Students March
Allen University and Benedict College Students took Varied Routes downtown from their campuses. Several in this group on Sumter Street carried Bibles or their textbooks. Photo by Vic Tutte, Courtesy of The State newspaper Photograph Archive, Richland Library, Columbia, SC.
“March 2, 1960 in Columbia, SC: In the morning sleet and rain, about two hundred students marched two by two to the core of the white shopping area. They walked in and out of stores, and at noon small groups converged on lunch counters at Kress and Woolworth.
....When forty to fifty black students entered Woolworth, the manager had already closed all but two of the seating sections at the lunch counter. As soon as the Columbia students sat, he closed the open sections too. The men and women read textbooks or Bibles for about ten minutes before departing. Protester Jack Simmons told a reporter, “If we can spend our money at the counters, we should be able to eat there, too.””
“March 3, 1960 in Columbia, SC: Tapp’s served only its employees in its roped-off dining area. At Woolworth ropes barricaded the lunch space, so students left after a few minutes. At Kress employees had removed counter seats. On the street a group of white men formed a line of their own and marched toward the demonstrators, yelling and laughing, but didn’t attack. This time two students managed to obtain service at McCrory’s. A young man, described in
news reports afterward as a ‘light-skinned Negro,’ entered ahead of the students, sat at the counter, told the waitress he was in a hurry, and ordered tea and a hamburger. When served he passed the food along to ‘a darker companion.’ The manager closed the counter, turned off the lights, and closed the store for an hour.”
Despite the force used Against them, including tear gas and fire-hose spray, Claflin University and South Carolina State College Students peacefully accepted arrest, walked with law enforcement Officers to the courthouse, and waited in Line for bookings. Photo by Richard taylor, Courtesy of The State newspaper Photograph Archive, Richland Library, Columbia, SC.
See WIS-TV Outtakes on the Orangeburg March’s beginning. Student Leader Chuck McDew, 32-56 seconds, provides Identification to Law Enforcement Officers, including Joseph Preston '“Pete” Strom, chief of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. At 1:25, a plainclothesman and police tackle an armed white man. Footage courtesy of Moving Images Research Collection, University of South Carolina.
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“March 15, 1960, in Orangeburg, SC: Denied a parade permit, Claflin and South Carolina State students marched anyway, more than one thousand strong on March 15. ‘Part of the nonviolence philosophy is you always reveal what you’re going to do,’ explained [Thomas] Gaither, regarding the useless parade application. ‘It became a battle between us and the leadership of the city and the city’s cops,’ said [Charles Frederick ‘Chuck’] McDew. The students—well-dressed and instructed not to bring so much as a fingernail file—intended to walk again to Memorial Square, there to pray for equal rights and sing patriotic songs, then return to campus and class. That’s not what happened, and consequently the nation discovered Orangeburg, South Carolina.”
“Lloyd Williams’s group walked just a few blocks past campus, to the local Piggly Wiggly, before firefighters and police told the students to turn around. ‘I was walking at the head of the line with a young lady,’ he told the New York Post. ‘The police chief insisted I was the leader. I told him I was not the leader and that I had no right to ask them to turn around.’ Students behind him shouted, ‘We are all leaders. If one is arrested, we will all be arrested.’
Police arrested Williams, then the police chief instructed, ‘All right, get them n———,’ and firefighters turned fire hoses on the group, according to the Post. ‘One student had water hit his ear with such force it began to bleed, and he stood there and took it,’ Williams said. ‘No one ran away. The students stood their ground and kept pressing forward. They began to sing, ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.’”
“More than [500 students were arrested, 388 charged with breach of peace, and] fifty demonstrators needed medical care. When men trained a fire hose on one young woman, knocking her down and holding the water on her, the force broke her kneecap. Another female student, hit in the face by the water, lost three teeth. Still another needed her eyes treated after exposure to tear gas. Several students soon came down with colds, even pneumonia; some were hospitalized.”
“Rev. H. P. Sharper, president of the NAACP state conference, called the violence used against the peaceful demonstrators ‘strong-arm, Facist-like tactics.’ He said student demonstrations, which had been ‘executed in an orderly and peaceful manner, designed to appeal to the good judgment and Christian conscience of the white people of South Carolina,’ illustrated young adults’ determination ‘to live in South Carolina under the Constitution, minus the indecencies traditionally imposed upon us by Southern tradition.’”