It’s amazing to see all the protesters on college campuses across the country making their points about the U.S. involvement in the Middle East, support for Israel, the Palestinians and everything else.
Sometimes they have taken over campus buildings and other parts of campuses that have caused administrators to seek the aid of law enforcement. While some of the student protesters and others have been wrestled to the ground, there has been great control by law enforcement.
The armed officers are doing the right thing by not drawing their weapons. Even in times when protesters overran police security lines, there was no violence. That’s a good thing.
Some protesters have set up tent encampments on some campuses and have, in some instances, kept law enforcement at bay at those locations.
Again, they have their right to argue, even vehemently with the government about what is happening to them without fear of physical reprisal.
I guess that restraint is what college students Denver Smith and Leonard Brown were hoping for when they were gunned down by law enforcement on the Baton Rouge campus of Southern University in 1972. Sheriff’s deputies, police and even the National Guard were sent to the Scott’s Bluff campus, overlooking the Mississippi River. It only took hours for the deaths to occur.
Earlier, two students at Jackson State University in Mississippi were probably hoping for the same restraint their counterparts are getting today because two of them were shot and killed by law enforcement.
And, being shot to death by law enforcement was probably the last thing on the minds of three HBCU students in Orangeburg, South Carolina, when they were protesting inequality around them. That 1968 incident, dubbed the “Orangeburg Massacre,” included dozens more wounded. You probably never heard of it.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, protests on Black college campuses and towns were handled with a lot less restraint than now. In each case mentioned earlier, law enforcement said they thought they heard gunfire, only there was never any proof that it happened, and no weapons were ever found on protesters.
After the two students were killed on Southern’s campus, then-Gov. Edwin Edwards, who ordered the National Guard there, gave a statement essentially saying the students, who were unarmed and not threatening anyone physically, got what they should have expected because of actions by students who came into a campus building.
At Jackson State, police shot into dorm rooms and killed students, claiming they thought they were being shot at. There was no proof of their claims. No one was charged with any crimes.
In the 1968 shooting at South Carolina State University and Clafin University, both historically Black colleges in Orangeburg, students were protesting segregation policies there and the beating of several protesters, including women, by law enforcement.
“Had this been a protest at Clemson or University of South Carolina, I have no doubt that the governor wouldn’t order in the National Guard,” Reid Toth, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina Upstate, said at the time.
During the confrontation, police said they thought they heard gunfire and started shooting at college students. According to news accounts, many of the wounds were in their backs and feet, indicating they were running away.
After the dust had cleared, there was no proof of gunfire nor of protesters having weapons. No one was ever held accountable.
As much pain as those instances have caused, the hope today is that the current protesters will be treated better. So far, they have. Maybe social media and the fact that cellphone cameras are trained on everything that is done is keeping the piece.
Some might say something else, that some of today’s protesters don’t look like those at HBCUs. That may be a sad reality, but the hope is these rallies will continue to be peaceful and that bullets are not needed.
As these protests continue, I genuinely hope folks remember those young Black college students should have been treated with the same dignity and restraint being shown today. They deserve at least that.