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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