Reverberations of the gunfire that killed four students at Kent State still hung in the air last week. In quick succession in two Southern cities, eight blacks were killed by policemen. Two were students in Jackson, Miss. Six died in the streets of Augusta, Ga., amid an orgy of burning and looting. Blacks were quick to note that these deaths failed to draw the headlines or rouse the nation's conscience on the scale of the Kent State killings, and most were bitter. One explanation is that there is a limit to a nation's ability to sustain outrage. And in Augusta, the issue was clouded: looters need not be shot, but they are not innocent. But it must also be admitted that somehow violence against blacks, especially in the South, has a familiar ring. There is a reproachful measure of justice in the anger felt by black Americans, who still find themselves even second-class martyrs, subsidiary victims. The following stories describe the events in the two cities.
Jackson: Kent State II
It was just a little over a week after Kent State and the same volatile ingredients were once again present. A tense college campus. A mob of angry, jeering students provoking a line of nervous armed peace officers. Rumors of snipers. The crash of rocks and bottles. And suddenly some signal triggering an atavistic convulsion brought on an unexpected eruption of gunfire. Finally, the youthful bodies, bleeding on the smooth campus lawn. The scene this time was Mississippi's predominantly black Jackson State College.
Generally Restive. Jackson State, a coed school of 4,557 about a mile from the state capital, had been generally restive over fears that black graduates would soon be at the mercy of white draft boards. Rock-throwing violence had flared Wednesday night, and 500 National Guardsmen were standing by off the campus.
The following evening a fire truck responding to a trash fire on the campus was stoned. One unsubstantiated report said that a sniper had shot at the truck. Around midnight, police received complaints that a crowd of blacks at the campus was stoning passing cars. When 75 city and state highway policemen marched up in front of the modern glass-and-brick Alexander Hall, a women's dormitory, they were met by a crowd of 100 jeering men throwing rocks and bottles.
Police said that someone shot at them from the dormitory. Jack Hobbs, a television newsman for WJTV, said: "I heard what sounded like a shot. In a split second something zinged past my ear and ricocheted off a fence behind me." But Hobbs, facing the dormitory, nevertheless said he could not be sure that the shot came from there. Students deny that anyone among them fired, contending that police opened fire without warning.