On the night of February 8, 1968, South Carolina state highway
patrolmen fired on civil rights demonstrators in front of South
Carolina State College, a historically black institution in the
town of Orangeburg. Three young black men--Samuel Hammond, Delano
Middleton, and Henry Smith--were killed, and twenty-seven other
protestors were injured. Preceding the infamous events at Kent
State University by more than two years, the Orangeburg Massacre,
as it came to be known, was one of the first violent civil rights
confrontations on an American college campus. The patrolmen
involved were exonerated while victims and their families were left
still seeking justice. To this day the community of Orangeburg
endeavors to find resolution and reconciliation.
In Blood and Bone, Orangeburg native Jack Shuler offers a
multifaceted examination of the massacre and its aftermath,
uncovering a richer history than the one he learned as a white
youth growing up in Orangeburg. Shuler focuses on why events
unfolded and escalated as they did and on the ramifications that
still haunt the community.
Despite the violence of the massacre and its contentious legacy,
Orangeburg is a community of people living and working together.
Shuler tells their fascinating stories and pays close attention to
the ways in which the region is shaping a new narrative on its own,
despite the lack of any official reexamination of the massacre. He
also explores his own efforts to understand the tragedy in the
context of Orangeburg's history of violence. His native connections
gave him access to individuals, black and white, who have
previously not spoken out publicly. Blood and Bone breaks new
ground as an investigation of the massacre and also as a reflection
by a proud Orangeburg native on the meanings of Southern
community.
Shuler concludes that the history of race and violence in
Orangeburg mirrors the history of race relations in the United
States--a murky and contested narrative, complicated by the
emotions and motivations of those who have shaped the story and of
those who have refused to close the book on it. Orangeburg, like
the rest of the nation, carries the historical burdens of slavery,
war, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and civil rights. Blood and Bone
exposes the ways in which historical memory affects the lives of
ordinary Americans. Shuler explores how they remember the
Orangeburg Massacre, what its meaning holds for them now, and what
it means for the future of the South and the nation.
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