Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College

by Nancy K. Bristow

Minutes after midnight on May 15, 1970, white members of the Jackson city police and the Mississippi Highway Patrol opened fire on young people in front of a women's dormitory at Jackson State College, a historically black college in Jackson, Mississippi, discharging "buckshot, rifle slugs, a submachine gun, carbines with military ammunition, and two 30.06 rifles loaded with armor-piercing bullets." Twenty-eight seconds later two young people lay dead, another 12 injured. Taking place just ten days after the killings at Kent State, the attack at Jackson State never garnered the same level of national attention and was chronically misunderstood as similar in cause. This book reclaims this story and situates it in the broader history of the struggle for African American freedom in the civil rights and black power eras.

The book explores the essential role of white supremacy in causing the shootings and shaping the aftermath. By 1970, even historically conservative campuses such as Jackson State, where an all-white Board of Trustees of Institutions of Higher Learning had long exercised its power to control student behavior, were beginning to feel the impact of the movements for African American freedom. Though most of the students at Jackson State remained focused not on activism but their educations, racial consciousness was taking hold. It was this campus police attacked. Acting on racial animus and with impunity, the shootings reflected both traditional patterns of repression and the new logic and rhetoric of "law and order," with its thinly veiled racial coding.

In the aftermath, the victims and their survivors struggled unsuccessfully to find justice. Despite multiple investigative commissions, two grand juries and a civil suit brought by students and the families of the dead, the law and order narrative proved too powerful. No officers were charged, no restitution was paid, and no apologies were offered. The shootings were soon largely forgotten except among the local African American community, the injured victimized once more by historical amnesia born of the unwillingness to acknowledge the essential role of race in causing the violence.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

320 pages, Hardcover

Published May 1, 2020

Reviews

[Micayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall, a very detailed analysis of the Jackson State shootings. I learned a lot!

I do wish Bristow had dug in more to race relations in Jackson at the time of the shootings. She does a good job of situating the shootings into statewide and national race relations, but misses some key moments of context in the city in 1970. I wonder how much the unexpected integration of schools in the middle of the 1969-1970 school year affected race relations in the city and these May 1970 shootings… In my mind, this had to be top of mind for most in the city or, at the very least, further exacerbated strains in race relations. (Caveat: I read this over several months, so I could be forgetting her mention of school integration.)

[Alexandra DuSablon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a phenomenal and comprehensive history of the Jackson State shooting in 1970 that killed 2 students and wounded 12 others. It is still incredibly relevant today. Bristow also does an excellent job covering the aftermath of the shooting and how the law and order narrative painted the victims as the 'aggressors', how white America erased the racial aspects of this tragedy, and how pervasive the roots of white supremacy are in America's police forces. What surprised me most about this book is how much I learned about Nixon and the Republican's 'law and order' narrative and how it has been weaponized since the 1970's to give more power to law enforcement and to cover up police violence.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well worth a read. A sad comment on the state of things in this country that this is only the second book written about these Murders.
Like most people who know about the Jackson State killings, I lumped it in with Kent State, which happened two weeks earlier. It was a valuable lesson to learn the details of what happened at JSC; quite different from the Kent State killings.
One slight issue I take with the author is her conclusion that this tragedy might not have occurred if the Mississippi national guard had been in charge of the situation, as they were authorized to do. Everyone acknowledges that the Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol - a bunch of racist crackers who should not have been allowed anywhere near the campus - bears full responsibility for these murders. But the national guard, even if better trained for these situations, did not have that great a track record on college campuses at that time (witness the Ohio nat'l guard). I think it's a big leap of faith the three guard would have acted in the students' interest.
A minor complaint, though. Anyone who lived through that time should read this book.

[Sonja · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give this book a 5. This book was reviewed in the Seattle Times or its Pacific Northwest magazine and I ordered a copy right away as I have been very supportive of Black Lives Matter and very upset at how people of color are treated in the United States. The beginning was more like a text book and somewhat dry but, as it got more into the details of the Jackson State College shooting, it was very interesting and extremely well documented. At the time of this occurrence, I was living in Alaska, had just delivered my third child and do not remember much of anything about this event although I was aware of the Kent University shooting during the Vietnam War. Living that far up North, we sometimes felt so far away of what was going on in the Lower 48.

I've been reading a lot of books lately by African American writers, either memoirs, fiction, and/or history. It breaks my heart to learn about the ways our Black brothers and sisters (and other races of color) have been treated over the past 400 years in America. To be honest, I'm surprised that they have put up with the actions of white supremacists for this long. And we white people should be ashamed of all the rotten things we have done to these people for no good reason. From the whole spectrum of Black to white, no color is superior or inferior to any of the other colors. We're all just people, hopefully people who are trying their best to be good to others but who obviously have not achieved that goal.

The last paragraph of this book says it all in a nutshell. Until we all fight for racial justice for everyone and accomplish that, we are not ever going to be free of what we are going through right now and terrible things will still happen. It's up to all of us to make the decision to accept all people as equal.