Author
gretchen
its black history month . . . has the headlines covered anything like this?
Story Filed: Thursday, February 08, 2001 1:22 PM EST
ORANGEBURG, S.C. (AP) -- More than 30 years after three men were killed by state police during a civil rights protest, Gov. Jim Hodges said Thursday the state still is healing.
Hodges, a first-term Democrat, became the first South Carolina governor to participate in a ceremony honoring the victims.
``We deeply regret what happened here on the night of Feb. 8, 1968,'' he said. ``The Orangeburg Massacre was a great tragedy for our state. Even today, the state of South Carolina bows its head, bends its knee and begins the search for reconciliation.''
The shootings at predominantly black South Carolina State University happened during a protest over the banning of blacks from Orangeburg's only bowling alley. A platoon of white highway patrolmen opened fire on the protesters, killing 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 people were injured.
``If these three young men were alive today, their sons and daughters would be college students just like you,'' Hodges told the crowd that included some of those injured that night.
``They were here because their parents believed in the power of education. And you are here because of the sacrifices they made. These sacrifices must never be forgotten, and these opportunities must never be taken for granted.''
Nine patrolman were indicted by a federal grand jury; they were all acquitted. Many of them said students fired first, threw bricks and at least one Molotov cocktail.
Students and protesters have denied that they were armed. Nat Abraham, a Columbia journalist who witnessed the shootings, said it was an ``ambush.''
Abraham said the students were herded into an open field by a fire truck and right into the patrolmen's line of fire. When the shooting started, Abraham remembers thinking, ``God, please let them be shooting into the air.''
The governor at the time, Robert McNair, never has attended one of the anniversary ceremonies.
Speaking before Thursday's ceremony, John West, who was lieutenant governor at the time and followed McNair into the governor's office in 1973, said McNair went ``through a very difficult time'' during and after the protests that led to the shootings.
``I sympathize with him,'' West said. ``He was, I know, and he is, very sensitive, particularly about it being called the Orangeburg Massacre. It was not intended to be a massacre. It was a situation that got of hand.''
On the Net: South Carolina State University http://www.scsu.edu