The Afro-American Society at Indiana University South Bend

Abstract

For Samuel Hammond, Henry Smith, and Delano Middleton February 8, 1968 was a fateful day. While protesting about the continued segregation at a bowling alley and other establishments after the passage of the Civil Rights Act on the campus of South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, these three African American students were shot dead by officers of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. Thirty more people were wounded as well. While this deadly occurrence was quickly overshadowed by events that garnered significantly more publicity both within the United States and without, Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination April 4, 1968 for example, this was the first in what was soon to become a long series of outrages against the black community that had the effect of galvanizing black students on campuses all across the nation.