Remembering the Orangeburg Massacre
South Carolina State University student protest often ignored by historians

By Linda Meggett Brown

ORANGEBURG, S.C.
Although it has been 33 years since the Orangeburg Massacre, the memory of the tragic events that took place the night of Feb. 8, 1968, remains vivid and painful for the victims who survived and is a mark of shame for the entire state.
"We regret deeply what happened. Even today, South Carolina bows its head, bends its knees and begins to search for reconciliation," Gov. Jim Hodges said at a commemoration ceremony last month at S.C. State University, where the tragedy occurred. He is the first governor to participate in the annual memorial program.
On that devastating night, nine South Carolina Highway Patrolmen fired shotguns into a crowd of Black students who were demonstrating in front of the campus. Virtually all the students hit by shotgun pellets were wounded in the back. The clash stemmed from a protest over a segregated bowling alley. Two days after clashing with police at the bowling alley, S.C. State students and many others from the town of Orangeburg had gathered around a bonfire at the edge of campus. Firefighters and police went in to douse the flames.
Moments later, screams and gunfire erupted as students and others scrambled to safety. Most of the protesters escaped unharmed. But three students, including one high school student, were killed, and 27 were injured.
Although historians devote attention to the student protests at the University of California -Berkeley and Columbia University, S.C. State is often ignored. Four students at Kent State University were killed May 4, 1970, two years after the incident at S.C. State, yet it gained far more attention and is often referred to as the first time protesting students were
fired upon.
The Orangeburg Massacre is often left out of the history books. Advocates stress that this legacy must be told. "S.C. State didn't get the same attention as Kent State because our students were Black. It wasn't newsworthy," says Thomas Kennerly of Columbia, S.C. "Lives were lost and we just failed to let it be known. There was so much going on with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy's death."
If government officials had reacted in a positive way, all that history would not have been ignored, he says.
The anniversary each year brings back many reminders for Kennerly. "I was responsible for carrying a young man to the infirmary on my back. My mother was working there as a nurse so I knew I would see her. I didn't know I was hit until I got there," he says. "I was hit three times myself. I could have damaged that guy more. In the heat of the moment we were so concerned for life. The Lord was just with us."