On this day in 1972

November 16, 1972

A law enforcement officer shot and killed two students at Southern University in Baton Rouge after weeks of protests over inadequate services.

As the students marched toward university president Leon Netterville’s office, Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards sent in dozens of police officers to break up the demonstrations. A still unidentified officer shot and killed two 20-year-old students, Leonard Brown and Denver Smith, who were not among the protesters. No one was ever prosecuted in their murders.

They have since been awarded posthumous degrees, and the university’s Smith-Brown Memorial Union bears their names. Stanley Nelson’s documentary, “Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities,” included a 10-minute segment on the killings.

“They were exercising their constitutional rights. And they’re being killed for it,” said former student Michael Cato. “No one sent their child to school to die.”

In 2022, Louisiana State University Cold Case Project reporters, using nearly 2,700 pages of previously undisclosed documents, recreated the day of the shootings and showed how the FBI narrowed its search to several sheriff’s deputies but could not prove which one fired the fatal shot. The four-part series prompted Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards to apologize to the victims’ families on behalf of the state.

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