All month and all year we continue to lift up our rich and proud ancestry and history and remember the triumphs and challenges we’ve had living in the United States of America. Today we remember the Orangeburg Massacre which happened on this day February 8th back in 1968 in South Carolina.
A tragic night that took the lives of three young men and wounded twenty eight others.
This story of the Orangeburg massacre is not different from many of the stories we hear in present day of racism, social injustice, persecution, and discrimination. But on that night after three days of protesting the segregation of a local bowling alley had drawn a lot of attention from local college students and civil right activists. The National guard was called in along with police and when tensions got extremely high the civil rights protest turned deadly.
The event becomes one of the most violent moments in the civil rights era but doesn’t get a lot of attention due to the media focus on the Vietnam war.
Out of the at least 70 armed police officers on the scene of the Orangeburg Massacre, just nine were charged with shooting at the protesters.
Source: history.com
