| Fighting the 'veil of secrecy' Activists want more notice of '68 shootings ORANGEBURG, S.C. - Protesters who watched three of their own gunned down by state troopers during a rally on the outskirts of South Carolina State University in February 1968 hoped the deaths of the three black students would echo throughout the history of the civil rights movement. Instead, they say it's been 37 years of silence as one of the biggest blights on South Carolina's record of peaceful integration has been delegated to a historical footnote. But that doesn't stop people like Cleveland Sellers, who says what has become known as the Orangeburg Massacre will eventually resonate through the South's history like the Birmingham church bombing or the killing of three civil-rights workers in Mississippi. "You have to keep doing it. Truth crushed to the ground will still rise up," said Mr. Sellers, the only person sent to prison in the incident. He was pardoned 25 years after being convicted of inciting a riot and spending seven months in jail.
AFTER THE TROOPERS' guns fell silent Feb. 8, 1968, South Carolina State students Henry Smith, 19, and Samuel Hammond Jr., 18, were dead, along with DeLano Middleton, a 17-year-old high school student. Twenty-seven others were wounded. No formal state investigation has ever been conducted into what happened on that chilly night, the culmination of three days of protests and unrest over a bowling alley owner's refusal to allow blacks into his business. State officials maintain the shooting was justified. At the time, troopers said the students were a threatening mob, charging the troopers, throwing bricks and firing small guns. But a book that many consider the definitive history of the event said only a few rocks were thrown. No spent bullet cartridges were found where the students gathered and the only trooper injured was hit by a piece of wood, according to The Orangeburg Massacre, written by Jack Bass, then a reporter at The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, and Jack Nelson, who wrote about the incident for the Los Angeles Times. Not long after the shooting, Mr. Nelson went to the hospital to check the records of the wounded. "I saw most of them were shot in the back, in the soles of their feet as they ran away," he said earlier this month. An FBI investigation led to charges against nine troopers, but a jury of 10 whites and two blacks acquitted all the defendants a little more than a year later, finding they acted in self-defense.
PROGRESS HAS BEEN made, Mr. Sellers and others say. Four years ago, then-Gov. Jim Hodges became the first governor to come to the ceremony commemorating the deaths held every Feb. 8 on South Carolina State's campus. On the 35th anniversary two years ago, Gov. Mark Sanford stunned many by issuing a statement hours after the event saying the state apologized for the events that night. But Mr. Sanford doesn't support a proposal to create an independent commission to investigate the incident. A bill introduced in the Senate would create a three-member panel to look into the Orangeburg Massacre. A similar bill died quietly a year ago, and this one could suffer the same fate. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Robert Ford, says it will pass "whether it is this generation of the General Assembly or the next." Many of his fellow lawmakers aren't convinced. "Everybody's afraid of pointing fingers and having fingers pointed back," said Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg. The silence over the Orange-burg Massacre shows blacks that their sacrifices and struggles aren't as important, Ms. Cobb-Hunter said. "If these students had been white, everyone would have heard about it. Doesn't everybody know about Kent State?" said Ms. Cobb-Hunter, referring to the killing of four white students protesting the Vietnam War by National Guard troops at the Ohio campus in May 1970.
THERE ARE SOME signs that the silence about the Orangeburg Massacre might be breaking. Northern Light Productions, independent filmmakers who have done a number of historical programs, is trying to raise enough money to create a documentary called The Veil of Secrecy after the phrase protesters use to describe the state's attempts to downplay the incident. Mr. Sellers was at this year's memorial service, as he is every year. And one of the things that touches him the most is how the students want to continue the fight. The main speaker at the ceremony was student Matt Kimbrough, who reminded the crowd that black students just like them were the crux of the civil-rights movement and should be thanked for their sacrifices. "The writers of the historical record have said by the silence, 'Don't remember,'" he said. "My brothers and I will never forget."
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