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After returning to Orangeburg from Columbia the evening of Feb. 8, 1968, Cecil Williams tried his best to get onto the campus of South Carolina State College. He wanted to join his friends and take pictures of the students gathering on the front of campus, but National Guardsmen and Highway Patrolmen were blocking the streets into campus and there was no way he could get in.
The years leading up to 1968 were relatively mild as far as race relations in Orangeburg, Williams said. The civil rights movement was beginning to decline after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act.
However the "white only" sign outside the All Star Bowling Lane in Orangeburg was a reminder of the days of Jim Crow and segregation and it caused tension in Orangeburg.
"Bowling itself did not bother me because I did not bowl, but still we wanted to feel that we lived in an atmosphere of equality, freedom and justice at that particular time in history since we had fought so many battles to overcome and achieve the victories of the civil rights movement," Williams said.
As the official photographer and year book photographer for Claflin University and South Carolina State College, Williams heard about the bowling incident through word of mouth.
On Feb. 5 or 6, Williams was drawn to the bowling alley on Russell Street with a large number of people including students, highway patrolmen, law enforcement, city police and SLED.
"So many people were in this small area that somebody accidentally pushed against a window," he said. "The window broke and just at that moment everybody started running. All the students started running including myself because I had known from other experiences that the law enforcement did not see me any different for having a camera. They saw me as just another demonstrator, another student, another protestor."
The violence of the event that came to be known as the Orangeburg Massacre began at this moment, Williams said, and it was not brought on by students but by the people who are supposed to be the protectors of the citizens.
"When a young lady fell down on the sidewalk, the city police, and I saw them with my own eyes, and I will always remember the image of them just taking a club and just beating the young lady right on the sidewalk where you come out of the bowling alley to Russell Street," Williams said. "They were just clubbing her and I think she required stitches to her head."
In response, the students began throwing rocks at windows and cars as they ran back to campus, he said.
Up until that day, any efforts from blacks towards desegregation in Orangeburg was met with conversation and non-violent confrontation, Williams said.
"The general impression that many in the news media were trying to paint and the police authorities' version of it was that this was a riot and the students were fighting back and this was a very ignoble act of defiance against segregation, but it was nothing like that," Williams said. "This was a group of 50 to 100 students who were trying to really achieve a victory and bring down this barrier that stood in front of them."
Students were prohibited from leaving campus following the incident but the violence continued until Feb. 8, when state police fired into a crowd of protesters, killing three and injuring 28.
Williams believes if he had been allowed on campus that evening, police may have targeted him too.
All during the night of Feb. 8, the Orangeburg telephone system failed because so many people were using it, Williams said.
The next morning, Williams woke up as early as he could and went to the campus of S.C. State. The campus was silent and it was a chilly morning as he entered the area at Lowman Hall.
"As I arrived I was so astounded at what looked like a battlefield that I think when I stopped my car, I even left it running and I left the door open," he said. "I just started walking toward the area and as I was walking, I saw the college's maintenance truck with two men picking up everything from debris and pieces of rock, and I imagine even shotgun shells."
Immediately, Williams began to pick up shotgun shells that he had previously ignored, realizing that the maintenance crew might be throwing away evidence.
A few days later, he took the shells he'd collected and photographed a student holding them. The photo became a widely used image that appeared in Time magazine some time later.
An FBI agent from Columbia later confiscated the shotgun shells Williams had retrieved from the scene.
Williams said the agency called him several times hoping to make an informant of him if any other events happened in Orangeburg. He was also extended an offer to become an FBI agent but he turned it down feeling it may have been a ploy for him to be more cooperative with the agency.
Williams is concerned that the impression the events stemmed from a riot has never been corrected.
"It's also partially the fault of us as collectors of information and us as a people really telling our own story," he said.
"We've not done a very good job of not only telling our story just publicly but even to the generations below us and behind us and letting them know what a revolution us of that era were involved in," Williams said. "If you were to look at the definition of a revolution, the civil rights movement was a revolution. It was an effort to overthrow this evil racism and discrimination and in effect we really overthrew the constitution so it would really live out the promise of democracy that everybody would have freedom, justice and equality."
Most historians place the civil rights era between the years of 1956 to 1969, Williams said, making the Orangeburg Massacre one of the last events of the Civil Rights Movement era.
Williams said the events should be alongside the other great events in the civil rights movement in all history books and a part of not only black history but American history, he said. It was a time in history when students laid their lives on the line.
There should be some type of closure to it, he said. "Some restitution to the families who suffered, especially those families whose children were shot and those who were wounded. This country has been generous in its effort to bring restitution to acts that were wrong."
It is a slap in the face that none of the highway patrolmen that shot the students were found guilty and some were even promoted despite the evidence and testimony, he said.
Fortunately, there has been progress in race relations and Orangeburg is beginning to come out of some of the old habits and customs, but there is still work to be done, Williams said.
"We need to come together and we need to work together as a community so that us who live here would be able to bring this community to higher standards so that the children and the generations behind us would benefit from this great community," he said. "We live in a great state. We live in a great Orangeburg, but it could even be greater."
T&D Features Writer Candace Newson can be reached by e-mail at cnewson@timesanddemocrat.com or by telephone at 803-533-5540. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.