An account of the night of February 8, 1968 when a group of young people were protesting on the campus of South Carolina State College and officers of the law opened fire killing three young men.

New York Times Bestseller What J. D. Vance did for Appalachia with Hillbilly Elegy, CNN analyst and one of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina history Bakari Sellers does for the rural South, in this important book that illuminates the lives of America’s forgotten black working-class men and women. Part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis, My Vanishing Country is an eye-opening journey through the South's past, present, and future. Anchored in in Bakari Seller’s hometown of Denmark, South Carolina, Country illuminates the pride and pain that continues to fertilize the soil of one of the poorest states in the nation. He traces his father’s rise to become, friend of Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King, a civil rights hero, and member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) , to explore the plight of the South's dwindling rural, black working class—many of whom can trace their ancestry back for seven generations. In his poetic personal history, we are awakened to the crisis affecting the other “Forgotten Men & Women,” who the media seldom acknowledges. For Sellers, these are his family members, neighbors, and friends. He humanizes the struggles that shape their lives: to gain access to healthcare as rural hospitals disappear; to make ends meet as the factories they have relied on shut down and move overseas; to hold on to precious traditions as their towns erode; to forge a path forward without succumbing to despair. My Vanishing Country is also a love letter to fatherhood—to Sellers' father, his lodestar, whose life lessons have shaped him, and to his newborn twins, who he hopes will embrace the Sellers family name and honor its legacy.

This memoir by Cleveland Sellers, a SNCC volunteer, traces his zealous commitment to activism from the time of the sit-ins, demonstrations, and freedom rides in the early '60s. In a narrative encompassing the Mississippi Freedom Summer (1964), the historic march in Selma, the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, and the murders of civil rights activists in Mississippi, he recounts the turbulent history of SNCC and tells the powerful story of his own no-return dedication to the cause of civil rights and social change.

The turbulent history of one of South Carolina's historically black colleges and its significant role in the civil rights movement Since its founding in 1896, South Carolina State University has provided vocational, undergraduate, and graduate education for generations of African Americans. Now the state's flagship historically black university, it achieved this recognition after decades of struggling against poverty, inadequate infrastructure and funding, and social and cultural isolation. In South Carolina State University: A Black Land-Grant College in Jim Crow America, William C. Hine examines South Carolina State's complicated start, its slow and long-overdue transition to a degree-granting university, and its significant role in advancing civil rights in the state and country. A product of the state's "separate but equal" legislation, South Carolina State University was a hallmark of Jim Crow South Carolina. Black and white students were indeed provided separate colleges, but the institutions were in no way equal. When established, South Carolina State emphasized vocational and agricultural subjects as well as teacher training for black students while the University of South Carolina offered white students a broad range of higher-level academic and professional course work leading to a bachelor's degree. Through the middle decades of the twentieth century, South Carolina State was an incubator for much of the civil rights activity in the state. The tragic Orangeburg massacre on February 8, 1968, occurred on its campus and resulted in the deaths of three students and the wounding of twenty-eight others. Using the university as a lens, Hine examines the state's history of race relations, poverty and progress, and the politics of higher education for whites and blacks from the Reconstruction era into the twenty-first century. Hine's work showcases what the institution has achieved as well as what was required for the school to achieve the parity it was once promised. This fascinating account is replete with revealing anecdotes, more than sixty photographs and illustrations, and a cast of famous figures including Benjamin R. Tillman, Coleman Blease, Benjamin E. Mays, Marian Birnie Wilkinson, Mary McLeod Bethune, Modjeska Simkins, Strom Thurmond, Essie Mae Washington Williams, James F. Byrnes, John Foster Dulles, James E. Clyburn, and Willie Jeffries.

A unique catalog of historic civil rights events, This Day in Civil Rights History details the struggles, sacrifices, and triumphs on the road to equal rights for all U.S. citizens. From the Quakers' 17th-century antislavery resolution, to slave uprisings during the Civil War, to the infamous Orangeburg Massacre in 1968, and beyond, authors Horace Randall Williams and Ben Beard present a vivid collection of 366 events--one for every day of the year plus Leap Day--chronicling African Americans' battle for human dignity and self-determination. Every day of the year has witnessed significant events in the struggle for civil rights. This Day in Civil Rights History is an illuminating collection of these cultural turning points.

Between 1965 and 1968, racial unrest was sparked when Orangeburg's black residents tried to integrate the All-Star Bowling Lanes, a "White-Only" facility located only a few blocks from South Carolina State College and Claflin College. Through his impeccable eye for detail and stunning portraits of reality, Cecil J. Williams and Sonny DuBose capture the tumultuous circumstances of one of South Carolina's greatest sorrows. This collection of stories, interviews and photographs revolves around a tragic event on February 8, 1968, when an all-white throng of state police unleashed massive gunfire into a crowd of about 150 students near the edge of the South Carolina State College campus. Three students were killed, and 27 were injured. Orangeburg 1968 is one of the most comprehensive books ever published about the Orangeburg Massacre. Many observers and surviving eyewitnesses reveal their stories in the unprecedented collection of historical interviews and photographs. Retold in the survivors' own words and Williams's pictures, this book remains a tribute to the lives of the students who suffered, fought, and died to reclaim their rights and freedom.

Images of America: African Americans of Orangeburg County explores the lives of African Americans in Orangeburg and some of the surrounding towns during the 20th century. Orangeburg has been called "the little town with the big history"--and that it is with over 30 sites on the National Register of Historic Places, including the beautiful Edisto Memorial Garden, which is known all over the state. This unique town, which is also the county seat, is the location of four colleges, including two historically black colleges. These schools and the church communities were driving forces during desegregation in the turbulent 1950s and 1960s. South Carolina State University was the site of the Orangeburg Massacre, where three students were killed in 1968. It has taken years for this town to heal from the tragic events that occurred; however, it has more than survived all the struggles and marches to become a better community. This book highlights various achievements and contributions from African Americans who have helped Orangeburg prosper.

2020 Museum of African American History Stone Book Award 2020 Lillian Smith Book Award Finalist, 2020 Pauli Murray Book Prize For generations, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have been essential institutions for the African American community. Their nurturing environments not only provided educational advancement but also catalyzed the Black freedom struggle, forever altering the political destiny of the United States. In this book, Jelani M. Favors offers a history of HBCUs from the 1837 founding of Cheyney State University to the present, told through the lens of how they fostered student activism. Favors chronicles the development and significance of HBCUs through stories from institutions such as Cheyney State University, Tougaloo College, Bennett College, Alabama State University, Jackson State University, Southern University, and North Carolina A&T. He demonstrates how HBCUs became a refuge during the oppression of the Jim Crow era and illustrates the central role their campus communities played during the civil rights and Black Power movements. Throughout this definitive history of how HBCUs became a vital seedbed for politicians, community leaders, reformers, and activists, Favors emphasizes what he calls an unwritten "second curriculum" at HBCUs, one that offered students a grounding in idealism, racial consciousness, and cultural nationalism.

The definitive history of South Carolina's Confederate flag controversy and 2005 finalist for Popular Culture Book of the Year from ForeWord Magazine.

In the summer of 1964, the turmoil of the civil rights movement reached its peak in Mississippi, with activists across the political spectrum claiming that God was on their side in the struggle over racial justice. This was the summer when violence against blacks increased at an alarming rate and when the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi resulted in national media attention. Charles Marsh takes us back to this place and time, when the lives of activists on all sides of the civil rights issue converged and their images of God clashed. He weaves their voices into a gripping narrative: a Ku Klux Klansman, for example, borrows fiery language from the Bible to link attacks on blacks to his "priestly calling"; a middle-aged woman describes how the Gospel inspired her to rally other African Americans to fight peacefully for their dignity; a SNCC worker tells of harrowing encounters with angry white mobs and his pilgrimage toward a new racial spirituality called Black Power. Through these emotionally charged stories, Marsh invites us to consider the civil rights movement anew, in terms of religion as a powerful yet protean force driving social action. The book's central figures are Fannie Lou Hamer, who "worked for Jesus" in civil rights activism; Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi; William Douglas Hudgins, an influential white Baptist pastor and unofficial theologian of the "closed society"; Ed King, a white Methodist minister and Mississippi native who campaigned to integrate Protestant congregations; and Cleveland Sellers, a SNCC staff member turned black militant. Marsh focuses on the events and religious convictions that led each person into the political upheaval of 1964. He presents an unforgettable American social landscape, one that is by turns shameful and inspiring. In conclusion, Marsh suggests that it may be possible to sift among these narratives and lay the groundwork for a new thinking about racial reconciliation and the beloved community. He maintains that the person who embraces faith's life-affirming energies will leave behind a most powerful legacy of social activism and compassion.