Orangeburg Massacre commemorated on 44th anniversary

Orangeburg Massacre remembered 44 years later (Added: February 08, 2012)

SC State honoring the 3 killed and 28 injured on the 44th anniversary of the Orangeburg Massacre. (more)

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By: Andy Wontor | CountOn2.com
Published: February 08, 2012

44 years after the fact, dozens of survivors, and families of loved ones lost, gathered together to commemorate the anniversary of the Orangeburg Massacre.

February 8th, 1968, 28 students were shot on South Carolina State's campus, three more killed. It had been three days of tense relations as students protested segregation at a local bowling alley. The final night ended in a bonfire held by the students. It was at this bonfire that shots erupted as South Carolina Highway Patrol officers fired into the crowd.

Thomas Kennerly was one of those shot during the protest. 21 at the time, he says he came over to the bonfire to see what was going on, and that was when he was shot in the back, the hip and the foot. To this day he cannot understand why lethal force was used. "I saw it as it was...a massacre. That is the way I saw it, because I guess my attitude was why was it necessary to use force, deadly force?"

The Orangeburg shootings pre-date those at Kent State and Jackson State. It is the first incident of it's kind on a United State college campus. Kennerly says that even after the rounds went off, the students could not believe what had just happened. "We didn't believe that it had actually taken place, that the shooting had actually taken place."

Since then, those who lived through it, and those who lost a loved one, grieve together on the anniversary. Two of those killed were SCSU students, Sam Hammond and Henry Smith. The third, Delano Middleton, was only 17 years old and a local high school student. "We always wonder about him, where he would have been, what he would have done. He didn't get an opportunity to get any further past his 17th birthday," says Middleton's nephew, Alonzo Middleton.

The losses from that day are obvious, but the lessons learned and the progress made since then even more so. "I would want our young people to know the depth of what transpired back then, that in order for them to be where they are now, that they had to stand on the shoulders of somebody else who had sacrificed and died before them," says Kennerly.