounts the death of two young African Americans, Phillip Gibbs and James Earl Green and the wounding of twelve others caused when white police and highway patrolmen opened fire on students in front of a women's dormitory at Jackson State College, a historically black college (HBCU) in May, 1970. It situates this story in the broader events of the civil rights and black power eras, emphasizing the role white supremacy played in causing the police violence and shaping their aftermath. A state school controlled by an all-white Board of Trustees, Jackson State had a reputation as a conservative campus where students faced expulsion for activism. By 1970, students were pushing back, responding to the evolving movement for African American freedom. It was this changing campus that law enforcement attacked, reflecting both traditional patterns of repression and the new logic and racially coded rhetoric of law and order." In the aftermath, the victims and their survivors struggled unsuccessfully tofind justice or a place in the nation's public memory. Despite multiple investigative commissions, two grand juries, and a civil suit, no officers were charged, no restitution was paid, and no apologies were offered. Overshadowed by the shooting of whitestudents at Kent State University ten days earlier, the violence was routinely misunderstood as similar in cause, a story that evaded the essential role of race in causing it. Few besides the local African American community proved willing to remember. This book provides crucial history for understanding the ongoing crisis of state violence against people of color"--