Three Black students are killed in the Orangeburg Massacre - February 8th, 1968

On this day in 1968, white state troopers shot and killed three unarmed Black students on a college campus in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that shines a light on the ups and downs
of everyday history. I'm Gay Lucia, and today we're reflecting

(00:22):
on one of the most shocking yet least remembered moments
of the civil rights movement. As a warning, today's episode
includes descriptions of police brutality and may be upsetting for
some listeners. The day was February eighth, nineteen sixty eight.

(00:47):
White state troopers shot and killed three unarmed black students
on a college campus in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Located between
Columbia and Charleston, the city of Orangeburg has long been
the home of two historically black colleges and universities, South
Carolina State and Klaflin. In the nineteen sixties, this put

(01:10):
the city in the unique position of having more educated
black citizens than many other Southern towns. As you might expect,
much of that black population was heavily involved in the
civil rights movement of the era. Martin Luther King Junior
even stopped in Orangeburg on several occasions to deliver speeches.

(01:30):
His spirit of activism took root in the city's colleges,
and students often led protests to combat racism in their
own community. By the early months of nineteen sixty eight,
the students focused their efforts on one target, in particular,
a local bowling alley owned by white proprietor Harry Floyd.
The nineteen sixty four Civil Rights Act had outlawed discrimination

(01:54):
based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, but
four years yars later, Floyd's All Star Bowling Lanes was
still whites only. Local black community leaders had tried several
times to convince him to integrate his business, but Floyd refused,
claiming that he'd lose all his white customers if he

(02:15):
allowed blacks to bowl. Finally, on February fifth, a group
of students took matters into their own hands by going
to the bowling alley and staging a sit in the
lunch counter. The protest ended without incident after the police
were called and the business closed early, but the students
returned the next day, and as soon as they entered

(02:35):
the building, fifteen of them were arrested for trespassing. News
of the arrests traveled fast in the small town, and
hundreds of students began to gather in a nearby parking
lot to plan their next move. The growing crowd was
soon confronted by Orangeburg police officers and state troopers, who
assured them that the arrested students would soon be released.

(02:58):
The situation was ds escalating nicely until a fire truck
arrived on the scene. For many in the crowd, the
truck's arrival reminded them of a demonstration they had attended
a year earlier, in which powerful hoses were turned on
them as a method of crowd control. Fearing that history
was about to repeat itself, many of the students rushed

(03:19):
toward the bowling alley for shelter, and in their panic,
one of them broke a pane of glass. Moments later,
the police advanced on the students and began beating them indiscriminately,
both men and women alike. The fleeing students were enraged
by the show of police brutality, and on the way
back to their respective campuses, several smashed the windows of

(03:41):
white owned businesses and to face the cars parked outside them.
These incidents prompted an overreaction from white South Carolina Governor
Robert McNair. He called in the National Guard, and by
the evening of February eighth, several tanks and more than
a hundred heavily armed officers had cordoned off the South

(04:01):
Carolina State campus. Late that night, around one hundred students
gathered on the campus lawn to protest the city's occupation.
Some of them chanted black power at the armed officers
stationed around them, while others formed a chorus singing we
shall overcome. Everything remained peaceful until around ten pm, when

(04:23):
the students lit a bonfire to keep warm and the
patrolman once again called in the fire department. The firefighters
were escorted onto campus by police armed with carbines, pistols,
and riot guns. Then, at ten thirty pm, someone in
the crowd threw an object at the police. Some witnesses
said it was a piece of a wooden banister, while

(04:45):
others claimed it was something smaller. In either case, the
objects struck patrolman Dave Sheeley in the face, at which
point nine of his fellow officers opened fire on the
unarmed students. It was standard police practice to use whose
bird shot when dispersing a riot, even though the campus
gathering hardly qualified as such, but it was later revealed

(05:07):
that the officers that night had loaded their guns with
double ot Buckshot, a much higher caliber ammunition. The results
of that choice were devastating. The patrolman fired into the
mostly black crowd for at least eight seconds, and when
it was over, twenty eight students lay injured and three
more were dead. Two of the black gentlemen who were

(05:30):
killed that night had attended South Carolina State, Samuel Hammond,
an eighteen year old freshman from Florida, and Henry Smith,
an eighteen year old sophomore from Mary in South Carolina.
The third victim, Delano Middleton, was a seventeen year old
high school student. He had been waiting for his mother
to finish her shift as a campus custodian and happened

(05:52):
to be sitting near the protest when the shooting started.
The police later claimed that the students had shot first,
but numerous witness accounts from reporters, firefighters, and students contradicted
their story. Multiple investigations found no evidence that any of
the protesters had firearms, but that didn't stop Governor McNair

(06:14):
from blaming the violence on quote black power advocates. He
insisted that the officers had fired in self defense after
being attacked by students wielding firebombs and sniper rifles. These
lies were repeated by local newspapers and eventually by national outlets.
The Associated Press, for example, described the incident as a

(06:36):
quote heavy exchange of gunfire, a false statement for which
it never issued a correction. The actual evidence from the
night of the shooting told a much different story. All
but two of the students killed or injured had been
shot in the back, the side, or through the soles
of their feet. They weren't injured while attacking the police.

(06:58):
They were gunned down while trying to get away. The
nine patrolmen who opened fire that night were later charged
for their role in the shooting and stood trial in
nineteen sixty nine, but in an outcome that seems sickeningly
predictable today, all of them were exonerated. In fact, the
only person convicted of a crime in connection with the

(07:20):
Orangeburg massacre was one of the victims. Cleveland Sellers, a
young black activist and the program director of the student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, had been shot in the side of
his arm while on campus. His work with the committee
made him a convenient scapegoat for the state so even
though he had played a minimal role in the protest,

(07:41):
Sellers was charged and ultimately found guilty of inciting a riot.
He went on to serve about eight months of his
year long prison sentence and was then released early on
good behavior. More than two decades later, Sellers was granted
a formal pardon, but he refused to have his record expunged,

(08:02):
viewing it as what he called a badge of honor.
I accepted the pardon, he told reporters, but that doesn't
clean the slate. In the decades since, several South Carolina
governors and mayors have made other attempts to clean the
slate by issuing apologies to the victims and their families.
Multiple memorials have also been raised in their honor, and

(08:25):
SC State commemorates the tragedy each year. Nonetheless, the events
at Orangeburg remain largely unknown to the general public. That
oversight seems downright damning when you consider the prominence held
by similar shootings involving white student protesters, such as those
at Kent State and Jackson State. The Orangeburg massacre deserves

(08:48):
a place in America's collective memory, because if we're ever
to have any hope of addressing the systemic failures that
led to it. We have to remember that it happened
in the first place. I'm Gabe Lucier and hopefully you
now know a little more about history today than you
did yesterday. If you have a second and you're so inclined,

(09:11):
consider following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI
HC Show, and if you have any comments or suggestions,
feel free to drop me a line by writing to
This Day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays
for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening.
I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day

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in History class.