Jack Bass: The Orangeburg Massacre

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.  Continue reading “Jack Bass: The Orangeburg Massacre”