On May 15, 1970, Jackson police and Mississippi Highway Patrol officers opened intense gunfire at Jackson State College after gathering to suppress student unrest amid high tensions over racial discrimination, police intimidation, white motorists harassing students on Lynch Street, the war’s expansion from Vietnam into Cambodia, the military draft lottery, and the recent killing of four student demonstrators at Kent State University. The night before, after a rumor spread that Charles Evers and his wife had been killed, students set fires and overturned a truck, and firefighters called for police help. With Lynch Street blocked, about seventy-five armed policemen and state highway patrolmen assembled, Mississippi National Guard troops stood at the west end of campus, and about one hundred students gathered in front of Alexander Hall, shouting and throwing rocks. Around midnight, after a loud noise startled the crowd and a policeman fell, police and highway patrolmen fired toward the students for more than thirty seconds. Philip Lafayette Gibbs, a twenty-one-year-old junior pre-law major, was killed near Alexander Hall, and James Earl Green, a seventeen-year-old Jim Hill High senior, was killed in front of B.F. Roberts Dining Hall; many students were injured, at least twelve by gunfire, and Alexander Hall was riddled by 460 rounds. There were no arrests, and soon afterward the city closed Lynch Street to through traffic and added the initials J.R. to its name in honor of John Roy Lynch, Mississippi’s first black congressman.
