Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre, 1968



Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre, 1968

56 minutes. 2008. Mon., Sep. 15, 2008. 7 p.m. Calhoun Hall 100.

This documentary, just about to be released by California Newsreel in October 2008, tells a story that is similar to that of Ohio’s Kent State University killing of four and injury of nine students on May 4, 1970, by members of the Ohio National Guard. Here we see an earlier but much less known event, the killing of three and injury of 28 students at South Carolina State College (SCSC) in Orangeburg on Feb. 8, 1968. Of those killed, one was 17 and two were 18 years old; two were casual observers, and one was an unarmed activist.

The Orangeburg killing was reported by a brief Associated Press story in the back pages of the New York Times, whereas the Kent State killing became rapidly known around the world and was commemorated in a nationwide student strike, songs, plays, operas, films, books, etc. The Orangeburg incident, apparently the first of its kind on a college campus in the United States, began with an attempt by students from SCSC and Claflin College, historically black institutions of higher learning in this small town composed mostly of African Americans, to complete the desegregation of local businesses, whereas the Kent State University incident began with an anti-war protest. The Orangeburg killing took place at night and was thus harder to capture effectively for television; it would have had to compete with the amount of attention being paid to the Vietnam War in the evening news; and those killed and injured on Feb. 8, 1968, were black, while those killed and injured on May 4, 1970, were white. Memories were fresh in people’s minds of urban riots in Detroit, Newark, and the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, and this may have caused some to dismiss what is often called the Orangeburg Massacre as simply maintaining law and order.

The process that led to the Orangeburg killings began in 1967. A Vietnam veteran was not allowed to bowl at the only bowling alley in town and complained to a college student who gathered information over the Christmas break and organized a protest that began on Monday, February 5, 1968, when the police closed down the bowling alley rather than allow the students to enter. It was the last segregated public accommodation in Orangeburg except for the doctors’ offices and the hospitals. During the next evening’s protest someone broke a window and someone else threw a toxic chemical at a police officer, which led to officers beating up a number of students, including young women. Angry about this, the protesters destroyed some property belonging to local white businessmen.

On Feb. 8, a cold night and the fourth night of the demonstrations, around 200 unarmed students were singing around a bonfire at the campus and loudly protesting the failure of their attempts to integrate the bowling alley. The fire grew too large, and as students were trying to put it out, a fire truck came in, accompanied by nearly 70 law-enforcement officers who lined the edge of the campus. In town by then were the National Guard with at least one tank, the Highway Patrol, the State Law Enforcement Division, and local police. After the fire was put out, someone threw a banister rail that hit a patrolman in the face and knocked him to the ground, at which point the shooting began. None of the students were armed, while the officers had carbines, pistols, and riot guns: short-barreled shotguns loaded with large-game buckshot, each shell containing 9-12 pellets the size of a .32 caliber pistol slug.

Cleveland Sellers, a 20-year-old former program director for SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), had come to this college town to found a Black Awareness Coordinating Committee to teach African American history and culture. Sellers, falsely targeted as an outside organizer of the bowling alley protests, was the only person jailed in connection with the Feb. 8 killing by officers, but his wrongful conviction was overturned when he received a full pardon 23 years later, in 1993. He had served seven months in state prison with early release for good behavior on a trumped-up charge of riot for Feb. 6, since it had turned out to be impossible to find anyone to accuse him credibly of anything in connection with Feb. 8. The nine officers who admitted that they had shot into the crowd were acquitted of charges of using unnecessary force or imposing summary punishment without due process of law.

Sellers became director of the African American Studies Program at the University of South Carolina; now he is the eighth president of Voorhees College in Denmark, South Carolina. In 2006 his son, Bakari Sellers, was elected at age 21 to the South Carolina State legislature, which officially closed one of its workdays with a statement in memory of the students who were wounded and killed at SCSC, now South Carolina State University. The university has commemorated the students’ deaths with a monument and an indoor athletic center named in their honor as well as regular ceremonies. Bakari Sellers also suggested a continuation of the investigation, in which none of the perpetrators have ever been convicted.

This film will be shown in

Celluloid for Social Justice: The Legacy of 1968 in Documentaries

Mini-Film-Series Honoring the 40th Anniversary of California Newsreel; consisting of documentaries provided by California Newsreel

The film series precedes 1968: A Global Perspective --

An Interdisciplinary Conference at the University of Texas at Austin

October 10-12, 2008;

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