ORANGEBURG MASSACRE!
On February 8th, 2022 it marked the 54th anniversary of the Orangeburg Massacre! This was a horrific event that changed the test of time and the history of South Carolina State University. I was honored to be able to perform my own rendition and speech/performance of how I thought about the event and the things that transpired that made it a monument in the civil rights movement. On this day we interview Sandra Paul Miller, who also was at the event and shared her thoughts, she was a student at Wilkinson High School at the time and also a member at Trinity United Methodist Church
The event itself for me was a day of learning, growing, emotional, somber, happiness, and a plethora of other things. I performed on this day a speech called Deja Vu, which is a tribute to the event and my reflection on the legacy of the massacre. I tried to capture the feel of the day February 8th, 1968, and all that transpired during it.
From hearing from Zack Middleton nephew of Delano Middleton, speaking and listening to the words spoken by Cleveland Sellers, as well as the other survivors and cultured students and faculty in attendance. A day of reverence through words spewed and justice sought.
Déjà vu! No not the movie with Denzel Washington and Paula Patton. What does that mean? A feeling of having already experienced the present situation. As I walked onto the campus of South Carolina State University on August the 11th 2021, from the first day I was here I grasped an interpersonal connection, feeling, and what I would call a tingle in the spine of a place feeling like home.
At the time I didn’t know why, if it was the marching band jamming in the morning or night, the Greeks stomping on the yard, the class and intellect exuded on a daily basis by professors and students or last of all the fashion show, the drip, and style! All of these things resonated with me but, that isn’t why I felt the Déjà vu.
As I stepped passed Leroy Davis Hall one day making my way to see Ms. White in the honors college to make sure all my business was in order during the first week of classes, I stumbled pass this open plot of land that was quiet, somber, but, peaceful. I looked at it for a glance and thought to myself something was here, I’m not sure what but, something massive was here. So, I went on with my day and my HBCU experience at the Illustrious South Carolina State University but, every once in a while, something would draw me back to this area.
A few other times I had a break between classes or leaving the café and I told my friends I would catch up with them and headed to this center circle. Now for me It became my place to reflect, think, and remember -- I listened to all my Neo Soul music there, Erykah, Jill, Maxwell, D’angelo, Masego, and three times I sat and thought about the trials and tribulations I had in my life and was able to sit and think. One of the days I began to be real curious looking around the plot and saw a name that looked all too familiar, I took a double take to make sure I was seeing correctly and saw a name that was spelled exactly the same as mine, with a death date attached, February 8th, 1968.
I looked up the name and was startled by what I saw of gruesome images of smoke fogging in the air, thick dark blood spewed on sidewalks, bodies rolling down hills, shoes and clothes in a disarray laid all over and last but not least striped uniforms with helmets standing over it all, without a care or concern on any of their faces. My first initial thought was, what is this, I researched and looked at the names and the story and it brought me to one of the most horrific, overlooked, and serious parts of our American History the Orangeburg Massacre.
Dr. King had a quote:
Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.
Why? Why? Why!
How can we live in a world where human beings can be brutally murdered for simply trying to receive the basic human rights that this country affords, everybody else and when I say everybody, I mean everybody?
It saddens me to my core that we are here today commemorating the death, forgive me, the brutal murder of three brave young man, Samuel Hammond Jr, Henry Smith, and Delano Middleton, who were simply peacefully marching for the right to be treated equally and to hang out at a bowling alley, and were sadly denied that right, simply because of the color of their skin.
So many people were wounded, viciously beaten, bullets piercing their backs, buttocks, and bottom of their feet, physically and mentally scarred, psychologically damaged for life, and tragically killed, 28 people were shot, all for the simple right of being treated like a human being.
I can only imagine the courage and the bravery it took to March on that gloomy day on February 8, 1968. Singing protest songs and building bomb fires peacefully in unity as won.
Fighting for what was right, one man, Mr. Cleveland Sellers was blamed and left with all responsibility and imprisoned wrongfully for a year! All while being paraded on the steps of the city jail! And here we stand 54 years later, and we are still fighting, can you believe it they don’t even want us to vote, it's 2022 people, this is why we are thankful for men like Majority Whip Clyburn!
We are still fighting, and we will never stop fighting for what is right. I stand before you today on the backs of Frederick Douglass on the back of Thurgood Marshall, on the back of Adam Clayton Powell, W. e. B. DuBois, on the back of Paul Robson and Charles Hamilton Houston, on the back of Dr. Martin Luther King, Andrew Young, Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer and especially on the back of Delano Middleton, Samuel Hammond Jr. and Henry Smith and all those wounded.
If it wasn’t for these great heroes I wouldn’t have the privilege an honor of being where I am, so all I can say is thank you, thank you for your courage, thank you for your perseverance, thank you for your determination, thank you for your dedication, thank you for your heart, thank you for your love of God, thank you for your bravery and thank you for making me the person I am and the person I strive to be! We as a people have come from the bowels of the bottoms of slave ships, survived the horrific nightmare called slavery, persevered through the brutality Jim Crow, the prison industrial complex, where you steal a ham and go to jail for LIFE, watch Sounder and 400 years of inequality. As God is my witness, With the power of love, not hate and the guidance of almighty God and faith, there is nothing we as a people can’t accomplish, overcome, and succeed!
A Déjà vu -- I felt this way because I remember where I was at 12 when Trayvon Martin was gunned down, I remember where I was at 14 when Mike Brown was killed, the nine members of the Charleston Church Shooting, Breonna Taylor, Ahamaud Aubrey, and George Floyd.
It’s a permanent stain because the stories have a resemblance but, we remember, we honor, respect, live for them, and make sure by any means necessary we continue to shine the light on Smith, Hammond, Middleton, and any other beautiful Black spirits.
Click here to enjoy my performance of Deja Vu and how my thoughts of the day were similar to Sandra Miller.
