During the first week of May every major news organization in America focused on the 1970 Kent State University shootings, remembering that on May 4 the Ohio National Guard opened fire on students protesting the Vietnam War. A total of 67 shots were fired in 13 seconds. Four students were killed, and nine students were wounded. All of those students were white.
Only 10 days later, on May 15, two more students were killed on a college campus by the Mississippi National Guard and the local police department. It happened at Jackson State College, now Jackson State University, in Jackson, Mississippi, and the students were African-American. This incident did not receive any national media coverage. Apparently, no one remembered.
The Jackson Police Department and the Mississippi National Guard fired continuously on a group of students at Jackson State, killing two and wounding 12 others.
According to a 1970 report from the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest, police fired more than 150 rounds. An FBI investigation revealed that about 400 bullets or pieces of buckshot had been fired into Alexander Hall, a girl’s dormitory.
Was not this unpleasant incident worth remembering? Was this not worthy of a news story? Was it not reported because of the race of the victims?
The only group to have involuntarily immigrated to the United States then forcibly stripped of its culture, African Americans have yet to receive our fair share of the American dream, even in news coverage.
Do media hold some people to one standard while using a different standard for other groups? Were the Jackson State shootings less important than the Kent State shootings?
We know there is hardly any race and little gender diversity in national news outlets compared to the African-American press. Yet media have tremendous power in setting cultural guidelines and in shaping opinionated dialogue. It is essential that the white news media, along with other institutions, are challenged to be fair.
News outlets should require their reporters, news directors and editors be compelled to take courses in cultural diversity. Diversity encompasses not only racial, ethnic and religious diversity, but also diversity of socioeconomic contexts, cultural perspectives, national origins, sexual orientation, physical ability and educational backgrounds. These differences among us have historically formed the basis of fear, bigotry and violence.
How many producers, editors or decision-makers at news outlets are women, people of color, or openly gay or lesbian? In order to fairly represent different communities, news outlets should have members of those communities in decision-making positions.
The so-called major media is unscrupulous in devoting features and programs to the May 4 Kent State massacre, while ignoring the Jackson State bloodbath.
For more information on both incidents, read Lynch Street by Tim Spofford, published by Kent State University Press (October 1988). Lynch Street is not named after a lynching but rather John Ray Lynch, an emancipated slave and Mississippi’s first black congressman. Lynch Street is the site of Jackson State College. Also, watch the movie Fire in the Heartland – 40 Years Since Four Dead in Ohio.
Please listen the Bernie Hayes radio program Monday through Friday at 7 a.m. on WGNU-920 AM, watch the Bernie Hayes TV program Saturday Night at 10 p.m. and Friday Morning at 9 a.m. on KNLC-TV Ch. 24, and follow the blog at http://berniehayesunderstands.blogspot.com.
I can be reached by e-mail at: berhay@swbell.net.
Hotep!