Jackson Free Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi Historical Society is giving its annual award for the best state history book to an author who wrote about the shooting deaths of two Black man 50 years ago at Jackson State University.

Nancy Bristow will receive the award for her book “Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College," about the deaths of James Earl Green and Phillip Gibbs.

Police opened fire on students in May 1970 on the campus, which had been the scene of civil rights and Vietnam War protests. Green and Gibbs were killed in the gunfire.

“Placing the Jackson State University shootings in a proper national and local context, Bristow is able to highlight the role of local politics and law enforcement in the perpetration of the murders," Chuck Westmoreland, Delta State University history professor and chair of the book prize committee, said in a statement.

Bristow is a history professor and chair of the History Department at the University of Puget Sound in Washington. She will accept the award, which carries a $700 cash prize, and deliver a lecture during the 2021 Mississippi Historical Society Annual Meeting, which will be held virtually March 5.

"This project has meant a great deal to me, because it is a story that is not mine, but which I believe so deeply others need to know,” Bristow said.