The last time Ada Smith spoke with her brother Denver Smith, he was in the library getting the bugs out of his computer program.
“He was a quiet natured person,” said Smith. “He was never the type to start any commotion. That was more of my style.”
November 16 will mark the fateful day that Denver Smith and Leonard Brown were brutally murdered in front of the Old Administration Building during a student protest.
“Denver and Leonard didn’t give their life, it was taken away from them,” said Smith.
The Smith and Brown family gathered for a remembrance program in the John B. Cade Library on Wednesday, November 13.
Josephine Jones, Smith’s sister said she can still remember law enforcement officials throwing tear gas into the group of students.”
“We broke cigarettes in half and stuck them in our nose so that we could filter out the harmful fumes,” Jones said.
Jones, a sophomore at that time, had no idea that her brother had been killed.
“I had a feeling that my roommates knew but they didn’t tell me,” she said. “I found out from the news and I went ballistic.”
However, the family of Leonard Brown didn’t find out that he was killed until two days after the incident.
“We called everybody to find out if Doug (Brown) was alright,” said Willie Jenkins, Brown’s brother. “We called his girlfriend and we even checked the jails.”
According to Jenkins, as the Brown family traveled from Gilbert to Baton Rouge via Scenic Highway, they stopped a sheriff officer and asked him whether he knew anything about their loved one.
He led them to the morgue of Earl K. Long Hospital.
“All I saw was Doug’s feet and I knew that he was my brother,” said Jenkins.
Jenkins asked the media not to release Brown’s name for a few hours so that he could tell his mother the tragic news.
After three decades, no one has been tried or convicted for the murder.
The official report by State Attorney General William Gust determined that the shots came from a sheriff’s deputy but it couldn’t prove which deputy fired the shot.
Jenkins said his family tried to file several lawsuits but none were successful.
“We didn’t get help from Netterville (S.U. president in 1972) or Governor (Edwin) Edwards,” said Jenkins. “No lawyers would talk to us and the ones who did were ran out of town.”
Thirty years later, the legacy of Smith and Brown continues to live on.
The library archives has an extensive collection of reports and historical documentation of the event. As a monument to the students, the naming of the student union as Smith-Brown Memorial Union was approved in February 1973.
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated organized a Smith-Brown memorial fund in efforts to erect the sculptural interpretation of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in the courtyard of the union in the spring of 1980.
Although the old Administration Building was destroyed in a fire in 1991, a memorial stone was placed on campus near the spot (left of the entrance to the Southern University Museum of Arts) where the students were shot.
