Aftermath
At a press conference the following day, Governor Robert E. McNair said the event was "...one of the saddest days in the history of South Carolina". McNair blamed the deaths on outside Black Power agitators and said the incident took place off campus, contrary to the evidence.
The federal government brought charges against the state patrolmen in the first federal trial of police officers for using excessive force at a campus protest. All nine defendants were acquitted.
In a state trial in 1970, the activist Cleveland Sellers was convicted of a charge of riot related to the events, for events on Tuesday at the bowling alley (the protest was on Thursday night). He served 7 months in state prison, getting time off for good behavior. He was the national program director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1973 he wrote The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC. Twenty-five years later, Sellers was officially pardoned by the governor of South Carolina.
Read more about this topic: Orangeburg Massacre
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“The aftermath of joy is not usually more joy.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)