Jackson State College oral history project

Collection — Multiple Containers

Identifier: 13-6-1630

Scope and content

The Jackson State College oral history project contains 12 interviews conducted between July 7 and July 14, 1970, collected by Cleveland Donald, Jr., a graduate student in history at Cornell and a native of Jackson, about the events at Jackson State College during the protests in the spring of 1970. The interviewees include seven students from Jackson State College: Ferries C. Adams, II, a student; Roosevelt Kelley, a high school student and incoming freshman; Louis McLaurin, a senior; Gene C. Young, a sophomore; Warner Buxton, a junior; Frank Melton, a senior; and Clarence Williams, a senior. Also interviewed were Vivian B. Romans, a librarian a the George Washington Carver Library; Aaron Shirley, a pediatrician and civil rights activist; Constance Slaughter, a staff attorney for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights on the Law in Jackson; and Alfred H. Rhodes, Jr., who received an M.A. in Administration from Jackson State that May (Rhodes also served as State Secretary of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, as representative to the Young Democrats; and as a social worker for the National Federation of Settlements) and Lee Martin, a student at Hinds Junior College. The collection also includes clippings from southern newspapers about the Jackson State confrontation a research proposal, and a copy of Donald Cleveland’s "Cornell in Crisis (Essence, June 1970).

Dates

1970.

Creator

Cornell University. Program in Oral History (Organization)
Adams, Ferries C., II. (Person)
Kelley, Roosevelt. (Person)
McLaurin, Louis. (Person)
Romans, Vivian C. (Person)
Shirley, Aaron. (Person)
Young, Gene C. (Person)
Slaughter, Constance Iona. (Person)
Buxton, Warner. (Person)
Melton, Frank. (Person)
Rhodes, Alfred H., Jr. (Person)
Martin, Lee. (Person)
Williams, Clarence. (Person)
Donald, Cleveland, Jr. (Date of work: 1946-.) (Person)

Language of Material

In English.

Restrictions on Access

Access to tapes and transcripts for Ferries C. Adams, Jr., Roosevelt Kelley, Frank Melton, Alfred H. Rhodes, Jr., Lee Martin , and Clarence Williams restricted to their written permission during their lifetime.

Terms Governing Use and Reproduction

Constance Slaughter tape and transcript require written permission to copy during her lifetime..

Biographical / Historical

In the spring of 1970, students on many college campuses were protesting the war in Vietnam, the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, racism and repression of women and minorities. At Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi, students were also protesting the issue of intimidation and harrassment by white motorists driving on Lynch Street, the major thoroughfare that divided the campus. On May 14-15, there also were demonstrations relating to the May 4 tragedy at Kent State University where four students had been killed by Ohio National Guard soldiers. In Jackson, according to reports, the riot began about 9:30 on May 14 when rumors spread that Fayette, Mississippi mayor Charles Evers (brother of Medgar Evers) and his wife had been shot. Later that night, several white motorists complained to the police that a group of blacks (likely not students) threw rocks at them on Lynch Street. Students also set several fires and overturned a dump truck that had been left on a campus construction site. Firefighters called to campus requested police back-up. Jackson city police, Mississippi State Police and Mississippi National Guardsmen came to the campus. After the firemen extinguished the blaze, the police and state troopers marched towards a women's residence. Students congregated on the street, chanting and tossing bricks at the officers. Someone in the crowd threw a bottle; an officer fell, struck by thrown debris. Accounts differ as to the next sequence of events, but at approximately 12:05, May 15, the police began to shoot and continued firing fro more than 30 seconds. Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, 21, a junior at Jackson State and James Earl Green, 17, a senior at Jim Hill High School were killed, and twelve other Jackson State students were struck by gunfire, others were injured by shattered glass. FBI investigators later estimated that more than 460 rounds had struck the building.

Biographical / Historical

After the shootings, the Cornell Oral History Program recognized the opportunity to apply interview guidelines developed for use in investigating student activism at Cornell to Jackson State. Cleveland Donald, a graduate student in history and a native of Jackson, became the interviewer, interviewing eleven people between July 7 and July 14.