THREE DEAD IN SOUTH CAROLINA: STUDENT RADICALIZATION AND THE FORGOTTEN ORANGEBURG MASSACRE A thesis submitted To Kent State University in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Kimberly Dawn Stahler May, 2018 Thesis written by Kimberly Stahler B., Frostburg State University, 2012 M., Kent State University, 2018 Approved by Kenneth Bindas_________________________, Advisor Brian Hayashi _________________________, Chair, Department of History James Blank _________________________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS .1 CHAPTER Page I RAISING RADICAL YOUTHS .16 II DIVERGING FROM REALITY .55 III CONTINUED RACIAL TENSIONS .140 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Everyone who knows me is aware that I am driven, focused, and determined. These personality traits have helped me achieve my goals, but the help I have received from others along the way proved to be more valuable to me than those traits. I could not have completed this project without the assistance and support I received from others. I am forever indebted to too many people to lay them all out here.
However, I would like to thank all of those who read through drafts and talked through ideas throughout my time working on this thesis in addition to those mentioned below. All of the professors that I worked with during my time at Kent State University have helped me achieve my academic goals, but I would like to extend a special thanks to those who worked with me on my thesis. I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Thank you for the direction, advice, and support that you provided me along the way.
I appreciate that you always made time for me whenever I needed to work through my own thoughts. I am also grateful for all the work that the members of my thesis committee put into overseeing this project: Dr. Leslie Heaphy, Dr. Zachary Williams, and Dr.
Leslie Heaphy read drafts of my work throughout my writing process, and her feedback proved to greatly benefit my thesis. Zachary Williams helped me engage with the current scholarship on gender and the civil rights movement and broadened my understanding of identity. Patrick Coy helped me approach my research from an interdisciplinary lens, which rounded out the perspective that my thesis takes. iv I also am indebted to others academics and library professionals who helped me accomplish this project.
Leonne Hudson introduced me to my case study and helped me work through my research throughout my time at Kent State University. Archivist Avery Daniels from the Miller F. Whittaker Library provided me with invaluable help with my primary source research which made this project possible. I appreciate every email that Daniels responded to and every source that he brought to my attention that I did not know existed.
Further, a special thanks goes to Dr. Hine for agreeing to an interview with me and for answering numerous emails to clarify some of the discrepancies that I found during my research. His insight and attention helped make this project into what it is. I am forever indebted to those who put tireless effort into saving and preserving the documents surrounding the Orangeburg Massacre: those who conducted and participated in the Orangeburg Massacre Oral History Project, those who wrote the grant proposal that funded the project and the process of cataloguing the documents in the Orangeburg Massacre Collection at the Miller F.
Whitaker Library, and those who continue to participate in the annual commemorations and who keep the memory of the massacre alive. It would be impossible to list all of the friends and family members who helped me complete this thesis. However, special thanks are due to my sister Bethany Stahler and my brother-in-law Larry Nehring for helping me mentally and physically survive this project. To everyone who read drafts, who talked through ideas, and who provided ample amounts of encouragement, thank you, I could not have done this without you.
When I started working on this project, gun violence in schools and police brutality targeting African Americans were major problems in America. The work of Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and so many others is truly inspirational and impactful. Additionally, in the last few months there has been a student movement growing that is v demanding change from American politicians and the American public who have accepted the constant presence of school shootings in the news. I dedicate this thesis to all the young students who are standing up to ensure that their classrooms are a safe place for learning and to the often overlooked radical women who have built the foundation of grassroots organizing networks that are fighting for social justice in America.
vi INTRODUCTION On February 8, 1968, hundreds of African American students from South Carolina State College (SCSC) and Claflin College gathered around a bonfire on Watson Street in Orangeburg, South Carolina, singing “We Shall Overcome.” Across the street, a group of almost exclusively white law enforcement officers from the South Carolina National Guard, the South Carolina Highway Patrol, and the local Orangeburg Police stood armed. After the bonfire grew, an officer called the fire department to prevent the flames from endangering the power lines. When the fire truck arrived, the National Guardsmen advanced into the street to protect the fire truck. The students began to retreat to their dormitories as the Highway Patrolmen crossed the street and stopped in an embankment at the edge of the SCSC campus.
Suddenly, nine Highway Patrol officers fired their pump-action shot guns loaded with buckshot into the retreating crowd. 1 The shooting lasted less than ten seconds, and in that time at least thirty-one students sustained injuries. Later, Samuel Hammond, Henry Smith, and Delano Middleton died from their wounds. After the firing stopped, chaos continued on campus as those who were able helped the most severely injured to reach the infirmary.
Most of the wounded students were hit in their backs or the bottoms of their feet. Field organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Cleveland Sellers later told reporters that because the patrolmen “shot as low as they could and a number of students fell to the ground…they could have killed 75 percent of them right then if they wanted to.”2 Rosemary Brooks, a senior at SCSC, was one of the many black community members who helped the injured students find safety in the aftermath. Later she remembered, “that night was the worst night of my life. Never have I seen so much 1 bloodshed.
Never have I seen so much heartbreak and terror… one student was shot in the mouth and part of his tongue was ripped out.”3 National movement leaders expressed their outrage at the use of deadly force from South Carolina’s law enforcement agencies during this peaceful protest. After a federal judge ordered the bowling alley to integrate in the weeks following the massacre, SNCC leader, H. Rap Brown stated, “as usual the Justice Department is acting in a faint-hearted manner after the blood of black youth has flowed in the streets. Three dead and 50 injured is too high a price to pay for a goddamn bowling alley.” 4 After the shooting ended, the law enforcement officers continued to block Watson street, which intersected with the sole entrance to the SCSC campus.
No ambulances were called to help the injured and dying students. Officers dragged Henry Smith and Delano Middleton, who would die soon after, towards their police cars. Four students later testified that they witnessed a patrolman use the butt of his gun to strike Smith. The sole nurse on duty that evening in the infirmary was quickly overwhelmed with the number of students who needed medical attention.
Most of the students needed more care than she could provide. Arleathia Jones, and other SCSC students who had cars, drove the severely injured students to the local segregated hospital. Frankie Thomas, Jordan Simmons, and Charles Hildebrand were a few of the students who remembered that once they were admitted to the hospital they did not receive any care and needed to seek medical attention in other nearby hospitals the following day. Even today, some of the surviving students, including Ernest Shuler, continue to carry buckshot pellets in their bodies.5 After the massacre ended, tensions between the law enforcement officers and the students seemed to dissipate.
The National Guardsmen, the Highway Patrolmen, and the local police officers did not advance further on campus after the shooting ended. No more confrontations 2 occurred near the campus between students and the law enforcement officers. Harold Riley, a student at SCSC in 1968, witnessed the shooting and the aftermath and later remembered, “it seemed they did what they came to do, and they knew they killed a few of us. They knew that.
And their job was done.”6 However, across the railroad tracks on the white side of town, some students continued to experience altercations with police officers. Arleathia Jones was pulled over on a return trip from the hospital with her pregnant SCSC classmate, Louise Cawley. They were both asked to exit the vehicle during the traffic stop, and an Orangeburg City Police officer physically assaulted Cawley who was later admitted to the hospital overnight due to the injuries she sustained. Months later, she miscarried.
7 The Orangeburg Massacre was a culmination of a week-long protest aimed at desegregating the local All Star Bowling Lanes. After months of negotiations with the owner, Henry Floyd, failed to produce results, SCSC senior John Stroman decided to stage a sit-in protest at the bowling alley with forty of his classmates. On the second night of the sit-in, police officers arrested fifteen protesters and physically assaulted students gathered in a large crowd outside of the bowling alley. By Wednesday, the college administration had instructed the students not to leave the campus due to the heightened racial tensions and the police brutality.
The city administration did not feel that they could adequately handle the civil rights dispute that was escalating in the town. They requested that the governor send the National Guard. However, the city administration and the state officials made no attempt to resolve the segregation issue at the bowling alley. Federal courts later used the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to force Henry Floyd to integrate his establishment.
Student leader of the sit-in protest, John Stroman bowled without incident after the courts’ decision. As the first African Americans bowled in his alley, Floyd stated, “I can’t fight the Federal Government. I can’t fight 3 any government. There’s nothing I can do about it.”8 In response, The Bronze Raven, an African American newspaper based in Toledo, Ohio, posed the question, “if all it took was a demand that the bowling alley owners obey the law, then, it may be asked why the City of Orangeburg and the State of South Carolina did not themselves know that equally as well as the Federal Government.”9 Students continued to protest after the massacre calling for Governor Robert McNair to initiate a civil rights investigation and fire the Highway Patrolmen who murdered their classmates.
When it became clear that McNair would not take action, they began writing letters to Lieutenant Governor John C. West and asked him to do so. One student, Delores Irene Shaw expressed her disgruntlement with the state’s response to the massacre by kindly reminding West, “Sir, this is a college not a slaughter house.”10 Reading these letters, it is clear that the students were aware that race played a major role in the state’s mishandling of the massacre and the black community’s relegation to second-class citizenship. Albert Dawson, wrote in a letter to West, “now that we’ve been shot down by lawless gun wielding officers I wonder about the first stanza of the Constitution.
I wonder if secretly in the minds of the white it reads, We the white people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union…do ordain and establish this Constitution for the American whites.