CHARLESTON, S.C. - Gov. Mark Sanford's apology for state troopers gunning down three civil rights protesters has elated many, but it's not enough for Sen. Robert Ford.

Ford, D-Charleston, wants an investigation into the shooting reopened and awards drafted to honor the slain students, two from South Carolina State University. He also is asking for more money for the historically black college.

"Your apology is accepted, and now we must move on to the next step - reparations," Ford said to Sanford in a news release. "As far as I'm concerned, reparations are about making people whole, and in this case, it will make an institution whole again."

Ford said he wants the state to bring back S.C. State's law school and its engineering program, which were disbanded in the 1960s and 1990s, respectively, a school spokeswoman said.

But Sanford's spokesman Chris Drummond said Sanford's apology was not delivered "with the intentions of reparations, but personally doing the right thing."

"It's unfortunate that the governor's apology is being exploited for political purposes," he said.

Sanford issued the apology in a written statement Saturday, shortly after a memorial on the 35th anniversary of what has become known as the "Orangeburg massacre."

Shots fired by highway patrol officers on Feb. 8, 1968, killed 20-year-old Henry Smith and 19-year-old Samuel Hammond, both students at the university, and 17-year-old Delano Middleton, a local high school student.

Twenty-seven other students from South Carolina State, neighboring Claflin University and an area high school were injured.wounded in the massacre.

For Diana Hammond Carter, who was 13-years-old when her older brother, Samuel, was killed, the apology is enough.

"It meant more than anything I could possibly ask for," she told The (Charleston) Post and Courier from her home in Plantation, Fla. "To come back after 35 years to right a wrong is incredible."

Cleveland Sellers, a professor at the University of South Carolina, was wounded in the shooting. He said dialogue is what is needed.

"I'm not particularly interested in what Sen. Ford is proposing at this point," Sellers said.

College of Charleston professor Jack Bass, who covered the massacre as a reporter and later wrote a book about it, said Sanford has refocused attention on an event that a lot of South Carolinians have ignored or failed to recognize.

His statement "suggests that the time may right for the state to begin a formal inquiry that might include some form of restitution," Bass said.

Information from: The Post And Courier