User:SilverStar54/Orangeburg Massacre

Orangeburg massacre
Part of mass shootings in the United States, school shootings in the United States and the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina
Location	Orangeburg, South Carolina
Date	February 8, 1968 approx. 10:38 p.m. (Eastern: UTC−5)
Deaths	3
Injured	28
Victims	Samuel Hammond Jr. Delano Middleton Henry Smith
Perpetrators	South Carolina Highway Patrol

The Orangeburg massacre was the killing of three and wounding of twenty-eight student protestors by the South Carolina Highway Patrol in Orangeburg, South Carolina, on the South Carolina State College campus on the evening of February 8, 1968. The shootings were the culmination of a series of protests against racial segregation at a local bowling alley, and marked the first instance of police killing student protestors at an American university.

Two days before the shootings, student activists had staged a symbolic sit-in at the segregated All-Star Bowling Lane. When a crowd of several hundred Claflin and South Carolina State College (SCSC) students gathered outside the bowling alley to protest the arrests, police dispersed the crowd with billy clubs. Students requested permission to hold a march downtown and submitted a list of demands to city officials. The request for a march was denied while city officials agreed to review the demands. As tensions in Orangeburg mounted over the next few days, Governor Robert McNair ordered hundreds of National Guards and Highway Patrol officers to the city to keep the peace. On the night of February 8, students from both colleges and Wilkinson High School started a bonfire at the front of SCSC's campus. When police moved to put out the fire students threw various debris at them, including a piece of a wooden banister that injured an officer. Several minutes later, at least nine patrolmen opened fire on the crowd of students. Dozens of fleeing students were wounded; Sam Hammond, Henry Smith, and Delano Middleton were later pronounced dead at the Orangeburg Regional Hospital.

In the aftermath of the killings, the bowling alley and most remaining whites-only establishments in Orangeburg were desegregated. Despite public pressure, the results of investigations by the FBI and SLED were never fully disclosed. Federal prosecutors charged nine patrolmen with imposing summary justice on the demonstrators but they were acquitted in the subsequent trial. The state of South Carolina charged one of the protestors, Cleveland Sellers, with several riot charges. He was convicted on charges relating to events two days before the massacre. Sellers received a full pardon in 1993. In 2001, Jim Hodges became the first Governor to make a formal apology for the massacre.

Background

Further information: Civil rights movement in Orangeburg, South Carolina

At the start of the 1967-1968 school year, the students at South Carolina State College (SCSC, or State College) had just emerged victorious from a years-long struggle against their conservative college president, Brenner Turner. Turner had tried to maintain good relations with the white state government by taking a hard line against student participation in civil rights demonstrations. Tensions had reached their breaking point the previous spring, and after large-scale protests, Turner had been forced to step down. In the wake of his resignation campus life was liberalized and political clubs were allowed to operate on campus for the first time. The two most important of these were a chapter of the NAACP and a club called BAAC, the Black Awareness Coordinating Committee. The NAACP chapter was large but moderate, having over 300 members. BACC was much smaller—its membership hovered around twenty students—but represented the most progressive edge of the student body that embraced Black Pride and was interested in Black Power. To the white community and Black middle class, the creation of BACC was ominous. They associated Black Power with the radical rhetoric of new SNCC leaders such as Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown. This view was reinforced when SNCC organizer Cleveland Sellers arrived in Orangeburg in October. In his autobiography, Sellers wrote that he had returned to his home state because "I believed I could develop a movement by focusing attention on the problems of the poor blacks in South Carolina." The Orangeburg elites viewed Sellers as an "outside agitator" who was there to stir up trouble.

Meanwhile, the state of civil rights in Orangeburg was lagging behind most areas in the south. Many institutions remained segregated, including the doctor's offices, entertainment venues, and the Orangeburg Regional Hospital. Political offices remained beyond the reach of black citizens, in part because the city boundaries were gerrymandered to exclude blacks. In January 1968, Governor McNair announced that he was rejecting the college's request for a budget increase. In light of the crushing disparity between funding for SCSC and white colleges in South Carolina, this was seen as a major disappointment. An independent committee had been set up over the summer to investigate and had issued a report urging reforms that included expanded student participation in administration. But by February, the college's all-white board had still not formally accepted this report.

Struggle to integrate All-Star Bowling Lane

The entrance to All-Star Bowling Lane, pictured in 2015 after its name was changed

In the summer and fall of 1967, a whites-only bowling alley near campus, All-Star Bowling Lane, became a focus of student protests. Owner Harry K. Floyd repeatedly refused students' requests to desegregate. Instead, he followed the trend of replacing his "Whites Only" sign with one saying "Privately Owned" (intending to turn away customers who were not "club members"). In October, the college's NAACP chapter met to discuss how they could mount a legal challenge. In December, a student started a petition against segregation that called out the bowling alley and got over 300 signatures. Eventually, student activist John Stroman decided to prove that Floyd's "club members only" strategy was only a cover for refusing black patrons by sending in a white student to bowl without a "club membership". On Monday February 5 1968, the white student arrived and began bowling without a problem. A little while later, Stroman and a group of black students arrived and asked to bowl. When the staff refused to let them, the students tried sitting at the lunch counter and were refused service there as well. The staff even went as far as throwing away anything they touched. Stroman pointed out to Floyd that the white student had been allowed to bowl without ever showing that he was a member, but Floyd just called the police. City Police Chief Roger Poston arrived and ordered the alley closed for the night. Chief Poston then met with Stroman and told him that he would have to arrest him for trespassing if he returned to the bowling alley. Stroman responded that getting arrested was his plan so that he could challenge the policy in court.

Map showing SCSC, the bowling alley, and surroundings

Stroman and a group of about 40 students returned to the bowling alley on Tuesday evening. They were met by 20 officers led by Chief Poston and South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) Chief J. P. Strom. Chief Poston told Stroman that 40 was probably more than needed to start the court case, so Stroman asked the women and any men who did not want to be arrested to leave. The fifteen remaining staged a brief sit-in and were arrested for trespassing. Up until this point everything had proceeded as planned; according to one of the students who had not been arrested, "[e]verything was cool until the cops rushed into the crowd of students outside in the parking lot and arrested some cat." The students who had not been arrested then returned to campus, and soon a crowd of several hundred students—only vaguely aware of what had happened—arrived at the bowling alley to make sure the arrestees were not being mistreated. Stroman and the other arrested students had been brought to the police headquarters downtown to sign into jail. When the police saw the new crowd gathering, they made a deal with Stroman to release the arrestees on the condition that they help defuse the situation at the bowling alley. This worked at first; Stroman and the others returned and were able to explain that the arrests were pre-planned. Students began to return to campus.

Unfortunately, the police had called a fire truck as backup. When it arrived it immediately changed the mood of the crowd; fire hoses had been used in Orangeburg and other cities as a form of crowd control and had a reputation for brutality. The police's decision to call a fire truck was interpreted by the students as an act of aggression, and they began to shout insults at the firefighters. The police moved away from the alley to protect the fire truck from the students. A student then broke one of the alley's windows. It may have been unintentional, caused by the press of the crowd knocking the student into the glass, but the police interpreted it as deliberate vandalism. They arrested the suspect but the crowd blocked them from leaving. Students and police began yelling abuse at each other. Although it is not clear which happened first, police began beating students with billy clubs and one student sprayed something in an officer's eyes. The beatings continued for several minutes. There was at least one occasion (possibly more) where officers grabbed and restrained a female student while another beat her with his club. Cecil Williams recalled seeing two officers beating a different female student who fell while fleeing. Eight students and one officer were sent to the hospital. The rest of the students fled back to campus, some smashing the windows of cars and businesses on their way. Total property damage amounted to less than $5000.

As soon as students arrived back on campus, they held an impromptu mass meeting. Cleveland Sellers was present at the meeting and, when asked for his advice, suggested that the students immediately occupy the intersections in front of campus and demand to speak to the Chamber of Commerce about the bowling alley issue. This proposal was rejected. Eventually, the students agreed to ask permission to hold a protest march the following day and drew up a list of ten demands. The demands included desegregating the bowling alley, the hospital, and doctors' offices as well as an end to police brutality.

Escalation of tensions

Tensions escalated rapidly over the next few days. On Wednesday morning, the student leaders submitted their request to hold a march, but were rebuffed. Instead, Mayor E. O. Pandarvis, city manager Bob Stevenson, and several Orangeburg business leaders came to the SCSC campus in an attempt to placate the students. The meeting they had with students is generally considered a failure. City leaders were unprepared for the students' questions and had no response to the demands read off by the students. The head of the Chamber of Commerce was slightly more conciliatory and offered to read the demands at the Chamber's next meeting. There was a notable lack of media coverage of the students' grievances: The Times and Democrat (Orangeburg's local newspaper) did not publish the students' list of demands until several days later (when they reported that the city council had rejected them). Washington Post reporter Jim Hoagland reflected that this media silence may have contributed to the students' frustration and anger.

There were several outbreaks of violence on Wednesday. With no protest planned, frustrated students gathered in informal groups to discuss the police "whipping our girls". Several crowds of angry students threw rocks and bricks at cars driving on U.S. Route 601 that contained white passengers. Police responded by setting up roadblocks to block traffic. Two blocks from campus, a homeowner shot and injured three Claflin College students who he claimed had been trespassing. Late that night, two white men drove a car onto campus and shot at students before being chased off with rocks and bottles.

On Wednesday evening Governor McNair decided to activate the National Guard. His main concern, shared by the police chiefs, was based on the unfounded rumor that the "plan of the Black Power people" was to attack utilities and burn down the city. Therefore, 250 Orangeburg-area National Guards took up positions protecting utilities across the city, joined by hundreds of highway patrol officers. On Thursday, McNair ordered an additional 110 National Guardsmen to Orangeburg.

Shooting

By the evening of Thursday, February 8, tensions were high and the police had set up a command post (nicknamed "Checkpoint Charlie") at the intersection of Russell Street and US Highway 601 to monitor the SCSC campus. Around 7:00 p.m., about 50 State College students gathered at the front of campus to start a bonfire. Police intervened to stop them and called up additional highway patrolmen to Checkpoint Charlie and at Livingstone's warehouse across from Claflin College. Students began to shout insults at the police, who claimed that a .22 caliber pistol was fired from a dormitory over their heads near Livingstone's warehouse. About 9:30 p.m., a larger group of students led by SCSC student Henry Smith made a second attempt at building a bonfire. This time they were successful, using wood from a nearby abandoned house. About 200 students from SCSC, Claflin, and Wilkinson High School spent the next hour gathered the bonfire in a "jovial" mood. They told reporters that they would stay as long as the police did.

More than 130 police from at least five agencies were positioned near the front of SCSC's campus. The were under the overall command of SLED Chief Strom, and under orders from Governor McNair not to let the students leave campus. Through journalist intermediaries, Strom attempted to get the students to move away from the front of campus, a request that they refused unless the police would leave first. At about 10:30 p.m., Strom and the other leading officers decided to call a firetruck to put out the bonfire. When the truck arrived, it advanced slowly up U.S. 601 with a police escort. On the truck's left, between the highway and railroad tracks were the National Guard. On the truck's right, a squad of highway patrol officers under Lieutenant Jesse Spell advanced up Watson Street. The students retreated towards Lowman Hall, throwing rocks and bottles. The fire was extinguished quickly, but continued to smolder. As Spell's squad turned to scale the embankment at the end of Watson Street, someone threw two white banister posts at patrolmen Donald Crosby and David Shealy. Crosby ducked, but Shealy was struck in the mouth and injured. The other patrolmen thought that Shealy had been shot, and several rushed to his aid.

"I remember hearing someone laugh just before we realized we were being shot at. We thought they were shooting in the air."

Jordon M. Simmons III

About five minutes later (around 10:38 p.m.), many of the students began to walk back towards the embankment, unaware that the patrolmen believed Shealy had been shot. Most of the sixty-six patrolmen in front of them had taken up positions behind the embankment or in the surrounding vegetation and were invisible to the students. When the first students reached about 100 feet from the officers, some witnesses recalled hearing a patrolman fire a shot into the air, possibly as a warning. Other witnesses would later recall hearing a whistle, as if signalling to fire. In either case, the students began to turn and run, some holding their hands in the air or dropping to the ground. Lieutenant Spell then shouted "now"; he and eight others opened fire on the students. The shooting lasted eight seconds. Most patrolmen fired buckshot from Remington Model 870 shotguns, while a few used carbines and one fired a pistol. At least thirty students were hit, most from behind while fleeing or on the soles of the feet while lying on the ground. After expending several rounds, Lieutenant Spell gave the order to cease fire.

For the list of victims, see the table below. The patrolmen who fired were: A. Joseph Lanier, B. John Brown, C. Edward Moore, D. Colie Metts, E. Allen Russell, F. Norwood Bellamy, G. Sidney Taylor, H. Jesse Spell, I. Sidney Taylor.

Victims

Location	Name	Age	Institution	Notes
1	Thomas Kennerly	21	SCSC
2	Robert Watson	19	Claflin
3	Frankie Thomas	18	Claflin
4	Savannah Williams	19	SCSC
5	Herman Boller, Jr.	19	Claflin
6	Samuel Ephesians Hammond, Jr.	18	SCSC	Killed by a shot to the back
7	Henry Ezekial Smith	18	SCSC	Killed by shots from both sides, a total of five wounds
8	Delano Herman Middleton	17	Wilkinson High School	Killed by seven bullet wounds: three to his arm and one each to his hip, thigh, and heart
9	Ernest Raymond Carson	17	SCSC	Hit by eight slugs
10	Robert Lee Davis, Jr.	19	SCSC
11	Joseph Lambright	21	SCSC
12	Joseph Hampton	21	SCSC graduate
13	Ronald Smith	19	Claflin
14	Charles W. Hildebrand	19	SCSC
15	Raymond McPherson	19	SCSC
16	Samuel Grate	19	Claflin
17	Bobby Eaddy	17	SCSC
18	Samuel Grant	19	SCSC
19	Harold Riley	20	SCSC
20	Robert Williams	19	SCSC
21	Ernest Shuler	16	Wilkinson High School
22	Nathaniel Jenkins	21	SCSC
23	Albert Dawson	18	SCSC	Noted student leader
24	Harvey Miller	15	Wilkinson High School
25	Bobby K. Burton	22	SCSC	His arm was permanently paralyzed
26	Thompson Braddy	20	Claflin
27	Cleveland Sellers	23	SCSC
28	Jordan Simmons, III	21	SCSC
29	Hebert Gadson	19	SCSC
30	Johnny Bookhart	19	SCSC
N/A	John H. Elliott	23	Claflin	Came forward shortly before the 40th anniversary

Immediate aftermath

The injured students were taken to the hospital where three would die from their wounds: Henry Smith, Samuel Hammond Jr. (both SCSC students), and Delano Middleton, a student at the local Wilkinson High School. Reporters overheard one of the patrolmen gloating over police radio, saying "You should have been here, ol' buddy; got a couple of 'em tonight." Over the next few hours the police arrested and heavily beat several more people. Louise Kelly Crawley would suffer a miscarriage after she was arrested and beaten while taking injured students to the hospital. John Carson was arrested and beaten after he started asking the highway patrolmen why they shot his younger brother eight times. Cleveland Sellers was arrested in the hospital waiting room; he would later be charged with inciting a riot, arson, assault and battery with intent to kill, property damage, housebreaking, and grand larceny. Some of the hospital staff insulted and demeaned the students. Oscar Butler recalled overhearing a staff member say "they asked for it".

Half an hour after the shooting, a group of students broke into the ROTC building and stole a handful of training rifles. The rifles lacked firing pins and were returned the next day, but the incident was later reported by Governor McNair as if it had happened before the shooting.

Public reactions and media coverage

Robert McNair, Governor of South Carolina from 1965 to 1971

The reaction of the white public nationwide was mainly indifference or support for the actions of the police. Major riots in Detroit and Newark the previous summer had soured white liberals on the course of Civil Rights movement. Rather than being seen as victims like the protestors of the 1964 Birmingham Campaign had been, the Orangeburg students were cast as violent rioters who needed to be stopped by whatever means necessary. This predisposition was reinforced by poor reporting and deliberately false or misleading statements by South Carolina officials. The Associated Press incorrectly reported that there had been a "heavy exchange of gunfire" and never issued a correction. Newspapers across the country ran the AP story with headlines such as "Three Die in Riot", "Trio Slain after Opening Fire on Police", or "Three Killed as Negroes, Police Exchange Shots". In a speech about the massacre the following day, Governor McNair called it "...one of the saddest days in the history of South Carolina", but claimed that the shootings had taken place off campus and had been necessary "to protect life and property." McNair placed the blame on "black power advocates" in creating the conditions that led to the deaths. Cleveland Sellers in particular was targeted by the state as a scapegoat. McNair's spokesman told reporters "He's the main man. He's the biggest nigger in the crowd" and even claimed that Sellers had been the one to throw the banister that injured Shealy. This narrative was widely accepted by the white media and public in the weeks following the event. Most of the white reporters in Orangeburg failed to investigate official claims, interview key witnesses, or even ask the police probing questions. According to Washington Post reporter Jim Hoagland, they "covered the story largely from the Holiday Inn."

The reaction of the students and of Civil Rights leaders was very different. Martin Luther King blamed the massacre on SLED Chief J. P. Strom, and called for an investigation by the US Attorney General. The NAACP's executive director Roy Wilkins echoed King's call for an investigation. John Lewis accused the white press of conspiring to obscure the true nature of events. SNCC chairman Rap Brown issued the most radical statement, calling for black people to take up arms in self-defense and to "die like men". In the State College newspaper The Collegian, students decried the inaccurate reporting in the mainstream press and argued for why the anti-segregation protests were justified. Black students staged demonstrations across the country. In Greenville, South Carolina, black and white students (mostly from Furman) protested together against the killings.

Despite the fact that the Orangeburg Massacre was the first time police shot and killed students on a United States university campus, they received much less media coverage than the later police shootings at Kent State and Jackson State. The week's issue of Time did not even mention the event. Historian Jack Bass pointed out that the subject of the protests may have played a role: by 1968, lingering segregation was seen as an essentially local issue, whereas at the time the Kent and Jackson State students were killed, the Vietnam War was a highly charged national issue. Moreover, the victims at Kent State (by far the most famous of the three) were white, unlike the students in Orangeburg, and were killed by National Guards rather than state highway patrolmen. Survivor Thomas Kennerly also points out that the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy quickly took over the news cycle in the weeks and months after the Orangeburg Massacre. In contrast, Kent State and Jackson State happened in close succession, painting a picture that law enforcement and university administrations had no idea about how to handle campus unrest.

Subsequent protests

Orangeburg remained in a state of high tension in the weeks after the shootings. Both colleges closed and let their students return home. McNair placed Orangeburg under a curfew. The city remained occupied by hundreds of National guards and highway patrolment, despite a petition by 800 black residents to have them withdrawn. The NAACP launched a boycott of all of Orangeburg's white businesses starting on February 11.

On March 7, BACC (see background) organized a protest of 200 Orangeburg students at the South Carolina State House. A group led by Steve Moore attempted to read a petition to the SC State Senate from the gallery, but was stopped and six students were arrested. On March 13, BACC led a second protest of 1000 students to Columbia and were met by police in riot gear. After some resistance, McNair eventually agreed to meet with a delegation of students.

Court cases

On February 10, the Justice Department filed a suit against Harry Floyd (who continued to insist on his right to refuse business to black patrons). The Department also filed against the Orangeburg Regional Hospital, which remained segregated despite having promised to integrate in 1965. On February 22, federal Judge Robert Martin ordered All-Star Bowling Lane to desegregate. John Stroman became one of the first group of black students to bowl there on the day classes resumed, February 26. Most businesses in Orangeburg followed suit and desegregated.

Federal prosecutors charged 9 state patrolmen with carrying out summary justice by firing on the crowd:

• Lieutenant Jesse Alfred Spell, 45: Commanding officer of the District Six squad
• Sergeant Henry Morrell Addy, 37: District Six squad
• Sgt. Sidney C. Taylor, 43: District Six squad
• Corporal Joseph Howard Lanier, 32: District Five squad
• Corporal Norwood F. Bellamy, 50: District Five squad
• Patrolman First Class (PFC) John William Brown, 31: District Five squad
• PFC Colie Merle Metts, 36: District Five squad
• Patrolman Allen Jerome Russell, 24: District Seven squad
• Patrolman Edward H. Moore, 30: District Five squad

It was the first federal trial of police officers for using excessive force at a campus protest. The state patrol officers' defense was that they felt they were in danger, and protesters had shot at the officers first. All nine defendants were acquitted, although 36 witnesses stated they did not hear gunfire from the protesters on the campus before the shooting, and no students were found to be carrying guns. In 2007, the FBI reopened the case as part of its re-examination of Civil Rights-era crimes, but declined to bring charges because the 9 officers had already been acquitted. In 2008, the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act made it possible to reopen cold cases from before 1970, and starting in 2010, the deaths of Smith, Middleton, and Hammond have been on the Department of Justice's list of unsolved Civil Rights cases.

In a state trial in 1970, Cleveland Sellers was convicted of a charge of riot related to the events on February 6 at the bowling alley. He served seven months in state prison, getting time off for good behavior. In 1993, Sellers applied for and was granted a full pardon from the South Carolina Board of Paroles and Pardons. During a conference at The Citadel on the 35th anniversary of massacre, Sellers reflected on the trial and its significance:

“ I was the only person arrested. The only person tried. The only person found guilty and sentenced. I did not commit a crime...The S.C. attorney did not want to proceed with a trial, because there was not any evidence, but Governor McNair insisted that the state go forward. All of the original charges were dropped, and in two of the three Riot Act charges the judge ruled a “directed verdict” because of the lack of evidence. All of the people who testified against me were white law enforcement officers. In the only testimony of evidence that could be used to secure a guilty verdict against me, a white South Carolina Law Enforcement Division officer lied and testified that he saw me on top of a fire truck on the night of February 6, 1968, saying “Burn, baby, burn.” I was found guilty of a “one-man riot” and sentenced to one year hard labor. There was no justice. It was a legal sham. ” — Cleveland Sellers

Legacy

Soon after the event, students and activists dubbed it the "Orangeburg Massacre". According to Cleveland Sellers, the name was chosen to be reminiscent of the Sharpeville Massacre. In Sharpeville, South African police had open fired on and killed dozens of unarmed anti-apartheid activists. Robert McNair strongly disliked the name because he thought it suggested the shootings had been pre-planned. Nevertheless, "Orangeburg Massacre" gradually became the accepted name in the decades after the event.

South Carolina State College (now South Carolina State University) has multiple memorials dedicated to the victims. The gymnasium that opened later in the same year as the massacre was named the Smith–Hammond–Middleton Memorial Center in their honor. The college built a granite monument with the names of the victims at the center of campus in 1969. In 2000, the university erected a South Carolina Historical Marker explaining the history of the massacre near the entrance to campus. In 2022, bronze busts of the three men killed were installed behind the granite memorial. Memorial services are held every year. From 1969 to 1983 they were held at the SHM Memorial Center and since then they have been held at the monument. In 2001, Governor Jim Hodges became the first governor to attend the annual memorial. He issued a formal apology for the massacre. That same year, on the 33rd anniversary of the killings, an oral history project featured eight survivors telling their stories at a memorial service. It was the first time survivors had been recognized at the memorial event. Robert Lee Davis told an interviewer, "One thing I can say is that I'm glad you all are letting us do the talking, the ones that were actually involved, instead of outsiders that weren't there, to tell you exactly what happened."

A joint resolution was introduced in the South Carolina state general assembly in 2003 and re-introduced in each of the next three sessions of the legislature to establish an official investigation of the events of February 8, 1968, and to establish February 8 as a day of remembrance for the students killed and wounded in the protest. However, the legislature never voted on the resolution.

Several works of media have also been produced about the event. It was the subject of two films released after its 40th anniversary in April 2008: Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre, 1968 by documentary filmmakers Bestor Cram and Judy Richardson; and Black Magic by Dan Klores. In 2009, the SC State Henderson Players (an acting troop of SC State students) put on a play about the events called Take a Stand.

In 2019 Cecil J. Williams, a graduate of Claflin, opened a civil rights museum that includes a collection of photographs he took of the days before and after the shooting.

See also

• Protests of 1968
• Greensboro massacre
• List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States
• List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States

Bibliography

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