This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.
Tamika Johnson nodded her head up and down in acknowledgment as her husband, Larry, questioned whether the ambulance she saw on her cellphone could be carrying their teenage son. The couple was rushing toward Tuskegee, Alabama, the headlights of their Silverado cutting through the night’s darkness as they headed northeast on U.S. Route 29. Larry pressed the gas harder. A 60-mile drive separated them from their son, La’Tavion.
With Larry focused on the road, Tamika dimmed her phone’s screen and zoomed in on a frightening photo that had been sent to her. Amid the chaos she saw playing out on the campus of Tuskegee University that night, it captured what she had been dreading most — their son lying still on the ground in a parking lot.
“When I zoomed in and saw it was my baby, I just already knew,” she said in recounting the harrowing moment. “But I didn’t tell my husband that because I didn’t want him to wreck.”
A cousin met the Johnsons at a McDonald’s about 35 miles from their home in Troy, Alabama, and drove them the rest of the way to Tuskegee University, which was in the midst of homecoming weekend. It was the couple’s first time stepping foot on the campus when they arrived, and as they crossed onto the grounds, Tamika searched for landmarks she had seen on her phone.
They followed blue and red lights flashing in the darkness until they reached an area cordoned off by yellow caution tape. Only hours earlier, music blasted from nearby car radios and cellphones lit up the area as hundreds danced. Now, bullet casings littered the ground. They noticed a large piece of plastic covering something nearby, but they were not sure what or who was underneath. After announcing they were looking for their son, they were pulled away and peppered with questions.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Larry told the people who approached them. Instead, he ran toward the roped-off area, ducked under the caution tape, and began searching for his son. Not far away, from beneath a large piece of plastic lying at his feet, a pair of black-and-white Nike Air Jordans stuck out.
“It’s him, Tamika, it’s Shugga!” The sneakers Tamika had bought her son a few weeks earlier still bore a few smudges. “He’s gone!” Larry bellowed.
His son’s body lay amid the disheartening aftermath of what turned out to be the highest casualty shooting to occur at an HBCU homecoming. La’Tavion was the sole fatality among 13 people shot and four others injured at Tuskegee on Nov. 10, 2024 — the 100th anniversary of the university’s first-ever homecoming.
Homecoming events on these campuses have come to embody communal hope, freedom, and safety, too. In recent years, though, HBCUs have been disproportionately affected by a tragic facet of the American education system — fatal shootings on or near campuses that reach all the way from kindergarten classrooms to graduate seminars.
The shooting that claimed La’Tavion’s life was one of the 280 incidents that have occurred — and 370 lives lost — across college campuses between 2000 and 2025, according to the Violence Project. Even though only 2% of American colleges are HBCUs, 81% of homecoming shootings take place on or near these campuses, according to a recent report by Everytown for Gun Safety. (Everytown’s nonpolitical arm provides funding to The Trace; read our editorial independence policy here.)
The rise in shootings — and the corresponding attention they bring — are fraught for the students, faculty, and graduates of these historic institutions.
“For a lot of people who come to college, it’s a gateway or an escape from what’s going on at home; it’s supposed to be us moving on to another path in life,” Jaevon Sutton-Rayfield, a senior at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, told The Trace. “When you’re hearing about these atrocities and stuff happening around us, it’s going to lower morale and hurt the reputation, even though we don’t have anything to do with it.”
After giving birth in a Montgomery, Alabama, hospital on August 18, 2006, Tamika Johnson held her almond-skinned, bright-eyed baby boy for the first time. She and Larry signed the birth certificate, listing his name in black letters: La’Tavion Johnson.
La’Tavion was only about 8 months old on April 16, 2007, when a 23-year-old Virginia Tech student fatally shot two of his fellow students on campus around 7:15 a.m. Over the next three hours, 30 more people would be killed before the gunman killed himself. It remains the deadliest shooting to occur on a U.S. college campus.
Before the Virginia Tech massacre, there had been a handful of mass shootings at U.S. colleges, but attacks on such a scale still seemed unfathomable. By the time La’Tavion learned to crawl, America was entering a new era. And as he reached adolescence, thousands of school shootings had taken place nationwide. Following the shooting at Virginia Tech, the use of assault style rifles in school attacks became commonplace. Shooting after shooting left campuses and surrounding communities forever changed.
As these tragedies garnered national attention from news programs and scholars, HBCU communities grappled with the uptick in shootings largely out of the spotlight. That has continued to this day. Last year, several campuses experienced shootings during homecoming: South Carolina State University, Alcorn State University, Jackson State University, and Lincoln University of Pennsylvania.
In conversations with The Trace, HBCU students and alumni have opened up about how the violence affects them and explored possible solutions.
“When it comes to school shootings, because it happens or it has happened so often, and there isn’t really anything that’s actively being done about it, our generation is desensitized to this stuff,” Liani Figueroa, a junior at Lincoln, said during a recent virtual gathering. She recalled being at a homecoming celebration 30 minutes before someone was fatally shot on campus.
But students do see a way to create change.
“Prevention starts with education, especially for the youth,” said Trey Walker, a senior at Lincoln University. “There’s a lot of Black people on TikTok who see the events and the festivities, and just see HBCUs as party schools, but we are so much more than that.”
Beyond education, researchers have noted that adequate funding for HBCUs is a key part of the solution.
Analyses have shown that funding for HBCUs falls far short of other institutions. In 2023, the U.S. Department of Education found that public HBCUs had been underfunded by at least $12 billion across 16 states.
“HBCUs are operating with half the budget of most [predominantly white institutions],” said James E. Jones V, an HBCU alumnus and educational leader, whose doctoral dissertation analyzed three HBCU shootings. “The first departments to receive budget cuts and to receive … employee cuts will be your IT, security, and police departments, because these departments do not produce revenue for the school.”
For private Black universities like Tuskegee, which operate with significantly smaller endowments than those of primarily white institutions, the shortfall hits particularly hard. The deficits on campus are often compounded by fiscal challenges in their surrounding communities; many HBCUs are rooted in historic, diverse-income places long affected by structural disinvestment and stigma — conditions that can fuel community violence. A growing number of universities have responded to the increase in shootings by closing their campuses or restricting access. Jones noted that these measures are understandable, but do not fully address the underlying issue.
“It’s not about shutting off a campus, it’s about putting the money where the hurt is, putting the money where the pain is,” Jones said. “A lot of people say that HBCUs are underserved. No, I think that we are overworked, and overlooked in a lot of ways.”
Hours before La’Tavion’s parents would travel the same Alabama highway, he and his friends piled into a vehicle and headed for Tuskegee’s centennial homecoming celebration. The ride was filled with excitement, and even though La’Tavion was among others in the car who were not Tuskegee students, the event was known for welcoming people from throughout the community.
“There’s so much enthusiasm around homecoming, because as Black people in this country, our spaces to hang out are so limited,” said David A. Canton, an HBCU alumnus and associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Florida. “There’s line dancing, cookouts, spades. And for many of us, after that weekend we have to go to spaces where we are unwanted or where we are struggling. I love going because it’s Black joy.”
For young Black people, Canton explained, homecomings can be a unique moment, even if they didn’t attend an HBCU. “In a society that wants Black people to struggle, and likes to see us struggle all the time, there is a space for a weekend where that is the furthest thing from your mind,” he said. ”It’s inspiring to young people and draws them in because it allows them to not see Black success as an anomaly.”
La’Tavion and his friends were among the more than 47,000 attendees who flooded Tuskegee’s campus as the homecoming football game and tailgating carried on. The private university celebrated its first homecoming game a century earlier in 1924. Founded by civil rights leader Booker T. Washington about 15 years after the Civil War, Tuskegee quickly became a symbol of Black academic and communal excellence, not only for Alabamians, but for the nation.
At halftime in 2024, Tuskegee trailed 17-0 against fellow Alabama HBCU Miles College, but school spirit carried on. The smell of barbecue wafted through the campus. Music from car radios and speakers filled the air. The gold-accented leotards the majorettes wore shimmered against the green grass of the football field. A rendition of the band’s signature song, “Ball-N’-Parlay” by Houston rapper Big Pokey, could be heard from the saxophones, horns, and drums of the university’s band, who were draped in crimson and gold. Thousands of spectators swayed left and right in the stands and erupted into the university’s iconic chant:
Whether It’s Sunny or Grey
We Gon’ Ball and Parlay
Keep it Crunk Every Day
That’s the Tuskegee Way
By nightfall, thousands of attendees were still scattered across campus and nearby. Around midnight, in the parking lot of a student apartment complex behind the school’s engineering building, music continued as hundreds of people socialized.
“It’s a time to celebrate and be able to go back and be surrounded by so much love,” said LaTroy Wagner Jr., a 2022 Tuskegee alumnus who attended homecoming in 2024. Like La’Tavion, Wagner drove to campus excited.
As the party went on, shoving and pushing moved through the crowd, and then, boom, shots rang out through the parking lot. Wagner, dressed in a black T-shirt with yellow wording, blue jeans, and black sneakers, stood up to walk but couldn’t. He had been shot in his right foot.
“You could see bullets hitting cars near us, windows … it was like nothing I had ever seen before, it sounded like a war or a battleground out there,” he said.
Nearby, La’Tavion had been dancing with his friends in the parking lot. When the shooting broke out, he dropped to the ground, covering a young woman near him.
As Wagner was helped to his feet and rushed to the hospital with other victims, La’Tavion lay bleeding on the ground. He had been shot twice, once in the head, the other round striking his shoulder. He died instantly.
No one has been officially charged in La’Tavion’s death. Shortly after the incident, 25-year-old Montgomery, Alabama, resident Jaquez Myrick was sentenced for a federal firearm charge in connection with a gun associated with the shooting. The gun was a Glock that had been modified with a switch that is illegal in the United States. Another man, Jeremiah Williams, was charged with possession of a similar-type firearm. Three other men, ages 20 to 21, were indicted and faced counts of discharging a weapon on school property. None of the men, who also were from Montgomery, were students at Tuskegee. It’s a frustrating pattern, recognized by many in the HBCU community: The perpetrators of the campus violence often are not students.
“The phenomenon of mass attacks and school shootings has not focused on HBCUs in the past,” said Peter F. Langman, a psychologist and expert on school shootings who has spent two decades studying the issue. “It seems that individuals with no connection are carrying out these acts; it’s different than what we have previously understood about school shootings.”
For alumni and students, understanding who is responsible for the violence is important. The distinction, they say, is key to stemming the harmful stigmatization that Black colleges have experienced across the years.
“If there are 100 homecomings every year, at most these shootings are not happening,” said Canton, the University of Florida associate professor. “HBCUs are not alone in schools having issues. We have to ask ourselves: Of the people who perpetuate this violence, how do we improve that person’s economic situation, or mental health, and what is their rationale? How can we solve that? A lot of it is access to guns, and policy issues.”
In the days after the shooting at Tuskegee, the university shut down its campus and implemented a public safety plan. Those steps, though, came too late for the Johnsons, who contend that the school fell short of its responsibility to safeguard both students and visitors.
“From what I understand, the following day, they put the school on lockdown and sent students home for like a week and added cameras, and they changed a whole lot of things now,” Larry said. The measures are very different from what the parents recalled seeing the night their son died.
“When we got to the scene, there was no security, everybody could just come in on campus; there were no guards at the guard shack, or police or anything,” Tamika said.
The Johnsons were among about 10 people who filed lawsuits against several entities tied to the shooting. Many of the suits, including one filed by LaTroy Wagner Jr., make claims against the International Protection Investigation Agency, the company overseeing security at Tuskegee during its homecoming celebration. Those suits are ongoing. The Johnsons also filed a suit against Tuskegee University for negligence and inadequate campus security.
“They never reached out to us,” Larry said.
“The least they could have done is send their condolences,” Tamika added.
Tuskegee University did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Following the shooting, Tuskegee’s leaders emphasized that the party that took place in the parking lot was not an authorized event, but said they would take responsibility to prevent future incidents.
The drivers of more than two dozen all-terrain vehicles in red, white, and black revved their engines outside the Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Troy, Alabama, on Nov. 23, 2024. It was La’Tavion’s last ride.
“He loved going to the country, driving, working on the farm, and riding four-wheelers,” Larry said in a recent interview. Tamika laughed, recalling how nervous she was when she found out her son was riding ATVs.
As they sat in a white limousine that day in November, it seemed fitting that ATVs would lead the procession making its way to the Carroll Street Cemetery. There, they watched as La’Tavion was lowered into the ground.
A year and a half earlier, the same family members and friends had gathered for the funeral of La’Tavion’s older sister, 18-year-old Ta’Mya Johnson.
“The only thing we had to do was just change names. That was a slap in the face right there,” said Larry, as he discussed planning both funerals. “He’s buried under her.”
La’Tavion and Ta’Mya, the babies of the bunch, were extremely close. One afternoon, when La’Tavion was a toddler, he and his sister were outside playing when she saw a truck drive by spraying mosquito repellent and yelled, “That’s Sugar Booger.” La’Tavion giggled so much that his nickname quickly became Shugga, short for Shugga Bugga.
Ta’Mya was driving with her 1-month-old son on a February afternoon when she lost control and ran off the road. She was declared dead at the scene, but her baby boy, Bryson, survived. He suffered from seizures after the accident, which have left him non-verbal and physically impaired.
La’Tavion wore a necklace with a gold letter initial for his nephew, who is now 3 years old, but that necklace went missing the day he was shot. His mother said that, after the shooting, she was sent videos of people going through La’Tavion’s pockets as he lay on the ground. The gold necklace he wore was never returned.
Larry and Tamika say the grief remains ever-present. “I still have those moments where I just break down and cry because I’m so used to them being around,” Tamika said.
For La’Tavion’s father, going back to his mother’s home in Saco, Alabama, where his son loved to spend time with his grandmother, brings solace. “I never told anyone this, but I can go sit on the back porch, and from time to time, two red birds fly by,” Larry said as tears welled in his eyes.
In the two years since La’Tavion’s death, his parents have watched as anniversaries and holidays, which they say are the toughest, roll by.
Aug. 18 would have been their son’s 20th birthday. That morning, Larry got dressed for work, while Tamika got her grandson, Bryson, ready for the day. The parents visited La’Tavion’s gravesite, bringing fresh flowers and two large metallic balloons, a 2 and a 0, for his birthday. “I know my baby boy was happy because the balloons were blowing in the wind nonstop,” she said.
The same week that they celebrated their son’s birthday, 60 miles away in Tuskegee, thousands of students smiled and laughed as they made their way across the closed campus to their first classes of the fall semester. The university welcomed its largest freshman class in decades, more than 1,400 students from across the country. The numbers reflect a national trend: Even as college enrollment declines overall, HBCU attendance has surged. The uptick reflects a renaissance among historically Black colleges and universities, which have welcomed students affected by recent Trump administration policies and U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have curtailed educational opportunities. The current sentiment echoes the institutions’ founding era, when Black colleges were established in response to policies that barred Black people from education.
The sense of community has been in full swing as homecoming season has commenced. Tuskegee’s 102nd homecoming game against Miles College is scheduled for Nov. 7. On Oct. 17, Howard University held its annual game. The weekend before, several other schools marked homecoming: Norfolk State University, Morehouse, Spelman College, and Delaware State University, where a man was fatally shot during an off-campus celebration, mirroring what happened to La’Tavion.
As hundreds of thousands celebrate, La’ Tavion’s parents wonder what his life would be like if he had survived. He was scheduled to start a new job the Monday after Tuskegee’s 2024 homecoming, and his parents said he was planning for the future.
“One day he said, ‘Dad, I said I want a truck just like you.’ I told him, ‘Don’t get a truck like mine; get one better than mine,’” Larry said. “That’s what he was working towards, but …” Larry sighed and shook his head. That promise will forever remain unfulfilled.
Afea Tucker contributed reporting.
