What is the Orangeburg Massacre and the history behind the building where Biden spoke?
When Joe Biden spoke at South Carolina State University Friday, he stood at a podium in the Smith–Hammond–Middleton Memorial Center, a building named after three victims of one of the most infamous days in South Carolina history.
During his speech, Biden acknowledged this moment, which, in time, came to be known as the Orangeburg Massacre.
“There’s a through line from the Orangeburg Massacre that happened 53 years ago and killed three students for whom this very ... arena is named” to racist and anti-Semitic events in the United States in the last eight years, Biden said.
What exactly led to the Orangeburg Massacre? Who were the victims? And what is the legacy of this seminal event?
The passage of the federal Civil Rights Acts in 1964 ended state-sanctioned segregation. But in parts of the South, “Whites Only” signs still adorned many businesses.
In early February 1968, South Carolina State students and activists began a protest at an Orangeburg bowling alley that didn’t allow in Black people.
Over the next three days, an escalating series of incidents ended with three deaths and 28 people shot.
Black activists began their protest on Feb. 5 by entering the bowling alley, according to various books and recollections of the event. The protest ended when police made the bowling alley close for the night. Another group of activists planned to enter the bowling alley the next day but were met by police.
Police began arresting and beating protesters to keep them away from the bowling alley. In one case that drew the ire of SC State students and administrators, a young woman was held by an officer while another beat her with his night stick. The night ended with eight people being sent to the hospital.
On Feb. 8, SC State’s new basketball arena opened. But whatever celebration was marred by the violence that followed.
The same day, with tension mounting after the assault on protesters, Gov. Robert McNair sent in state police and the National Guard to SC State’s campus. About 200 students and activists, continuing their protest, made a bonfire in a street near campus. The group was unarmed but threw objects at police and shouted at them. An object struck a state police officer’s face, bloodying him. Police opened fired on group.
When the shooting was done, at least 31 people, mostly students and teenagers, had been shot. Most were shot in the back and side and some in their feet as they ran away or hit the ground to escape the bullets.
As recalled in an article by Ferris State University, the then-U.S. Attorney General said the police “committed murder” after they “lost their self control.”
Police killed local high school student and all-state basketball player Delano Middleton while he was sitting on the stairs of an SC State building waiting for his mother to get off work. The police also killed SC State freshman football player Samuel Hammond and sophomore Henry Smith.
McNair said at the time that the day of the shooting was “one of the saddest days in the history of South Carolina.” But he blamed Black activists and agitators for the violence.
McNair and state police put the blame on one student who was present, Cleveland Sellers, a well-known activist and former leader of the civil right organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Sellers had been shot in the shoulder during the protest. Police charged him with inciting a riot, arson, assault and other offenses. In 1970, a jury convicted Sellers of one charge and a judge sentenced him to a year in prison.
Federal agents charged nine South Carolina police officers in the shooting of the students and activists. A jury acquitted them all despite sparse evidence that they were shot at first at, as they claimed.
SC State named the arena that opened on the same night as the shooting after the victims later in the year.
In 1993, the state pardoned Sellers of his conviction. Sellers went on to lead the African-American Studies Program at the University of South Carolina and was president of Vorhees College in his hometown of Denmark, SC from 2008 to 2015. He is the father of former state representative and former lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Bakari Sellers.
This story was originally published December 17, 2021 at 11:05 AM.