45 Years Ago, a Stand That Turned Deadly (Orangeburg SC Massacre)

On a February night 45 years ago, a linebacker on the South Carolina State football team named Robert Lee Davis went with three or four teammates to a bowling alley just off the black college’s campus in Orangeburg. Theirs was not an act of recreation but of political protest.

As expected, the alley’s owner turned them away because only whites were admitted. Then the local police arrived to arrest the players for disturbing the peace. When other students nearby began to object, the officers drew their nightsticks and the beatings began.

Two nights later, on Feb. 8, 1968, Davis and a larger group of football players joined their fellow students in building a bonfire near the campus entrance in a demonstration against the police assault. This time, an all-white force of state troopers responded. By the time the lawmen were done firing, 3 South Carolina State students lay dead and 27 had been wounded.

The Orangeburg Massacre, as the event came to be called, has grown over time into a landmark in civil rights history. More specifically, it stands as a tragically valiant episode in the history of political activism by black athletes, specifically the football players and the coach of South Carolina State.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/sports/ncaafootball/south-carolina-state-stand-unmatched-by-any-made-on-a-field.html