SCSU Commemorates Orangeburg Massacre
Orangeburg, S.C. (WOLO) — Its been 48 years since the Orangeburg Massacre but it’s a memory that has never dulled for families of the victims and survivors who are not looking to a new generation to continue the fight for justice.
“February 8th 1968, I can remember vividly everything that transpired on that particular night,” says massacre survivor Cleveland Sellers Jr.
A sentiment that rings true for so many of the 200 activists on the South Carolina State campus that evening, protesting a bowling alley’s refusal to desegregate.
According to Thomas Kennerly, who also survived the massacre, “Students were upset, city officials were upset and it was just kind of a situation where you realize something negative was going to occur.”
Nine state troopers opened fire in to the crowd fatally wounding three protesters and injuring 27 others.
Sellers tells ABC Columbia, “Not only ways I in pain from the gunshot but it was pain from the kind of in justice that was perpetuated upon unarmed students. Many of them were shot in the back as they retreated from the police officers.”
While joining together in song and prayer, civil rights activists called for a thorough investigation into the incident and the state troopers who were cleared by a federal jury.
“Those are the type of things that are still kind of a festering wound on our state,” says Reverend Joe Darby.
Rev. Darby hopes remembering this injustice will reignite passion in the fight for human rights.
He says, “The young people really put their lives on the line to do what was right. That should inspire this generation that should inspire succeeding generations.”
