Jackson State’s Class of 1970 Finally Gets to Graduate | Inside Higher Ed

The killing of two Jackson State University students in May 1970, and the wounding of 12, still haunts those who lived through it. Their graduation was called off. But on Saturday, 400 of the students who would have graduated got to march across the stage at the university and receive diplomas, The New York Times reported. Mayor of Jackson, Miss., Chokwe Antar Lumumba said during the ceremony that it was long overdue for the city to accept responsibility for the bloodshed. “As James Baldwin once wrote, ‘When we cannot tell the truth about our past, we become trapped in it,’” Lumumba said. “I believe as a city we must publicly atone for the sins of our past and proclaim a new identity of dignity, equity and justice.”