The Night South Carolina Opened Fire on Its Own Children - Lest We FORGET.
- Ian Miller
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Orangeburg, South Carolina — February 8, 1968
American history remembers Kent State. It remembers the photograph, the outrage, the arguments that followed. What it rarely remembers is that two years earlier, in a small Southern town, police opened fire on unarmed Black students who were trying to leave.
The event is known as the Orangeburg Massacre, though for decades it barely registered as a massacre at all.
By 1968, segregation was illegal. The Civil Rights Act had been law for four years, but Orangeburg still lived by older rules. The All-Star Bowling Lane near South Carolina State College remained whites-only. Black students knew the ritual: attempt entry, be refused, be reminded—quietly—that equality was still conditional.
They protested anyway.
The demonstrations were peaceful at first. Students tried to integrate the bowling alley. Police intervened. Arrests followed. Rumors replaced facts. By the evening of February 8, the state had recast a civil-rights protest as a public threat.
More than one hundred South Carolina Highway Patrol officers were deployed. Many carried shotguns loaded with buckshot.
That night, students gathered on campus. A bonfire burned—later described by officials as evidence of a riot, though witnesses recalled noise, frustration, and bravado rather than violence. There was shouting. There was confusion. There was fear.
At some point, an object—possibly a wooden banister—struck a patrolman. No officer was seriously injured. No weapons were found among the students.
Without warning, police opened fire.
The shooting lasted roughly ten seconds. It was enough.
More than four hundred rounds were fired into a crowd of young people who were running away. The evidence was unmistakable: most of the wounded were shot in the back, the legs, the buttocks—where bullets land when people are fleeing.
Three teenagers were killed.
Samuel Hammond Jr., 18, a high-school football player. Henry Smith, 18. Delano Middleton, 17, shot multiple times, including while lying on the ground.
Twenty-eight others were wounded, some permanently.
No warning was issued. No order to disperse was given. No return fire occurred—because the students were unarmed.
The massacre barely pierced the national consciousness. Local coverage largely echoed police accounts, framing the shootings as necessary, defensive, tragic but justified. One newspaper called it a “police riot.” Most simply moved on.
Justice, when it arrived, moved in reverse.
South Carolina charged nine Black students with rioting. They were convicted and served prison sentences. No state charges were brought against the officers who fired into the crowd.
Federal prosecutors later charged nine highway patrolmen with civil-rights violations. All were acquitted. Officers testified that they feared for their lives. Juries accepted this explanation despite the physical evidence.
Fear, it seemed, was enough.
For decades, Orangeburg remained a footnote—overshadowed by Kent State and later tragedies that were more visible, more televised, and easier for the nation to recognize as injustice. There was no apology. No compensation. No accountability.
Only in the early 2000s did South Carolina offer partial acknowledgment. A memorial was erected. A governor conceded that what happened was wrong.
By then, many parents had already died waiting.
Orangeburg is not an anomaly. It is an early chapter in a pattern that continues to echo: protest reframed as threat, force justified by fear, accountability delayed until memory fades.
Today’s cellphone videos and familiar explanations feel less like progress than repetition.
The Orangeburg Massacre was not chaos. It was not a riot. It was not an accident.
It was the state opening fire on its own children—and trusting that history would look away.
Footnote:In 1968, South Carolina state troopers opened fire on unarmed Black students at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg. Most were shot in the back while fleeing. Three teenagers were killed. Twenty-eight were wounded. No officer was convicted; Black students were prosecuted instead.
More than fifty years later, the language has barely changed. Police shootings are still justified by fear, protests reframed as threats, and accountability delayed until memory fades. What separates Orangeburg from the present is not structure but visibility. The pattern was already complete—only the cameras were missing.
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