Samuel Hammond Jr.
Age 18
A Black college football player whose family called him "Bubba"
Orangeburg, South Carolina
February 8, 1968
Eighteen-year-old Samuel Hammond Jr., affectionately known as “Bubba” to his family, was so devoted to football that he was known to cry when his school lost a game. Six months after Hammond started studying at the historically Black South Carolina State College (now South Carolina State University), and playing halfback on the school’s football team, he was shot by law enforcement in what has come to be known as the Orangeburg Massacre. The information in this summary comes from a host of media reports about the incident and the investigations that followed.
Students at the college had conducted a series of protests decrying the whites-only policy at a local bowling alley. Even though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had outlawed segregation in most establishments, some white-owned businesses still refused to follow federal law — among them, Orangeburg’s only bowling alley. The students were also demanding the regional hospital, which had resisted integration, provide equal treatment to people of all races.
The night of February 8, 1968, students had gathered on campus for another protest. Scores of members of the National Guard and state highway patrol and police officers had amassed near the campus; hundreds more troops were nearby. The officers were armed with deadlier ammunition than typically used for dispersing riots.
When a patrol officer was struck in the head by an object, another officer fired his gun in the air as a warning. After that first shot, at least eight other troopers and a police officer opened fire on the unarmed students. As the students fled, some were shot in the back, sides and feet.
Hammond was shot in the back and died. After his death, Hammond’s father traveled to Orangeburg to identify the body and to collect Hammond’s things from his dorm room. Seventeen-year-old Delano Middleton and 18-year-old Henry Smith were also killed, and about 27 other protestors were injured.
The event did not spark extensive public outcry at the time, but historians believe it was the first deadly confrontation between college students and law enforcement in the United States.
Initial Investigation
After the incident, the state’s governor, Robert McNair, called it “one of the saddest days in the history of South Carolina” and blamed “black power advocates.” He also said the shooting occurred off campus, despite evidence to the contrary. McNair asked the FBI to investigate but did not mandate a state investigation.
More than a year later, nine state troopers were tried on a charge of imposing summary punishment without due process of law. A federal jury acquitted them in less than two hours. Cleveland Sellers, an activist shot during the protest, was sentenced to one year in state prison on a riot charge from a protest at the bowling alley two days before the incident at the college.
In the years since, South Carolinian leaders have repeatedly acknowledged the state’s responsibility for the tragedy. More than two decades after his conviction, Sellers was officially pardoned for the riot charge. In 2001, Gov. Jim Hodges said, “We deeply regret what happened on the night” of February 8. Two years later, Gov. Mark Sanford officially apologized for the event, writing, “I think it’s important to tell the African-American community in South Carolina we don’t just regret what happened in Orangeburg 35 years ago, we apologize for it.”
The state has never formally investigated the incident.
Till Act Status
In 2007, the FBI announced it was reviewing the Orangeburg deaths as part of its examination of civil rights era killings. Several months later, a spokesperson said federal officials had declined to reopen the investigation out of concern for double-jeopardy, since the troopers involved had already been acquitted.
Despite that announcement, Hammond’s, Smith’s and Middleton’s names appeared on a list of cold cases being investigated by the Department of Justice in a 2010 Attorney General report to Congress. The names have remained in each DOJ project report through 2019, and no memos announcing the cases’ closures have been published.
Case Status open
Themes
- Incident on Campus
- Deaths Involving Law Enforcement
- Men
- Open Cases
About the Project
This multiplatform investigation draws upon more than two years of reporting, thousands of documents and dozens of first-hand interviews. FRONTLINE spoke to family and friends of the victims, and witnesses, some of whom had never been interviewed; current and former Justice Department officials and FBI agents, state and local law enforcement; lawmakers, civil-rights leaders and investigative journalists, to explore the Department of Justice’s reopening of civil rights-era cold cases under the 2008 Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.
In addition to an examination of the federal effort, the project features the first comprehensive, interactive list of all those whose cases were reopened by the Department of Justice. Today, the list stands at 151 names. Among the victims: voting rights advocates, veterans, Louisville’s first female prosecutor, business owners, mothers, fathers, and children.
The project consists of a web-based interactive experience, serialized podcast, a touring augmented-reality exhibit, documentary and companion education curriculum for high schools and universities.
A project like Un(re)solved would not be possible without the historic and contemporary contributions of universities, civil rights groups, and the press, particularly the Black press, who have ensured the ongoing public record of racist violence in the United States. To pay homage to these groups, the web interactive begins with a quote from journalist, activist and researcher Ida B. Wells, one of the first to document with precision the horrors of racial terror in America. “The way to right wrongs,” she wrote, “is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
At the outset of the project, FRONTLINE forged a relationship with Northeastern University’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ), bringing them on as an academic partner. Launched in 2007 by Distinguished Law Professor Margaret Burnham, CRRJ is a mission-driven program of interdisciplinary teaching, research and policy analysis on race, history, and criminal justice. Their work has expanded beyond the names on the Justice Department’s list, archiving documents in over 1,000 cases of racially motivated homicides.
With support from the CRRJ, FRONTLINE reporters gathered what could be known about the individuals on the list, conducting interviews with family, friends and witnesses, delving into newspaper archives and gathering documentation including headstone applications, draft cards and archival photographs.
At the heart of the project has been a drive to center the voices of the families of those on the list. FRONTLINE partnered with StoryCorps to record nearly two dozen oral histories with victims’ next of kin, which are featured both in the web-based interactive and traveling AR exhibit. These oral histories will also be archived in the National Library of Congress.
To lead the creative vision for the web experience and installation, FRONTLINE partnered with Ado Ato Pictures, a premier mixed reality studio founded by artist, filmmaker, and technologist Tamara Shogaolu.
Shogaolu rooted the visuals in the powerful symbolism of trees. In the United States, trees evoke the ideal of liberty, but also speak to an oppressive history of racially motivated violence. In Persian myth, trees are humanity’s ancestors, while in Toraja, Indonesia, they serve as sacred burial sites.
“I was really inspired by looking at the role of the tree as a symbol in American history” Shogaolu said. “It’s been looked at as a symbol of freedom, we look at it as a connector between generations, and also there’s the association of trees with racial terror.” When designing the creative vision for Un(re)solved Shogaolu wondered whether she might be able to reclaim the symbol of the tree. “As a person of color, we’re often terrified of being in isolated places in the woods. And I thought it was kind of crazy that there are natural environments that instinctually give great fear because of this connection with racial terror and I wanted to reclaim that — to turn these into beautiful spaces.”
Un(re)solved weaves imagery of trees, which also recall family ties, into patterns and textures from the American tradition of quilting. Among enslaved African Americans forbidden to read or write, quilts provided an important space to document family stories. Today, quilting remains a creative outlet rich with story and tradition for many American communities.
We invite you to enter this forest of quilted memories — a testimony to the lives of these individuals, and the multi-generational impact of their untimely, unjust loss.
(Credits to come)