1970 Jsu Shooting
Destiny Bowie Instructor C. Liegh McInnis English 105-11 September 29, 2012 Understanding the Causes of the 1970 Jackson College Shooting The 1970 Jackson College shooting occurred May 14, 1970. There were many different aspects that lead to the shooting. There was a lot of tension between the white motorist and the JSC students over Lynch Street. Another aspect that contributed to the Jackson College shooting was the development of JSC into a major institution with programs equal to that those offered at white institutions.
The last aspect was that police over reaction or poor reaction to an event that had nothing to do with JSC. If society researched and discovered the real reasons behind the JSC shooting they’ll see how much of a big incident JSC has overcome as a whole. The tensions on the way Lynch Street ran right into the heart of the University was a very large aspect that led to the shooting. With Lynch Street being the only way to get from one city in Mississippi to another it caused great risks to the JSC students.
The main people driving up and down Lynch Street were white motorist and it caused a lot of tension between them and the African American students that attended JSC due to the fact that they were at an all-time high of tension and activity in America. The African American students eventually got tired of being disrespected on their college campus by white motorist so they decided to take matters into their own hands and stood their ground for the street to be closed.
If society understood how important it is to have a closed college campus and understand the risks of having an open campus we could prevent incidents like this from occurring again. When Dr. Peoples became the president of JSC his dream was to develop JSC into a urban and metropolitan university and he made steps to make it such. Dr. Peoples allowed the students of JSC to associate themselves with other students from different schools who took part in the civil rights activity.
The board of education didn’t take this lightly, Dr. Peoples began to become a thorn in their side and that bothered them. Dr. Peoples didn’t allow the media to attend JSC meeting and this made the College Board feel as if Dr. Peoples wanted to run JSC on his own. If society understood and researched this information we’ll be able to benefit greatly because we’ll start realizing what a tight hold authorities tried to have not just on the students, but on the people who ran the school as well.
As a whole society will possibly start becoming more involved with the things that take place in colleges. The police were called to an area about a mile from Jackson College on the night of May 14, 1970 to stop a disturbance between some local African American youth and city workers. After this event, rather than return to their stations, the police along with other law enforcement marched toward JSC where nothing was happening.
This information indicates that the police was trying to get a strong hold on the students who attended JSC and wanted to let them know they couldn’t be protected anywhere. If society learned what really happened before and during the Jackson State shooting, more people will try to do better and treat each other with more respect. The main reason people are getting killed is due to the fact we have no respect for one another. If more people treated one another would respect we possibly wouldn’t have so much violence as it is.
Everybody is just trying to get the respect they “deserve” and their starting to feel as if violence and making a name for themselves is the only way to get respect. The Jackson College shooting must be studied as a major historical occurrence. Additionally, society could benefit greatly if more people learned more about what happened that night. More people will began to appreciate what today’s generation is not forced to endure by understanding what their ancestors were forced to endure for the current generation to be able to do what they are doing now.
The appreciation and understanding of what put ancestors went through so we could fulfill our dreams and further our education would make our generation want to do better. It’ll make this generation want to further their education because we’ll start appreciating what they did and what they went through for us they didn’t do it for themselves they did it for the generations after them to be able to live freely.
