February 2, 2016 – In a week when Charleston learned that the Emmanuel AME Church had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, it was certainly timely that we would be visited by Jack Bass to learn of another mass killing with racial roots – the Orangeburg Massacre. Dr. Bass is a graduate of the University of South Carolina who studied at Harvard and received his doctorate in American Studies from Emory University. He is currently a professor emeritus at the College of Charleston has the unique distinction of likely being the only man in Charleston who has flown off the U.S.S. Yorktown. Dr. Bass has had an illustrious career as a journalist and came to us this week as a first-hand witness to the events in Orangeburg which occurred forty-eight years ago. Dr. Bass relayed to us the events leading up to that fateful day of February 8, 1968, a day which led to what Dr. Bass considers the most unknown tragedy of the civil rights era.
In February of 1968, Dr. Bass was the Columbia bureau chief for the Charlotte Observer and a stringer correspondent for the New York Times. It was four years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and black students at South Carolina State College, now University, we still unable to bowl in Orangeburg, instead having to travel to Columbia a good forty minutes away. On February 5, 1968, there were three white students at the predominately black college and a group of students, which included one of these young men, went to the local bowling alley seeking entrance to bowl, but were turned away by the owner who called the police.
The chief of police called South Carolina’s then sitting governor, Robert McNair, who assured him that he and his town would be protected. It was a time of riots across the country in places like Detroit and Newark and fear was the prevailing emotion of many in the halls of government. Both the National Guard and the South Carolina Highway Patrol were dispatched to Orangeburg. Dr. Bass explained that all procedures for riot control in place at the time stressed that no shots be fired without orders from a superior officer of the forces deployed. Typically law enforcement would load shotguns with three rounds of birdshot, then rounds with buckshot, to ensure that the first shots would not be lethal. Shotguns used by the Highway Patrol in Orangeburg, however, held rounds with only buckshot ensuring that the carnage would be great if their use was employed.
At the time Cleveland Sellers was a professor at Vorhees College. Dr. Bass, like any good newsman, had sources in many law enforcement agencies and his FBI contact confirmed that Sellers’ phone was tapped. Sellers had no interest in bowling, but was deeply interested in seeing that the progress of the civil rights movement continue. It was not surprising that as the tensions mounted after the failed attempt to bring desegregation to the bowling alley, he would become involved with the students’ movement. As tensions mounted everyone and everything seemed to be hurtling toward the same fateful point in time and space.
The mayor of Orangeburg went to campus in an attempt to answer questions and dispel the growing tensions, which Dr. Bass, who was sent to cover events, said were palpable. Crowds of students were throwing bottles at cars and they blocked Highway 601. A bonfire blazed on campus and on the night of the eighth two groups were silhouetted by its light, the students and law enforcement made up of the local police, sheriff’s deputies, agents of the State Law Enforcement Division, the National Guard and around sixty members of the Highway Patrol. A firetruck was called to extinguish the bonfire. At around 10:30 Dr. Bass and a colleague heard what they thought was an explosion and gunshots from a .22 caliber rifle or pistol. He went to the hospital to find Cleveland Sellers had been shot. Later at the county courthouse he listened as the sheriff and the magistrate discussed what charges should be brought against Sellers.
There were approximately eight to ten seconds of gunfire. Three students were killed and many more wounded. The Highway Patrol insisted that the students had charged them, but most of the injured students were shot in the back or the sides. The most likely chain of events from Dr. Bass’ investigation appears to be that an officer of the Highway Patrol had fired warning shots into the air. These warning shots were misinterpreted by other members of the Highway Patrol as coming from the students and a chaotic volley of gunfire ensued. While several trials resulted from Orangeburg Massacre, including the trial which resulted in Sellers being convicted of rioting, no comprehensive formal inquiry has ever occurred.
Because it occurred late at night during a time when so many other issues gripped the nation, press coverage of the massacre was slight. As a result many might believe this tragedy, lost in the mist of time, might have little impact on our country’s history, but Dr. Bass begs to differ. He relayed how in 1968 Governor McNair was rumored to be a top contender for the Vice President’s slot on the Democratic ticket. Hubert Humphrey considered him, but because McNair’s called out the Highway Patrol and the National Guard to Orangeburg the state director of the NAACP could not endorse him as a candidate. As a result Humphrey did not choose him. Dr. Bass speculates that in an election when so many southern states formed the base of the wave which swept Richard Nixon into the Whitehouse, the presence of McNair, a southern governor, on the Humphrey ticket, might have put a Democrat into the executive mansion, resulting in a greatly altered future history. To this day Dr. Bass believes the Orangeburg Massacre has a chilling effect on our state’s economy and political progress. He implored us to join him in seeking from our state legislature or our governor the courageous step of concluding once and for all a full investigation into the events of that fateful night to put the ghosts of this tragedy behind us forever.
— Alex Dallis, Keyway Committee