On this day in 1968, SC Troopers killed 3 students per protest – Mississippi today

February 8, 1968

Students Samuel Ephesians Hammond, Jr., Henry Ezekial Smith and Delano Herman Middleton were shot dead and killed by state soldiers who fired at demonstrators at the South Carolina State College Campus in Orange, South Carolina.

Fifty were also injured in confrontation with highway rally patrols supporting civil rights protesters.

Students protested at All-Star Bowling Lane, who refused to serve black students. When police arrested protesters, chaos followed and police began to beat protesters with Billy clubs, sending eight students to the hospital. Angry to what happened, the students put fire in front of the campus. When the authorities appeared to suppress the fire, an officer was wounded by an object thrown by the crowd.

State troops began firing their weapons at the unarmed protesters, killing two students, Hammond and Smith, as well as in Middleton, a high school student who was just sitting on the steps of the first -year dormitory waiting for his mother.

The governor tried to blame the “external agitators” for the incident, but the federal government has charged excessive force against the nine soldiers. The jurors justified the soldiers who claimed to have acted in self -defense.

In contrast, the jury carried out the activist Cleveland sellers of the riot fee in connection with the protest on the bowling alley and he was forced to serve seven months in prison.

Violence was known as the slaughter in Orangeburg, predicting the shootings that followed at the State University of Kent and the State University of Jackson.

Since then, the campus arena has been renamed in honor of the students killed. Jack Bass, co-author of the Orangeburg slaughter, who details the killings, called on South Carolina to do something similar to what Florida did about the slaughter of Rosewood, placing money for surviving children and colleges of grandchildren.

“Maybe,” he writes, “It’s time for South Carolina to clear its conscience.”