Time for Orangeburg closure

Truth and reconciliation combine to provide the theme of this week's 40th anniversary of the Orangeburg Massacre. The tragedy that befell on Feb. 8, 1968 left three young men dead and more than two dozen wounded by police gunfire on the third night of turmoil that began when black students attempted to bowl at Orangeburg's still-segregated and only bowling alley.

The reconciliation part of the theme will take center stage Friday at the annual memorial service at South Carolina State University. Dr. Cleveland L. Sellers, who has emerged from being the scapegoat into an honored hero of the civil rights movement, will be the main speaker. But also on the program for the first time is a white official of the city of Orangeburg, Mayor Paul L. Miller.

Sellers, convicted in 1970 of riot on the flimsiest of evidence, received a pardon 23 years later by the state's Probation, Pardon, and Parole Board. At the trial, the presiding judge threw out other charges — "incitement" and "conspiracy" to riot — on grounds that the only evidence presented against the defendant was that he got shot "and that to my mind means very little." Sellers served seven months in prison, missing the birth of his first child, now a physician. His pardon in 1993 led to his becoming a valued member of the University of South Carolina faculty and director of its highly-rated African-American Studies program.

Sellers, as third ranking national officer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, had returned to his native South Carolina after four years on the front lines of civil rights conflict in the Deep South. In Orangeburg, however, his attention had turned to a new idea — developing consciousness and student awareness of black history and culture — a subject then mostly unrecognized as worthy of serious academic study. He went on to earn a master's degree in education from Harvard and a Ph.D. in education administration from the University of North Carolina.

In December, at a special ceremony at Brookland Baptist Church in West Columbia, he formally received the Eagle Scout award he had earned at 16 in his home town of Denmark. After a request by him last spring, the Boy Scouts of America searched for and found paperwork misplaced more than four decades earlier.

The chief Boy Scout official for central South Carolina, in making the presentation, said Sellers had spent his full life living the values of the Boy Scouts.

The book I co-authored, "The Orangeburg Massacre," also characterizes the nine defendant highway patrolmen as scapegoats, in a sense. The decisions to issue lethal buckshot, apparently suggested by an FBI agent involved in rudimentary riot control training for the patrol, and to grant each officer authority to shoot came from higher-ups. Both violated standard procedures outlined in all existing crowd control manuals, which specifically stated that no one fires a weapon unless authorized by a senior officer in command and that minimum force be used. The policy in place amounted to a formula for disaster.

In 2006, when his biography was published, former Gov. Robert E. McNair accepted "responsibility" for what happened. His acceptance of responsibility as governor means that the state was responsible. The officers fired in their official capacity as agents of the state, what in legal terms is called "state action." The officers were cleared of criminal wrong-doing, but the fact remains that three young men died and at least 28 others suffered serious gunshot wounds — and painful emotional scars.

Although at the trial of the patrolmen a number of witnesses testified hearing gunfire "from the direction of the campus" immediately before the deadly 8 to 10 barrage of deadly gunfire, here's what actually happened. What they heard was a patrolman stationed in front of them firing what he intended as warning shots into the air from his carbine as some 150 or so students, who had retreated to the campus interior, began heading back toward the sloping front edge, to watch firemen douse a bonfire. The sound of shots triggered deadly firing by others. Unfortunately, Gov. McNair erroneously reported the next day in Columbia that the shooting occurred off the campus.

The state has never made a formal investigation and report of what happened. Legislation introduced last year for such a study remains untouched in a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, with no hearings or other action. A major law firm in the state has quietly expressed to legislative leaders its willingness to provide, pro bono, a team of lawyers to collect and fully examine the evidence as part of such an investigation.

With that caliber of volunteered talent effectively and dispassionately examining conflicting stories and disputes, a full and factual report would be forthcoming.

The matter of the Orangeburg Massacre isn't going away. Tom Brokow, whose new book "BOOM!" focuses on 1968 and fully includes the Orangeburg Massacre, will open the memorial service Friday with a special taped historical retrospective. A PBS documentary, produced by Northern Lights Productions in Boston, will air nationally next fall. It promises to be balanced, powerful, and informative. A new Web site, www.orangeburgmassacre1968.com provides full and reliable information.

The time has come for healing and closure. The Legislature has the opportunity, by passing the current resolution, to present the people of South Carolina with truth. All South Carolinians should welcome it.

Jack Bass is professor of humanities and social sciences at the College of Charleston.