Classmates set $100,000 fundraising goal during yearlong anniversary celebration
Fifty years after graduating, members of the class of 1965 donned doctoral caps and gowns to receive diplomas during the Golden Diploma Ceremony during May’s commencement exercises. The anniversary celebration and accompanying fundraising drive will culminate with homecoming activities in October. Class members hope to raise $100,000 and surpass the class of 1964’s challenge to meet its $68,000. Money raised by Golden Tigers helps ensure baby Tigers will have opportunities to create their own memories at Jackson State University.
A defining moment: 1964 demonstration
In 1964, then 20-year-old Mamie Ballard became the unintentional catalyst of a student demonstration and protest on John Roy Lynch Street. A white motorist hit Crockett as she was crossing Lynch Street going from the cafeteria to her dormitory room. In those days before the pedestrian plaza, Lynch Street was a busy thoroughfare connecting downtown to west Jackson.
Students resided on the north side of the street but ate meals, attended classes and used the library on the south side. During rush-hour traffic in mornings and afternoons, students literally took their lives into their own hands to get to and from their dorms.
Ballard survived with a broken leg, bruises and lacerations, but students — who long had been pushing for a traffic light — began demonstrating when police let the driver go.
Five years later, following another demonstration and the shooting of 14 students and the death of two young men, James Earl Green and Phillip Gibbs, the plaza was constructed and traffic was rerouted around the campus onto Terry Road (now University Boulevard).
These days Crockett is a retired Jackson Public Schools administrator but came back to her “dear old college home” for the Golden Anniversary 50th Reunion of the Class of 1965.