Today, academics, students and others meet in South Carolina for a three-day conference at the College of Charleston. They’ll discuss the black power movement and the legacy of the Orangeburg Massacre.
“It’s still a sore spot for people here, when you talk about a massacre of students, how it never reached the level of a Kent State,” says Patricia Lessane, executive director of the Avery Research Center, which is hosting the conference.
“This was an example of people who were saying, ‘Enough is enough,’ ” she says. “We hear about Selma and other places,” referring to the March 7, 1965, attack on voting rights protesters in the Alabama city, “but you don’t hear about Orangeburg.”
