Story at a glance
- On Feb. 8, 1968, South Carolina Highway Patrolmen opened fire at South Carolina State during a nonviolent protest by Black students and residents, killing three and wounding 28 people.
- The nonprofit group Center for Creative Partnerships is working to restore the bowling alley where demonstrations occurred a few days before the shooting and add a civil rights museum.
- The National Park Service awarded the All Star Bowling Lanes a grant for $500,000 toward its renovations.
Correction: This story was updated at 9:30 am on Feb. 11, 2022 to correct the precise location of the Orangeburg massacre.
Fifty-four years after three Black men were killed and more than two dozen people were wounded in a shooting in South Carolina, the National Park Service (NPS) is working with a nonprofit group to revitalize and reopen a then-segregated bowling alley associated with the event alongside a civil rights museum exhibition space.
In 1968, much of Orangeburg’s public spaces had become integrated, with exception to the All Star Bowling Lanes and the Orangeburg Regional Hospital, which sat between two historically Black colleges, South Carolina State and Claflin College. On Feb. 8, 1968, South Carolina Highway Patrolmen opened fire at South Carolina State during a nonviolent protest by Black students and residents, killing three and wounding 28 people in what is known as the Orangeburg Massacre. Demonstrations had happened at the bowling alley a few days before the shooting.
“I am happy to be a part of this important project, commemorating the significance of the Orangeburg Massacre,” former South Carolina state Rep. Bakari Sellers (D) said in a press release.
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In June 2021, the bowling alley was added to the NPS’s African American Civil Rights Network, and in July 2021, it received a grant of $500,000 from the NPS to aid in its renovation.
Working with the nonprofit organization Center for Creative Partnerships, the bowling alley is expected to be restored as the Orangeburg All-Star Justice Center in Commemoration of the Orangeburg Massacre.
“We’re going to make it a place of education, community and healing,” said Ellen Zisholtz, president of Center for Creative Partnerships.
The bowling alley is projected to embody the 1960s in style but with a civil rights theme and a museum space to commemorate those killed and injured in the shooting, as well as civil rights history as a whole.
On Tuesday, on the 54th anniversary of the shooting, the public is being given the chance to walk through the site before renovations begin.
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