When the Orangeburg Massacre Comes Home To Roost
by Keith Josef Adkins
Back in the 80s when I was applying for undergrad, my parents insisted I avoid Kent State. Once President Nixon announced the country was invading Cambodia and the students at Kent went into protest and some lost their lives, Kent had been etched into their memory as a hotbed of violence and no son of theirs would be victim to police gunfire. Even if it happened nearly two decades prior. But my parents never once insisted I avoid South Carolina State College in Orangeburg. There was a massacre there just as deadly. I'm assuming they didn't know about it. I know I didn't.
Filmmaker Dan Klores' documentary "Black Magic" which aired on ESPN last month briefly exposed the Orangeburg Massacre and its impact at South Carolina State College and its even lesser impact on our country. In 1968, over 100 black students were demanding an all-white bowling alley to be integrated in their all-black college town. Of course there was rabid resistance and the students got heated and the state troppers, well... they open-fired, killing three, injuring 28.
According to an article in the NY Times yesterday the reason for the new national interest in the Orangeburg Massacre is mostly because there was very little media coverage of it of that time. Many believe it was because the students murdered were black. Others believe it was because the incident happened at night and there were no news cameras there to document it. Oh, I should mention the troopers who open-fired were acquitted and the state's governor blamed the incident on black militancy.
It is unfortunate and horrific that a group of black students were bludgeoned by violent racists simply because they wanted to intergrate a bowling alley. And that's obviously not the first time black people had endured attack, but inhumane treatment of blacks is always atrocious and beyond infuriating. [And as if it always happened yesterday]. It is, however, amazing filmmaker Dan Klores felt the impulse to bring justice to this well-kept American secret. But it's unbelievable that the only man who was criminalized in the massacre was Cleveland L. Sellers, the national program director for SNCC. Shot in his shoulder and weapon-less, he was charged with "Riot" and served seven months in prison.
But the most interesting component to this is that filmmakers Bestor Cram and Judy Richardson who have been working on their Orangeburg Massacre documentary for ten was told by arts foundations that issues of civil rights were passe. In took them literally ten years to convince the monies-that-be the incident at South Carolina State College was not passe. It was, in fact, a story that demanded to be told.
From Singleton's Rosewood to Marco Williams' 2007 documentary Banished, some of America's best kept secrets are black and aching to be exposed. Thank the stars that Cram, Richardson and Klures have been relentless about unearthing this one. We'll be a much better country when all of our laundry is aired.
