Orangeburg Massacre: Three Students Killed by Police

South Carolina Highway Patrol officers opened fire on a group of unarmed Black students at South Carolina State College on the night of February 8, 1968, killing three young men and wounding twenty-seven others. Most were shot in the back as they fled. The victims, Samuel Hammond Jr. (eighteen), Delano Middleton (seventeen), and Henry Smith (eighteen), had been part of a multi-day protest against racial segregation at the only bowling alley in Orangeburg. The massacre received a fraction of the national attention given to similar incidents, overshadowed by the escalating Vietnam War and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy later that year. The protests began on February 5, when students attempted to integrate the All Star Bowling Lanes, owned by Harry Floyd, who refused to serve Black customers despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Police arrested fifteen students and beat several others, including a female student struck in the face. The following nights saw escalating confrontations between students and law enforcement. On February 7, students built a bonfire on the edge of campus. Firefighters arrived and were pelted with debris. An officer was injured. Governor Robert McNair ordered the Highway Patrol and National Guard to the campus. On the night of February 8, approximately 200 students had gathered on a grass embankment near the front of campus. A patrolman was struck by a piece of heavy lumber. Moments later, officers opened fire without warning, discharging carbines, shotguns, and pistols into the crowd for roughly ten seconds. The students scattered. Officers later claimed they believed they were under sniper fire, a claim contradicted by FBI investigators who found no evidence of student gunfire. Nine highway patrolmen were charged with excessive use of force. All were acquitted by an all-white federal jury in 1969. Cleveland Sellers, a civil rights organizer and the only person ultimately convicted in connection with the events, was found guilty of inciting a riot and served seven months in prison. He was pardoned by the state of South Carolina in 1993. The Orangeburg Massacre remains one of the deadliest attacks on student protesters in American history, largely forgotten outside the community it devastated.