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THE ORANGEBURG MASSACRE ( FEBRUARY 8, 1968 )

On May 4, 1970, four students were killed and nine others were injured when National Guard troops fired into a crowd of Vietnam War protestors on the campus of Kent State University. The shooting of the students caused national uproar, impacted the course of American politics, and spurred the writing of countless articles and books both in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy and in the years that have followed (Lewis & Hensley, n.d.). Additionally, school children around the United States still receive lessons detailing the shooting of the student protestors. Conversely, the murder of 3 young men and the wounding of 27 young men and women in a similar incident on the campus of South Carolina State College over two years before the Kent State shooting has received limited exposure to this day. In early 1968, Orangeburg, South Carolina was a "staunchly conservative, rural-oriented town of 20,000 located forty miles southeast of the state capital at Columbia" that al...