S.C. Governor in 1968 Takes Blame for College Massacre
The 1968 Orangeburg Massacre of civil-rights demonstrators at a South Carolina college, a tragedy in its day as momentous as were the Kent State shootings two years later, has faded into obscurity. But not for the governor of South Carolina at the time, Robert E. McNair.
In a new biography, Mr. McNair, now 83, takes full responsibility for decisions that led to the shooting deaths of three black students and the wounding of 27 at South Carolina State College, in Orangeburg, S.C., on February 8, 1968. “The fact that I was governor at the time placed the mantle of responsibility squarely on my shoulders, and I have borne that responsibility with all the heaviness it entails for all those years,” Mr. McNair told Philip G. Grose, author of South Carolina at the Brink: Robert McNair and the Politics of Civil Rights (University of South Carolina Press).
The book, which is described in an article in The State, a newspaper in Columbia, S.C., also gives Mr. McNair credit for pursuing integrationist policies and for welcoming newly enfranchised black voters into the Democratic Party, in contrast to the practices of some of his fellow governors.
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Ed
In a new biography, Mr. McNair, now 83, takes full responsibility for decisions that led to the shooting deaths of three black students and the wounding of 27 at South Carolina State College, in Orangeburg, S.C., on February 8, 1968. “The fact that I was governor at the time placed the mantle of responsibility squarely on my shoulders, and I have borne that responsibility with all the heaviness it entails for all those years,” Mr. McNair told Philip G. Grose, author of South Carolina at the Brink: Robert McNair and the Politics of Civil Rights (University of South Carolina Press).
The book, which is described in an article in The State, a newspaper in Columbia, S.C., also gives Mr. McNair credit for pursuing integrationist policies and for welcoming newly enfranchised black voters into the Democratic Party, in contrast to the practices of some of his fellow governors.