Shining City Audio, a John Meacham and C-13 original studio.

February 8, 1968, the Orangeburg South Carolina Massacre takes place.

I'm John Meacham, and this is Reflections History.

It was the kind of thing we associate with reconstruction, with ages past.

And yet it happened in the United States in the same year Apollo 8 orbited the moon.

On this date in 1968 nonviolent demonstrators protesting the persistence of racial segregation in Orangeburg, South Carolina were the victims of shotgun blast fired by highway patrolmen.

27 were wounded.

3 were killed.

Their names were Henry Smith, Samuel Hammond, and Delano Middleton.

2 of them, Smith and Hammond, were students at South Carolina State College.

They and others were standing against the denial of service to a black veteran of the Vietnam War at a local bowling alley, the All-Star bowling lanes.

Cleveland Sellers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was there in Orangeburg that night.

Here is how Sellers recalled the events in an interview with Democracy Now.

I can almost remember that period of time as if it were today. It was a cold night on February 8, 1968.

This was the fourth day of activities around the effort to desegregate the bowling alley, and we're talking about 9.30 or 10 o'clock at night.

The students had built a bonfire to keep themselves warm and just build morale.

They were trying to work out some strategy. What should they do next? Should they go back to the bowling alley where they had been arrested on Tuesday night?

Should they go to the city hall? Should they go to the state capital? And they thought that they were in an area that was pretty safe and secure, and they never expected the police to open fire.

And it so happened that the law enforcement decided to put the bonfire out, so they sent in firemen escorted by National Guardsmen, and they put the fire out.

And apparently during that time an officer got hit in the head with a piece of wood, I suspect it was.

That's what they said it was. And that was probably about 10 or 15 minutes after that it was just the darkness turned to light as the police opened fire.

Nine highway patrolmen and one local police officer firing rifles and shotguns and pistols.

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