Timeline
A group of around a hundred African-American students had gathered on Lynch Street (which at the time bisected the campus) on the evening of Thursday, May 14 to protest the United States invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. By around 9:30 p.m. the students had started fires, thrown rocks at white motorists and overturned vehicles, including a large truck. Firefighters dispatched to the scene quickly requested police support.
The police responded in force. At least 75 Jackson police units from the city of Jackson and the Mississippi Highway Patrol attempted to control the crowd while the firemen extinguished the fires. After the firefighters had left the scene, shortly before midnight, the police moved to disperse the crowd then gathered in front of Alexander Hall, a women's dormitory.
Advancing to within 50 to 100 feet (15 to 30 m) of the crowd, at roughly 12:05 a.m., officers opened fire on the dormitory. The exact cause of the shooting and the moments leading up to it are unclear. Authorities claim they saw a sniper on one of the building's upper floors, and were being sniped in all directions. Later two city policemen and one state patrolman reported minor injuries from flying glass and an FBI search for evidence of sniper fire was negative. The students say they did not provoke the officers. The gunfire lasted for 30 seconds, and at least 140 shots were fired by a reported 40 state highway patrolmen using shotguns from 30 to 50 feet. Every window on the narrow side of the building facing Lynch Street was shattered.
The crowd scattered and a number of people were trampled or cut by falling glass. Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, 21, a junior, and James Earl Green, 17, a senior and miler at nearby Jim Hill High School, were killed; twelve others were wounded. Gibbs was killed near Alexander Hall by buckshot, while Green was killed behind the police line in front of B. F. Roberts Hall, also with a shotgun.
Read more about this topic: Jackson State Killings