South Carolina State University will commemorate the 58th anniversary of the Orangeburg Massacre on Sunday, Feb. 8, beginning at 1 p.m. in the Martin Luther King Jr. Auditorium on campus.
The public is invited.
SC State alumnus Michael A. Allen, a preservationist and retired National Park Service community partnership specialist, will deliver the keynote address. President Alexander Conyers will also present the university’s annual Smith-Hammond-Middleton Social Justice Awards.
Following the program, the commemoration will move to Smith-Hammond-Middleton Legacy Plaza for a brief torch lighting ceremony with the families of the three young men killed in the massacre.
In a related event immediately after the ceremony, SC State will cut the ribbon on Bulldog Lanes, the university’s recently renovated historic bowling alley in the Kirkland W. Green University Center. The lanes were built in response to the Orangeburg Massacre, which resulted from a student protest over the segregation of Orangeburg’s only bowling alley.
Bulldog Lanes will be home to SC State’s newly restored women’s bowling team while serving as a recreational facility for the SC State student body. Community bowling hours also will be posted.
About the Orangeburg Massacre
On the night of Feb. 8, 1968, Henry Smith, Samuel Hammond and Delano Middleton were killed when police opened fire on some 200 unarmed Black students who were demonstrating in the name of integrating a local bowling alley. Another 28 protesters were wounded. Smith and Hammond were both enrolled at SC State, and Middleton was a 17-year-old student at Wilkinson High School in Orangeburg.
Each year on Feb. 8, the university honors Smith, Hammond and Middleton, their families and the survivors of
