In his most extensive public comments about the Orangeburg Massacre, former Gov. Robert E. McNair said Thursday on SCETV, “I’m not sure we’ll ever know what triggered it.”

The “it” refers to the 8 to 10 seconds of police gunfire that killed three students and wounded more than 27 others on Feb. 8, 1968, on the campus of South Carolina State University. Most of the firing consisted of double-ought buckshot, nine to 12 pellets, each the size of a .32-caliber pistol slug, fired from each shell.

The book The Orangeburg Massacre, which I co-authored with Jack Nelson, answers the “it” question. The shooting occurred at 10:33 p.m. It exploded after State Law Enforcement Division Chief J.P. “Pete” Strom had ordered 66 highway patrolmen to advance onto the edge of the college campus.

Tension had built steadily after violence broke out two nights earlier between police and students protesting Orangeburg’s only bowling alley’s refusal to allow blacks to bowl. Students, angry and frustrated after nine had been hospitalized and many others treated – including females held and clubbed – two nights later built a bonfire beside a street at the edge of the campus. Earlier a few .22-caliber pistol shots from the adjacent Claflin College campus were fired over the heads of a patrol squad across the highway and railroad tracks from the campus. Traffic had been diverted because of objects tossed.

As students retreated to the interior of the campus, one tossed into the air a banister rail from an unoccupied house. It hit one patrolman in the face, leaving teeth marks on the wood and knocking the officer to the ground, his face bloodied. Before an ambulance arrived, a patrol car took him to the Orangeburg Regional Hospital for treatment. Some thought he had been shot. Tension intensified.

After retreating, more than 150 students began returning to the edge of the campus, a few throwing objects and others shouting at the officers. As we report in the book, one patrolman fired his carbine, or rifle, several times in the air, intending it as warning shots. Hearing shots, at least nine other officers began firing at the students.

Gunfire lasted 8 to 10 seconds. All but two or three of those killed or wounded suffered injuries from the side or rear as they turned to run or dived for cover. Freshman football player Samuel Hammond Jr. was standing more than 200 feet away and not part of the moving group when fatally shot in the back.

Chief Strom and others standing behind the patrolman heard the pop-pop-pop from the “warning shots” in the instant before the explosion of shotgun blasts, clearly hearing shots “from the direction of” the campus.

As the Charlotte Observer’s Columbia bureau chief at the time, I arrived in Orangeburg a day and a half before the shooting, covered events as they unfolded, and covered the March 1969 federal trial of nine patrolmen. All were acquitted.

My source that the initial pop-pop-pop came from a patrolman was Deputy Attorney General J.C. Coleman, the chief defense lawyer for the patrolmen, who is now deceased. Soon after the trial, he told me he had heard I was working on a book about what happened at Orangeburg and asked if I knew what actually started the shooting. I replied that we had a theory. If I told him my theory, he said, he would tell me if it was true.

I knew J.C. professionally as a first-rate lawyer of skill and integrity, someone with authority and knowledge who could provide a reporter factual background on a developing situation. He was a loyal, skilled and faithful public servant who served the people of South Carolina well. To family and friends, he was known as a kind and loving father who regularly attended church on Sunday.

As J.C. and I sat down together to eat at a reception, I told him our theory, derived from a Department of Justice’s prosecuting attorney: As the students had advanced toward the edge of the campus to watch the firemen douse the bonfire, a patrolman fired rifle shots into the air, intending them as warning shots.

He looked down and mumbled, “I don’t believe I want to talk about it.” We engaged in other conversation during the meal. As dessert arrived, he looked me directly in the eye and said, “You know, you’re the first person I’ve heard even suggest that theory except for the patrolman who told me he fired the warning shots.”

That’s the essential story of “it.” The full story is told in The Orangeburg Massacre. One of its conclusions is that the defendant patrolmen – issued deadly buckshot and individually authorized to shoot in a crowd-control situation rather than having that authority placed in a senior officer – in a sense were scapegoats.

Some 25 members of the Legislative Black Caucus last Thursday introduced legislation to create a committee charged with finding and telling the truth of what happened. The timing is right for the full Legislature to act.

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