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Orangeburg Massacre: Team to restore bowling alley

ORANGEBURG, SC – Big plans are being made for a once secluded, dark and dusty bowling alley 54 years after state troopers opened fire on a crowd of black students in the day’s murder. now known as the “Orangeburg Massacre.”

After years of neglect, the National Park Service is helping a nonprofit group renovate the All-Star Bowling, remaking it into a fully functional bowling alley with a civil rights theme.

South Carolina soldiers opened fire on a crowd on the outskirts of South Carolina State University’s historic Black campus on February 8, 1968, killing 3 people and wounding 28 others with their bullets. But the shooting remains relatively unknown outside of the state. Compared to the four students killed at Kent State two years later, that’s a footnote in the national narratives of the 1960s protests.

The planners of the Orangeburg All-Star Justice Center in the future hope their renovation project will restore the nation’s memory space of the civil rights movement.

“What we will have is a great national legacy for Orangeburg, South Carolina, and the nation,” said Ellen Zisholtz, president of the Center for Innovative Partnerships, the nonprofit that purchased the vacant building long ago. family. $140,000 from an anonymous donor.

A panel of community members, shooting survivors and civil rights era activists is providing input into shaping the project. In their view, the lanes are lit, the lunch counters bustling, and every time someone clears up leftovers or goes on strike, a display above the lane provides factual information about civil rights history. A digital display on the wall will name visitors who have pledged to seek racial justice.

A $500,000 grant to start the renovations came from the National Park Service, which added the bowling alley to its African-American Civil Rights Network. The grant is paying for architectural plans, a new roof, electrical and plumbing repairs and maybe even some work on the facade, Zisholtz said.

The board also hopes the project could kickstart the revitalization of Orangeburg, a predominantly black town of about 13,000 with a 27% poverty rate.

Zisholtz opened the building’s doors last month to Orangeburg residents, who used their phones to illuminate high points painted on the side walls and take portraits against a backdrop of empty lanes. Some describe their loved one’s involvement in the civil rights movement, and recall memories of knocking down the pegs after the bowling alley was integrated.

“This is history,” said Willie Dean Odom, who brought her children and grandchildren with her. “I just want them to be a part of the memory, to see what it’s like.”

For those who have lived through the shooting or grew up in its shadow, the project is a way to continue to push for justice and ensure murders remain part of South Carolina’s story.

In 2003, then-Government. Mark Sanford officially apologized on behalf of the state. At the federal level, the Justice Department indicated as recently in December that it was still looking into the murders.

But the state has never conducted its own official probe or offered compensation to the victims. State police at the time claimed that protesters shot at the soldiers first, although many of the wounded were shot in the back or in the leg. An FBI investigation resulted in charges against nine service members. They said they acted in self-defence, and a jury of 10 whites and two blacks acquitted them.

In the end, the only person convicted was Cleveland Sellers, a Black activist who was shot in the shoulder and served seven months in prison for rioting. He was pardoned 25 years later.

“We had to keep telling the story until justice prevailed in South Carolina,” Sellers said. He was asked to speak in the State of South Carolina at a ceremony Tuesday to dedicate busts of Samuel Hammond, Delano Middleton and Henry Smith, three young students who were killed. Statues like them have been installed in a memorial on campus, the Smith Hammond Middleton Legacy Plaza.

On Tuesday’s 54th anniversary, the public will have one more chance to step inside All-Star Bowling Lanes before renovation work begins.

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