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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums45 Years Ago, a Stand That Turned Deadly (Orangeburg SC Massacre)
On a February night 45 years ago, a linebacker on the South Carolina State football team named Robert Lee Davis went with three or four teammates to a bowling alley just off the black colleges campus in Orangeburg. Theirs was not an act of recreation but of political protest.
As expected, the alleys owner turned them away because only whites were admitted. Then the local police arrived to arrest the players for disturbing the peace. When other students nearby began to object, the officers drew their nightsticks and the beatings began.
Two nights later, on Feb. 8, 1968, Davis and a larger group of football players joined their fellow students in building a bonfire near the campus entrance in a demonstration against the police assault. This time, an all-white force of state troopers responded. By the time the lawmen were done firing, 3 South Carolina State students lay dead and 27 had been wounded.
The Orangeburg Massacre, as the event came to be called, has grown over time into a landmark in civil rights history. More specifically, it stands as a tragically valiant episode in the history of political activism by black athletes, specifically the football players and the coach of South Carolina State.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/sports/ncaafootball/south-carolina-state-stand-unmatched-by-any-made-on-a-field.html
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)makes me shudder.
Blanks
(4,835 posts)for black college football players to arm themselves for protection as a result of this decades old reminder of out of control police action.
Just curious. That typically seems to be the proposed solution.
formercia
(18,479 posts)into arming themselves by an FBI provocateur. We know how that worked out.
lunasun
(21,646 posts)Twenty-eight other persons were injured, including a women who miscarried due to a beating
All troopers acquitted
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)AnotherDreamWeaver
(2,850 posts)Stainless
(718 posts)Rascist bigots exist everywhere in the USA. We have our own controversy here in St. George, Utah where the power elite have chosen to keep the name "Dixie" for the local college even though the school has an ugly past associated with slave auctions, blackface performances and other overt rascist activities.
I don't remember specifically the Orangeburg Massacre because there was so much protesting and killing going on at the time. Thank you for reminding us of those brave young people who gave their lives in the name of social justice for everyone.
Fuck Rascist Bigots wherever they exist.
MrScorpio
(73,631 posts)noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)the troopers were just protecting their "way of life."