LCV Winter 2013-14 - (Page 27)
JOHN G. CADE LIBRARY, ARCHIVES AND MANUSCRIPTS, SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY AND A&M COLLEGE
these cases." He was right. Edwards' obstinacy assured
that a judgment wouldn't be made anytime soon, and
though Southern would never forget the incident, law
enforcement quickly did. Neither Amiss, who had become
sheriff less than four months earlier, nor his deputies were
ever prosecuted for the shooting deaths of the two
students. For professional misconduct. For dereliction of
duty. For anything.
The violence that occurred at Grambling and Southern
wasn't rare at southern black campuses. Not only did
black colleges experience more campus protests per capita
than did their white counterparts during the Black Power
era, but more off-campus authorities were used to police
the resulting problems. Of course, southern black colleges
already were situated in a tense racial climate, and the
scores of white police who appeared on campus
demonstrated white southern mistrust of black students
and increased the potential for violence. The dynamic of
white officers policing black protests not specifically
targeted at integration and similar civil rights goals also
had a significant history prior to the Grambling and
Southern protests of 1972. From the inception of Black
Power to the fall semester of 1972, this combination of
black students and white police proved dramatically
combustible, at Alcorn A&M, Texas Southern, South
Carolina State and Jackson State universities.
The legacy of violence at Grambling and Southern
resonated in the years to come. In the spring following the
1972 protests, E.C. Harrison, Southern's vice president for
academic affairs, published an enlightened study of
student unrest at black colleges, which many of the activist
students would have found either gratifying or
disingenuous, depending on the level of residual
frustration they experienced after the events. To
be sure, Harrison's conclusions didn't jibe
with Netterville's (or, for that matter, Jones's)
actions. He argued for "modernization of
organizational structure and
administrative practices and policies,"
Members of the State Police Tactical Unit and East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff's deputies
were dispatched to Southern University to remove students who occupied the
Administration Building in November 1972.
and defended "an organization in which the faculty and
student are involved in the formulation of policies and
decisions." Administration officials needed to
demonstrate patience. In addition, the community
surrounding the university needed to "make a reexamination of their institutions, social customs and laws
for their imperfections and inconsistencies." But in the
years following the protests, Harrison's encomium to
cooperation didn't solve the problems. And the federal
investigation into the deaths of Denver Smith and
Leonard Brown ended without indictments.
In the vast panoply of sociological and historical
treatments of the nature and evolution of student protest,
it is sometimes easy to forget what they died for-easy to
forget the place of the Grambling and Southern protests in
the broader trajectory of student activism at black
southern universities. The national student movement
and the strain of living in the racist South certainly had
their place in student frustration, but the protests were
directed at administrations deemed unresponsive to
student needs. The Black Power movement, the broader
culture of student protest and the inherent mistrust of
white authorities gave impetus to the longstanding
resentment against the administrators of Louisiana's two
principal black public institutions to create a crucible of
discontent during the fall 1972 semester. The broken
buildings, the injured and arrested, and the legacy of two
dead students would cast a pall over the universities that
would linger for years.
-----------------------------
Thomas Aiello, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of history at
Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia. His books
include Bayou Classic: The Grambling-Southern Football
Rivalry, Paul Morphy: Pride and Sorrow of Chess (coauthored with David Lawson) and The Kings of Casino
Park: Black Baseball and the Lost Season of 1932.
Winter 2013-14 * LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 27
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