One night in February 1968, a small group of South Carolina State University students tried to enter a bowling alley, just off the campus of the historically Black college in Orangeburg, S.C.
The students wanted to bowl, but more importantly, they sought to make a point. It had been four years since Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodations, yet the bowling alley remained off-limits to Blacks. The students sought to change that.
When they entered the establishment, the owner turned them away. Police were called. They tried to arrest the students for disturbing the peace. Some of the students were beaten, attracting the attention of other SCSU students and setting off demonstrations that, two days later, resulted in the shooting deaths of three students, including one football player, and injuries to dozens of others. The killings became known as the Orangeburg Massacre.
The SCSU shootings marked the first time in the nation’s history that unarmed university student demonstrators had been shot and killed by law enforcement officials. But what also made the event noteworthy was that the group of students who set off the chain of events that culminated in the shootings were football players.
The Orangeburg Massacre was not the only instance that HBCU athletes played key campus leadership roles during the Civil Rights Movement.
Student athletes played prominent roles in several instances during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, including at Florida A&M University, Grambling State University and North Carolina A&T University, where one of the protest leaders was quarterback and student body president Jesse Jackson.
