“To the extent that the state of Louisiana can try to make this right, that’s what we’re going to try to do,” Edwards said at an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the shooting at the Old State Capitol building.

By BlackPressUSA

Contributing Writers Drew Hawkins and Claire Sullivan | Louisiana Weekly

(LSU Manship School News Service) — Gov. John Bel Edwards apologised on behalf of the state to former Southern University protest leaders and the families of two Southern students killed by an unidentified sheriff’s deputy 50 years ago. “To the extent that the state of Louisiana can try to make this right, that’s what we’re going to try to do,” Edwards said at a commemoration of the shooting’s 50th anniversary at the Old State Capitol building.

According to Edwards, students “bravely and peacefully gathered to protest the disparities in educational opportunities in Louisiana” on the morning of the shooting. He claimed that the nine protest leaders who were barred from Southern’s campus after the protests had been “unjustly punished.” He stated that he wanted to “make amends to those who were victims of state injustices,” including the families of Leonard Brown and Denver Smith, two 20-year-old students who were shot and killed.

He expressed a desire to “recognise the lost potential of the lives” of the two young men. The governor then signed a proclamation formally apologising. At the event, Southern President Dennis Shields also spoke. “Today is an important and sad day in the history of Southern University and A&M College,” he said. “We sincerely welcome you back,” Shields said, referring to Southern’s recent decision to lift bans on protest leaders returning to campus.

Some protest leaders also met privately with Shields prior to the commemoration event. Some of the former protest leaders echoed concerns raised 50 years ago, such as current funding disparities between Southern and other public universities such as LSU and Louisiana Tech, and called for the establishment of a board of representatives at Southern comprised of student members to hear and address student concerns. They also demanded that the Smith and Brown families be compensated for their losses.

Shields, according to some of them, listened to their concerns and appeared sincere in his commitment to work with them to find a solution. “This isn’t the end of the conversation,” Shields stated. “It’s the start of a conversation that will last beyond today.” Denver Smith was a computer science junior from New Roads, and Leonard Douglas Brown was an agricultural education major from Gilbert, Louisiana. Angela Allen-Bell, a Southern Law Center professor, and the Louisiana State NAACP Conference organized the commemoration.

The LSU Cold Case Project recently published a four-part series in this newspaper that examined the events leading up to the shooting, the day of the shooting, and the aftermath. Referring to the stories, Gov. Edwards said in an interview that much of “what I knew about this came from you all. It wasn’t something I was very familiar with. I knew there had been unrest, and I knew there were some problems on the Southern University campus. I had no idea what the names were. I had no idea about the specifics.” “It’s the best we can do,” he said of his apology. “It may not be much, but it’s the best we can do.”

After several weeks of protests in 1972, student leaders at Southern saw inadequate funding, dilapidated buildings, and little response to their concerns. Smith and Brown had not been involved in the protest movement and were part of a large crowd outside the school’s administration office. Protest leaders demanded that the university’s then-president, George Leon Netterville, assist in the release of four student protest leaders who had been arrested for disrupting classes.

Officers from the Louisiana State Police and the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office responded and ordered the students to leave, using tear gas when they refused. Smith and Brown’s bodies were found on the sidewalk after the gas clouds cleared. There was no evidence that any of the students were armed, according to a commission appointed by then-Gov. Edwin Edwards. The fatal shot also came from an area where sheriff’s deputies were stationed, according to the report.

A state grand jury investigated the shooting in 1973 for four months but failed to identify the shooter. A federal grand jury also couldn’t figure out who fired the shot. Students from LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication and the Southern Law Center conducted dozens of interviews while studying nearly 2,700 pages of FBI documents.

They discovered that Southern officials had frantically requested law enforcement assistance, and that the majority of sheriff’s deputies lacked crowd control training. The series also revealed how the FBI quickly narrowed its search for the shooter to just a few deputies based on the angle from which the fatal shot was fired.

However, because of the tear gas and the fact that the majority of the deputies were wearing helmets with visors that obscured their faces, no eyewitness could identify the shooter. The investigation was also hampered when key deputies refused to take polygraph tests about what they knew.

This article originally appeared in The Louisiana Weekly.