On April 23, 2009, from noon to 1:00 p.m., Cecil Williams, Orangeburg author and photographer will discuss his books and art.
Williams is the author of Orangeburg 1968 which documents one of the least remembered chapters of America's Civil Rights history; the Orangeburg Massacre. On February 8, 1968, over 150 students gathered on the campus of South Carolina State University to protest the segregation policies of the town's only bowling alley. Amid escalating tensions, students protested by building a bonfire on the edge of the campus. State Highway Patrolmen fired live ammunition into the unarmed group in an attempt to end the protest. Killed were Henry Smith, Samuel Hammond, both students at South Carolina State University, and Delano Middleton, a 17-year-old Wilkinson High School student.
The Orangeburg Massacre was the first incident of its kind on an American university campus but it received little national attention and almost no mention in histories of the Civil Rights Movement. In producing this outstanding volume, Sonny DuBose, author of, The Road to Brown, and Cecil Williams, author-photographer of Out-of-the Box in Dixie, and Freedom and Justice, compiled interviews and photographs of living participants and observers.
This lunchtime program is presented by the State Library's South Carolina Center for the Book, the South Carolina affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book. The SC Center for the Book is a cooperative project of the State Library, the University of South Carolina School of Library and Information Science, and The Humanities Council SC. This program is FREE and open to the public. Attendees are welcome to bring a bag lunch. The program is located in Room 309 of the State Library's Administrative Building at 1430 Senate Street.
