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<h2 class="post-title"><font size="-2"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://blog.freedomarchives.org/the-story-of-the-tsu-five/">http://blog.freedomarchives.org/the-story-of-the-tsu-five/</a></font><br>
</h2>
<h2 class="post-title"><a
href="http://blog.freedomarchives.org/the-story-of-the-tsu-five/">The
Story of the TSU Five</a><span class="sep"></span></h2>
<h2 class="post-title"><span class="sep"></span><font size="-2"><a
href="http://blog.freedomarchives.org/the-story-of-the-tsu-five/"
title="7:29 pm" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date"
datetime="2016-11-28T19:29:16+00:00" pubdate="">November
28, 2016</time></a></font><span class="by-author"> </span><a
href="http://blog.freedomarchives.org/the-story-of-the-tsu-five/#respond"><span
class="leave-reply"></span></a> </h2>
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<p>Hello,</p>
<p>This multi part blog series highlights significant but
relatively unknown moments of resistance to racist police violence
as depicted in the pages of <em>The Movement</em>. When looking
at the stories in <em>The Movement</em>, the continuity between
historical events and the emerging movement against police
violence comes into sharp focus. Police treatment of Black and
Brown people has not changed much, if at all. The murders that are
captured on smartphones today and streamed online are not a new
phenomenon. They were happening in the 1960’s too, and they were
met with rage and resistance then, just like they are today.</p>
<p>In early 1967, Texas Southern University (a historically black
college) students and Black residents of Houston began organizing
on and off campus. In March, students demonstrated against
conditions on campus, which were significantly worse than those at
the white college down the street. Their grievances included bad
food, early curfews, and a lack of courses in fields like
engineering and technology. The administration responded by
throwing TSU’s Friends of SNCC chapter off campus, firing the
group’s faculty advisor, and working with the local police to have
a warrant issued for the arrest of a student organizer.</p>
<p>The administration’s crackdown only further angered students, and
their protest expanded. They came forward with new demands,
including an increase in faculty salaries, the disarmament of
campus police, the removal of the campus dean from the local draft
board, a student court for disciplinary cases, and the dropping of
all charges against student activists.</p>
<p>In May students joined together with local Black residents to
protest poor living conditions and city government neglect. A
demonstration in the Sunnyside neighborhood was called after a
child drowned in an unfenced city garbage dump. Another was held
in Northeast Houston to protest the beating of Black high school
students with ax handles and chains. The demonstrations gave city
officials an excuse to retaliate against TSU students. On the
night of May 16, police officers blockaded the campus. Students
gathered and some threw rocks at the police. Soon, hundreds of
armed police officers swarmed the campus. They arrested 489
students and opened fire on a dormitory. They shot between 3 and
5,000 rounds of AR-15 shells into the dorm. In the course of the
raid, a student and a number of officers were shot, and one
officer was killed, almost certainly from ricocheting bullets.</p>
<p>Although the ballistics and coroners reports confirmed that the
officer was killed by a .30 bullet (the caliber used by Houston
PD), the city used the death as a pretext for crushing the Black
movement. They arrested five students known for their political
activism–one of whom was actually in jail the night of the
raid–and charged them with the murder of the police officer. The
students became known as the TSU 5 among activists, who organized
support for their defense. Despite the lack of evidence, it took
over three years for them to be cleared of charges. In November
1970 a Houston judge finally dropped the charges and the state
admitted that the officer probably died from a ricocheting police
bullet.</p>
<p>The story of the TSU 5 is told in the pages of <em>The Movement</em>,
check out the newspaper here: <a
href="http://blog.freedomarchives.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/tsu-5-article.pdf"
target="_blank">Page1</a> <a
href="http://blog.freedomarchives.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MDS01277.pdf"
target="_blank">Page2</a></p>
<h5><font size="+1">Please help us continue our educational work at
the Freedom Archives. You can make an online donation <a
href="https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=33005"
target="_blank">here</a>. Your support really makes a
difference!</font></h5>
<p> </p>
<p>-Laura</p>
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