When National Guard troops fired on students protesting the Vietnam
War at Kent State University in Ohio in 1970, newspapers decried the
lethal use of force the left four students dead. Television stations
replayed the scene over and over again, and songs were sung to the
memory of the fallen students on radio airwaves across the country.
Four dead in Ohio.
It was in stark contrast to the nation’s reaction, just two years
earlier, to the killing of three civil rights protestors and the
wounding of twenty-seven others who were gunned down by state troopers
at South Carolina State University (SCSU) on February 8, 1968.
The three dead in South Carolina were: Samuel Hammond Jr.,
eighteen, who planned to be a teacher; Delano Herman Middleton,
seventeen, who was still in high school; and Henry Smith, eighteen, who
was known as “Smitty” around campus and mentioned in a college
questionnaire that his life goals were simply “happiness and success.”
No songs commemorated their memory. No television station, not one
newspaper denounced the local police officers who incited the incident,
or the nine highway patrolmen who opened fire on the students, or then
governor Robert E. McNair — who claimed he was powerless in the
situation — or the larger community, which turned a deaf ear.
But their memory remained on the SGSU campus, where annual memorial
services honor the casualties of the “Orangeburg Massacre.”
And finally, as the thirtieth anniversary of the incident has come
and gone, the state of South Carolina seems to be putting forth an
effort to pay homage to the three slain civil rights soldiers. The
state general assembly recently passed a resolution recommending that
February 8 be a day of remembrance for the students. The resolution
also includes a request to posthumously award them the Order of the the
Palmetto — the state’s highest civilian honor.
