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LSU Manship School News Service

LSU Manship School News Service

In an early 1970s photo, Milton Scott poses at his parents' home in Baton Rouge, where he was born and reared.

50 years after fatal shooting: Milton Scott’s family, FBI agents talk about the emotional toll

By: - July 24, 2023

Beverly Shabazz did not have a job and was seven months pregnant with her second child when her husband, Milton X Scott, was shot and killed outside their home in 1973 by FBI agents attempting to arrest him. “I was thinking I have these two kids to raise,” she said. “I don’t have any help […]

Separated by a door and perspectives, a routine arrest turned deadly in 1973

By: - July 17, 2023

BATON ROUGE—On a hot, quiet morning in July 1973, 21-year-old Milton Scott heard a loud knock at his door. Scott was lying in bed with his pregnant wife, Beverly, and their 2-year-old daughter, Andrea. He felt uneasy about a bloody nightmare he’d had that night. “I had to do everything I could do to calm […]

Leonard Brown and Denver Smith

Gov. Edwards issues state apology for fatal 1972 shootings at Southern University

By: - November 16, 2022

By Drew Hawkins and Claire Sullivan Gov. John Bel Edwards apologized Wednesday on behalf of the state to former Southern University protest leaders and the families of two Southern students who were killed by an unidentified sheriff’s deputy 50 years ago. “To the extent that the state of Louisiana can try to make this right, […]

Paintings of Leonard Brown and Denver Smith hang in the Smith-Brown Memorial Union at Southern University with the words “Lest We Forget.”

Pain, lessons remain decades after Southern shooting

By: - November 14, 2022

By Claire Sullivan, Brittany Dunn, Shelly Kleinpeter and Allison Allsop Last of a four-part series (Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) Shunda Wallace was 3 months old when her father, Leonard Brown, and another student, Denver Smith, were shot dead by a sheriff’s deputy on Southern University’s campus in November 1972. Fifty years later, […]

As tear gas filled the area in front of the Southern administration building, many sheriff's deputies fell back while others held positions roughly in front of a palm tree.

After 1972 Southern shootings, deputies deny knowing who fired fatal shots

By: - November 6, 2022

Third story in a four-part series By Drew Hawkins, Adrian Dubose, Allison Allsop and Alex Tirado At 12:35 p.m. on Nov. 17, 1972, the phone rang in the office of acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray in Washington. It was Deputy Attorney General Ralph Erickson, calling to order an investigation into the shooting of the […]

What led to the 1972 shooting death of two Southern University students during a protest

By: - November 2, 2022

Second in a four-part series By Drew Hawkins, Adrian Dubose, Maria Pham and Annalise Vidrine The knock on the door came at 4 a.m. Rickey Hill and Herget Harris, two protest leaders at Southern University, peeked out and saw sheriff’s deputies outside their apartment. Hill had been arrested the week before for disrupting the campus. […]

50 years later, justice still absent for two deaths during Southern campus protest

By: - October 30, 2022

By Claire Sullivan, Brittany Dunn, Shelly Kleinpeter and Annalise Vidrine Josephine and Denver Smith took different approaches to protests at Southern University in the fall of 1972. Josephine skipped class for meetings, while her older brother stayed away and warned her to be careful. The pair had grown up with 10 other siblings in a […]

LSU Cold Case Project

‘Frontline’ revisits Louisiana editor’s work on Ku Klux Klan murder case

By: - February 14, 2022

The work of a longtime Louisiana newspaper editor will be included in a PBS "Frontline" documentary Tuesday on the 1967 Ku Klux Klan murder of Wharlest Jackson, a 37-year-old Black man in Natchez, Mississippi.

Teens testify on Louisiana redistricting

Stern testimony from teens over redistricting triggers Louisiana lawmakers

By: - February 10, 2022

Sparks flew between lawmakers and high school students at a House redistricting committee hearing Wednesday.