The Orangeburg S.C. Massacre Feb. 8, 1968 (months before the assassinations of MLK & RFK)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080416_the_orangeburg_massacre/

Posted on Apr 16, 2008

By Amy Goodman

Sen. Barack Obama is clearly a bad bowler. The networks rolled the video clip of his gutter ball endlessly across our TV screens. It was an Internet favorite. The media served it, and the public ate it up. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, the host of “Hardball,” hammed it up when interviewing Obama on the campus of West Chester University in Pennsylvania:

Matthews: One of the perks, senator, of being president of the United States is that you have your own bowling alley. Are you ready to bowl from day one?

Obama: Obviously, I am not.

But in fact, it was not too long ago when African-Americans were not allowed in some bowling alleys. In Orangeburg, S.C., three young African-American men were killed for protesting against that town’s segregated bowling alley.

It was Feb. 8, 1968, months before the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. It was more than two years before the massacre of students at Kent State University in Ohio. Students at South Carolina State University were protesting for access to the town’s only bowling alley. Cleveland Sellers, a student at the time at that historically black college, was also a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and an organizer of the protests. In a recent interview, he said about that night 40 years ago:

“It was a cold night ... this was the fourth day of activities around the effort to desegregate the bowling alley. ... The students had built a bonfire to keep themselves warm and 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 Capitol? And they thought that they were in an area that was pretty safe and secure, and they never expected the police to open fire.”

Sellers is now director of the African-American studies program at the University of South Carolina. His memory is vivid: “The darkness turned to light as the police opened fire, nine highway patrolmen and one local police officer firing rifles and shotguns and pistols. It was a shock to many of the students that there was no bullhorns, no whistles, no anything that indicated that this kind of extremely lethal action would be taken on these students.”

FULL story at link.

I posted here because the article only mentions Senator Obama. It is not about him.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 650 stations in North America.

© 2008 Amy Goodman

Distributed by King Features Syndicate

[ck4829]

1. K&R

[leveymg]

2. KNR - This incident of police murder of civil rights demonstrators is never mentioned. Why?

Thanks for posting this.

[unc70]

3. Just another divisive fight from the 60's. Time to get over those old fights.

It was a big deal in neighboring NC in 1968. Demonstrations in Chapel Hill.

That story was prominent at the time, but it was in the middle of the worst month of Vietnam war, the Tet offensive.

Some of the difference is comparable to the disparity in coverage of Kent State vs Jackson State in 1970. Racial and regional prejudices made it less appealing as a national story.

[Richard Steele]

4. K&R

[Orwellian_Ghost]

5. K&R