"The Orangeburg Massacre was a shooting of student protesters that took place on February 8, 1968, on the campus of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, South Carolina, United States. Nine Highway Patrolmen and one city police officer opened fire on a crowd of African American students, killing three and injuring twenty-eight. The shootings were the culmination of a series of protests against racial segregation at a local bowling alley, marking the first instance of police killing student protestors at an American university. Two days before the shootings, student activists had been arrested for a sit-in at the segregated All-Star Bowling Lane. When a crowd of several hundred Claflin and South Carolina State College (State College) 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, but city officials agreed to review the demands. As tensions in Orangeburg mounted over the next few days, Governor Robert McNair ordered hundreds of National Guardsmen 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 State College's campus. When police moved to put out the fire, students threw debris at them, including a piece of a wooden banister that injured an officer. Several minutes later, at least nine patrolmen and one city police officer 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. Federal prosecutors charged nine patrolmen with deprivation of rights under color of law by firing on the demonstrators, but they were acquitted in the subsequent trial. ... According to journalist and later historian Dave Nolan, 'most whites seemed to feel that it was justified to put them down as brutally as possible.' This predisposition was reinforced by inaccurate reporting on the ground. The Associated Press 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'. ..."
W - Orangeburg Massacre
NBC - A Survivor of the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre Reflects: 'You Wish You Could Say It Didn't Happen'
NY Times: Films Revisit Overlooked Shootings on a Black Campus
YouTube: Orangeburg Massacre: South Carolina's Deadly Struggle for Civil Rights, PBS - The Orangeburg Massacre: Remembrances and Reckoning 56:46
Around 700 Black students congregate outside of the South Carolina State House in Columbia to protest the killing of Henry Smith, Samuel Hammond Jr., and Delano Middleton. Highway patrolmen seal off the front entrance of the building.
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