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• 1 2024-09-17T06:02:22+00:00 “The Most Frightening Thing I Have Ever Seen”: Moving Images and the South Carolina Civil Rights Movement 3 image_header 2025-01-07T19:18:50+00:00

  by Bobby Donaldson

  University of South Carolina-Columbia
  
  Abstract

  Introduction
  Setting the Stage: January 1, 1960, Newsfilm Footage of the Greenville Airport March
  Three Demonstrations in South Carolina: Orangeburg, Bouie, and Edwards
  >March 1, 1960, Orangeburg, South Carolina
  >Orangeburg Newsfilm Annotated
  >Photojournalist Cecil J. Williams
  March 14, 1960, Columbia, South Carolina: Bouie
  >Bouie Newsfilm Annotated
  March 2, 1961, Columbia, South Carolina: Edwards
  >Integration demonstrations at State House—outtakes
  >Edwards Newsfilm Annotated
  Conclusion: Stories Matter

  Introduction

  The Center for Civil Rights History and Research at the University of South Carolina works to uncover the grassroots history of the African American freedom struggle in South Carolina, promote research into that history, and create programs and exhibitions to share that history. From its inception in 2015, the Center has been a collaborative effort with the university’s libraries. We have found vital history unidentified in the libraries’ existing collections. Equally important, we have found that history in the community—in the memories and desk drawers and storage spaces of civil rights movement veterans. Then we have worked with these movement veterans to document and archive their history through oral history interviews and new collections in the university libraries. Those interviews and new collections deepen and enrich our understanding of the state’s history and provide engaging items for our programs and exhibitions.
  
  One of the most fascinating, revelatory, and important collections at the university is the local television newsfilm of the Columbia NBC affiliate: the WIS-TV News Collection. Then-Mayor Stephen Benjamin called me in 2012 to propose a public history initiative with several other Southern cities to highlight the Civil Rights Movement events of each city by focusing on 1963. That gave me the impetus to search the WIS-TV collection for compelling footage of the student movement.
  
  On December 8, 2012, I sent an email attachment to Ramon Jackson, my graduate assistant, titled “Possible Civil Rights Moving Images.” The list included a silent film from March 2, 1961, titled Integration Demonstrations at State House. At the time, Chris Frear—another graduate assistant—Ramon Jackson, and I were conducting research to lay the foundation for an ambitious public history project, Columbia SC 63: Our Story Matters, an effort to give greater voice and visibility to largely overlooked and understudied chapters of the long Black freedom struggle in the capital of South Carolina and in the nation.¹ We sought to document and promote the individuals, organizations, and key events that shaped the modern civil rights movement in the Palmetto State. Armed with newly discovered photographs and local newsfilm, including the March 2, 1961, State House footage, our project provided ample evidence that directly challenged scholars and journalists who suggested that South Carolina played a minor or insignificant role in the civil rights movement. The short newsfilm clips, now preserved and digitized, provide an extraordinary repository of historical detail and context that has supported exhibitions, public programming, course instruction, and oral interviews. 

  On March 3, 2013, civil rights veterans and journalists met for a town hall forum hosted in the headquarters of the South Carolina Education Television Network in Columbia. The forum’s moderator, Beryl Dakers, observed:

  South Carolina prides itself on the fact that we accomplished “peaceful desegregation and integration” for the most part. South Carolina is very pleased it was not compared with Selma or Montgomery. . . . Here we are fifty-odd years later and we can say that we did not see all this activity, but we are uncovering many things that actually happened. Did the news media fail us by not giving prominence to the things that were going on?

  Bob Hickman, news director at Columbia’s WIS-TV in the early 1960s, responded:

  We missed the boat on some occasions, and we did not go deep enough and follow through as to the results of these things. We were constantly criticized by our white peers. Did that bother me that much? No, it didn’t bother me at all because I was trying to do a job that needed to be done. But we were criticized to the extent of if you all don’t put the cameras on them, they will quit doing this kind of thing and it will all just fade away into the background and it will be ok.²

  Congressman James E. Clyburn, a student leader in the early 1960s and a former history teacher, was not present for the 2013 roundtable. But he has repeatedly shared Dakers’s sentiment about an intentional effort by white state leaders and journalists to “to black out or, it might be more appropriate to say, white out civil rights activities taking place in South Carolina.”³

  In Clyburn’s memoir, Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black, he observes:

  There was something impersonal about the way the public perceived the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Aside from a few high-profile leaders, demonstrations were reported in terms of masses of humanity surging against the walls of those defending the status quo. Protestors came across as being some sort of faceless force recruited for a tour of duty in the streets. The shame of it all is the utter misrepresentation of the courageous young men and women who made those marches. Each of them was there to express a strongly held opinion and to risk personal safety and security to make certain those feelings were heard and felt. Their motivation went back days, weeks, and months prior to the actual demonstration, and it endured long after the event itself passed.⁴

  Drawing upon news footage found in the University of South Carolina’s Moving Image Research Collection (MIRC), this essay unmasks the “faceless force” of the movement and examines three key civil rights demonstrations in 1960 and 1961 led by student activists who refused to “fade away into the background.”

  MIRC holds an extensive collection of local television newsfilm that highlights South Carolina’s critical role in the Black freedom struggle, including the dynamic contributions of young activists from the state’s historically Black high schools and colleges. Utilizing outtakes from local newsfilm, this essay examines the men and women who were on the front lines of transformational change in South Carolina and the nation in the early 1960s. 

  A person who was instrumental in preserving the Columbia NBC affiliate’s newsfilm—and who witnessed many of the events recorded as a television journalist—remains active in providing background detail, context, and technical information about specific clips in the newsfilm collection. James Covington, ninety-two in 2023, lives in Columbia and regularly engages with us in extended conversations about the movement. His memories of his career and specific events offer an irreplaceable lens on that moment. 

  Throughout the development of Columbia SC 63 and the University of South Carolina’s Center for Civil Rights History and Research, Covington has proven to be an invaluable asset and collaborator. As demonstrations escalated in the spring of 1960, Covington completed his senior year at the University of South Carolina. As a student, he freelanced for WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina. When he learned about demonstrations from sources, he called in the information to editors. Once cleared, he was on the scene, camera rolling. He was paid for coverage, plus three dollars per day for using his own camera, a Bolex 16mm, which he purchased in 1956. “When I covered the demonstration, I would send my film by bus or plane. I knew every bus schedule between Columbia and Charlotte by heart.” 

  As a journalist on the ground for civil rights protests, Covington was mindful that he too was under police observance. During a major demonstration in Orangeburg in March 1960, he came under attack. “Three white men grabbed me and one of them hit me for taking pictures of blacks,” Covington recalled. “They were upset that the demonstrations were happening, but they certainly didn’t want any TV coverage. . . . They didn’t want you to contribute to the news that was happening,” he surmised.⁵

  From that experience, Covington learned to protect his film. “When law enforcement wanted to take my film, I had a trick. I carried two or three extra canisters of film in my coat. As soon as I finished one, I would put in a fresh roll, so when they asked for it, I would give them a roll of fresh film with nothing on it.”

  Covington, a native of Bennettsville, South Carolina, played a role in the preservation of WIS-TV’s original newsfilm and, decades later, its donation to MIRC. A veteran of the United States Air Force and a former student at the Citadel, he majored in journalism and was a member of the campus press club. From 1961 to 1972, he worked for WIS-TV, the NBC affiliate. When WIS-TV station managers made plans to discard old news footage, Covington packed stacks of film from the television station’s basement and carted home fifteen boxes in the family station wagon. “It bothered me to throw anything away,” he said. For more than a decade, he stored the film and some news scripts in his garage. 

  When the Cosmos Broadcasting Corporation and its station, WIS-TV, planned to donate the company’s remaining newsfilm to the University of South Carolina in 1984, Covington restored the footage he preserved to the collection. “It was not my film,” he said, “I was just trying to protect it.” The WIS-TV collection consists of the complete film library of news stories shot by WIS-TV from 1953 through 1979. The collection also includes the teleprompter news scripts from 1963 through 1979; the WIS-TV archive for Awareness, a weekly African American–focused news show; Carolina Magazine; a photo library from late 1950 through the late 1960s; documentaries and extended stories on film dating back to 1959; and photo slides from the early 1970s.⁶ MIRC also holds newsfilm collections from other South Carolina stations, WLTX-TV and WBTW-TV, giving scholars the ability to compare coverage across years and locations. The size of the collection, the span of years it covers, the availability of the scripts, and the comparative newsfilm from other stations combine to give the collection national significance.

  Two years prior to the transfer of the WIS-TV footage to the University of South Carolina, Joseph Wider, a former instructor in the university’s Media Arts Department, gained permission to use WIS-TV archival newsfilm dating back to 1952 for the South Carolina Political History Project, a proposed television documentary that “evolved out of the need to document the oral recollections of individuals involved in the most dynamic cultural change since the Civil War, before they pass and their perceptions of this history, its personalities, issues and events die with them.” Wider planned to duplicate the relevant newsfilm and create a collection at the university.⁷

  The remarkable collection that Covington and Wider worked to preserve both visualizes and documents chapters of the civil rights movement that many have long forgotten and some have overlooked. Coupled with oral testimony, still photographs, and archival documents, the news footage enables scholars and journalists to deepen and broaden their fundamental questions about what transpired decades ago. MIRC constitutes a rich repository that provides new frames of evidence that expand research, reflection, pedagogy, and documentation. We have before us moving visuals that offer geographical and spatial context that confirm or challenge court testimony, news articles, oral interviews, and longstanding historical interpretations. 

  Setting the Stage: January 1, 1960, Newsfilm Footage of the Greenville Airport March

  Before the student sit-ins started, the largest civil rights demonstration took place in South Carolina, and the MIRC archive has a record of it. During an Emancipation Day protest on January 1, 1960, amid sleet and snow, state leaders used an embarrassing police encounter with famed baseball great Jackie Robinson months earlier as backdrop to launch a blistering attack against segregation. Reverend James Hall, the pastor of Springfield Baptist Church and leader of the local Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), remarked: “There’s more involved here than just Jackie Robinson. It is a matter of citizens’ rights, be it Jackie Robinson or a ditch digger. Human dignity is involved.” 

  At a service held at Hall’s church, Ruby Hurley, the southeastern regional director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), spoke. “South Carolina needs prayer like no other state. . . . Integration is coming real soon, sooner than some of us realize. . . . Stop thinking colored, start praying a little bit more and start praying right. Use your mouths and use them the right way.” In her remarks, Hurley highlighted the miseducation of citizens regarding historical events. “South Carolina has been wrong so long that it is hard for her to turn around and get right.” She mentioned the Reconstruction era and the period’s contributions to education. “A lot of other things came about because of 60 Negro members in the State Legislature. . . . Honest history will show you this. You have been brainwashed if you believe otherwise.”⁸

  At the service, Reverend Horace Prince Sharper, a minister in Florence and the newly appointed state president of NAACP, turned to a group of white journalists and railed against the press. “I’ve been waiting for this opportunity and finally got it,” he said. “One of the greatest disappointments to me has been with the press, these men who’re supposed to print the news unbiasedly. . . . The press is not here because they are interested in your welfare,” Sharper insisted. “They are here because they want to make money.”⁹

  Following the meeting at Springfield Baptist Church, hundreds joined a caravan from downtown Greenville to the city’s municipal airport—the very site where Robinson was threatened with arrest. Reverend Matthew McCollum, a Methodist minister in Orangeburg, served as a spokesperson in the airport’s waiting room, reading from a printed press release as leaders stood before journalists. In silent MIRC footage, McCollum can be seen speaking emphatically as a group of ministers and civil rights leaders read along with him. McCollum remarked, “We will no longer make a pretense of being satisfied with the crumbs of citizenship while others enjoy the whole loaf only by the right of a white-skinned birth.” A part of McCollum’s statement read, “That with faith in this nation and its God we shall not relent, we shall not rest, we shall not compromise, we shall not be satisfied until every vestige of racial discrimination and segregation has been eliminated from all aspects of our public life.”¹⁰

  Resurgent civil rights organizations in Greenville in the late 1950s propelled the movement into the next decade. When a bus seating confrontation brought new attention to segregation, Hall guided the energy and determination of Dorris “Deedee” Wright and other students into reviving the city’s NAACP youth council. At the same time, the next generation of key NAACP officers taking over in the post–Brown v. Board era were working in nearby Spartanburg. Reverend Isaiah DeQuincey Newman, a Methodist minister, became state conference president, and attorney Matthew J. Perry Jr. was building his practice and taking on the role of NAACP’s lead civil rights attorney in the state. When students in Greensboro, North Carolina, ignited a new movement, students in Greenville were primed. 

  Three Demonstrations in South Carolina: Orangeburg, Bouie, and Edwards

  For students in Columbia, Orangeburg, and across the South, the sit-ins in Greensboro, initiated by Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain, and Joseph McNeil at a Woolworth’s store, sparked a revolution—“a new era of standing up to indignities and atrocities.”¹¹ And as the sit-ins and the counterattacks mounted, the students’ resolve deepened. In spring 1960, as young activists across the American South challenged longstanding barriers to racial equality, young and determined students in South Carolina joined the powerful and transformative civil rights movement. At lunch counters and department stores, in theaters and hotels, on the grounds of the governor’s mansion, the State House, schools and public parks, in courtrooms and the press, and in the corridors of city halls, South Carolina citizens faced strong opposition and threats of arrest as they challenged a long legacy of racial discrimination and injustice. Led by Perry and Lincoln C. Jenkins II, a team of dedicated NAACP attorneys counseled thousands of clients, defended freedom of speech and assembly, and successfully challenged continued segregation in public schools, institutions of higher learning, and public accommodations. 

  By 1960 America was several years into its television age, and television newsrooms were adjusting to covering what some prominent national reporters termed “the race beat.” By 1957 80 percent of American homes had televisions, and the country had five hundred television stations. Significantly, that same year, the number of homes with television sets surpassed those subscribing to a daily newspaper. Through the Little Rock school desegregation standoff and the Montgomery bus boycott, movement leaders knew the value of news media attention to public demonstrations—particularly the value of the African American press, northern newspaper reporters, and television cameras. Still, the emergence of the student movement and its signature lunch counter sit-ins took the news industry by surprise, and it took more than a week for northern reporters to recognize the importance of the fast-spreading movement. While established civil rights organizations decided whether and how to support the students, southern city newspapers wrestled with how to report on the protests and how prominently, or even whether, to report on sit-ins.¹²

  In the week leading up to the Orangeburg demonstration, the Charleston News and Courier ran the story “Negroes Continuing Segregation Strike,” which reported student protests in Orangeburg and Rock Hill. In Rock Hill, CORE leader James T. McCain, a native of Sumter, conducted training workshops for students attending Friendship Junior College. On February 12, 1960, the first documented student sit-ins began in Rock Hill when close to one hundred African American students sat down at Woolworth’s and McCrory’s stores. Their actions forced the lunch counters to remain closed until February 23. In Orangeburg, on Thursday, February 25, about forty-five students, many from Claflin College, walked to the S. H. Kress store, where close to twenty-five demonstrators took seats at around eleven in the morning. Stools were removed, and signs reading “Closed in the interest of public safety” were displayed.¹³ On the following day, protests continued when a Claflin student was attacked at the Kress store by a group of onlookers. NAACP officials claimed Melvin Fludd was jumped by several white people at the Kress lunch counter. The Orangeburg police chief called the accusation ridiculous. “]The only disturbance that occurred at Kress dime store today was between the Negro and white man, who was arrested. . . . No youths were involved in the incident. No one was hit over the head. No one jumped anyone. It was just a mild exchange of blows. . . . Any other claim is absolutely ridiculous.”¹⁴ Incensed by the turn of events, Senator Marion Gressette, the head of the state legislature’s Segregation Committee, attended a Rock Hill White Citizens’ Council meeting and declared before an audience of 350 people, “No one can be forced to serve someone he doesn’t want to serve.”¹⁵

  Building on the growing student movement across the region, which was magnified by the media attention focused on Greensboro, students at Claflin and South Carolina State expanded their public demonstrations. Clyburn, a founder of the newly formed Orangeburg Student Movement Association, recalled, “A whole new dimension of public expression took form and became a powerful force for change and political power.”¹⁶

  March 1, 1960, Orangeburg, South Carolina

  Days after the protests in Rock Hill, over four hundred students gathered in downtown Orangeburg at a local Kress store on Tuesday, March 1, 1960, shortly before one o’clock. As news footage documents, they traveled from their campuses to East Russell Street and gathered in Memorial Plaza. 

  According to the Charleston Evening Post, hours before the planned demonstration, an African American leader telephoned the United Press International (UPI) newswire office and stated that between “1,000 and 1,200 Negro students would stage the protest march beginning at 12:30 p.m.” Corroborating a critical moment in the MIRC footage, a reporter for the Post observed that some students held up victory signs as they “walked slowly and silently toward downtown Orangeburg, not talking to anyone.”¹⁷ They carried signs that read “Segregation Must Die,” “Down with Segregation,” “We Want Liberty,” “Our Money Is As Good As Theirs,” and “Segregation Is Dead.” As the march unfolded, law enforcement officers admonished students that the “banners could not be displayed.”¹⁸

  As the MIRC footage illustrates, Charles F. McDew, a South Carolina State student from Ohio, served as one of the leading spokespersons for “a group of about 250 Negro men and women” who “marched through downtown Orangeburg today in protest to segregated seating at lunch counters.” While McDew and the students walked through the city streets, they were stopped (as seen in the film) by J. Pete Strom, the head of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED). According to newspaper accounts, “Strom addressed his warning to the two persons leading two twin columns of marching Negroes.”¹⁹

  In the MIRC footage, McDew is followed by a student bearing a sign that is difficult to see. The Charleston News and Courier published a front-page article and a photograph taken by Covington in which McDew is followed by a student with a sign that is easy to read: “What Do I Have to Do, Bleach Myself Mr.?”²⁰

  The students were halted on the sidewalk by Strom and Orangeburg police chief C. Harold Hall. Strom spoke with McDew—a scene clearly featured in the MIRC footage. “I have informed you all you had to have a permit to come to town with signs,” Strom warned. He then asked, “What college are you from?” McDew, described as a “neatly dressed young negro,” by Norman Spell, a Charleston newspaper reporter, responded, “I respectfully decline to answer on the grounds that it might tend to incriminate me.” According to Spell, Strom advised McDew that any incidents would compel him to “charge you with inciting a riot.” Seemingly unfazed by the warning, McDew and his colleagues cast their signs “aside when Strom ordered them to,” then continued their march under the watchful eye of local police, SLED agents, and the State Highway Patrol.²¹ This fact may explain why the protest placards are missing later in the film footage. In fact, some students can be seen walking with signs rolled in their hands.

  In the days following the protest, the Times and Democrat published an editorial titled “Marching Demonstrations,” which characterized McDew and his fellow marchers as “apparently students organized and directed by outside agitators. . . . Had someone—as a result—provoked an incident it would have played into the hands of the agitators, who are seeking publicity, and who would probably welcome violence. As a reflection of our orderly way of life, no incident occurred.” 

  Of course, this editorial—focused on a communist effort directed by outside “professional agitators”—failed to account for the organizing skills of the student leaders, the series of workshop trainers, and their firm commitment to nonviolence, all of which were clearly on display in the brief film footage from that day.²²

  Mindful of deliberate efforts to reconstruct and obscure the historical details of the student movement, a few young activists committed their memories to paper. Thomas Gaither, a Claflin student and a key leader of the Orangeburg Student Movement Association, recalled that he and others “became inspired by the example of the students in Rock Hill, the first South Carolina city where lunch counter sit-ins occurred. We, too, feel that stores which graciously accept our money at one counter, should not rudely refuse it at another. We decided to request service at Kress’s lunch counter.”²³ In training sessions over several days, Gaither and his peers studied nonviolence, the pamphlet CORE Rules for Action, and Reverend Martin Luther King’s Stride toward Freedom. 

  Gaither’s written account of events follows key moments captured in the MIRC footage:

  The first such demonstration started at 12:30 on March 1. Over 1,000 students marched through the streets of Orangeburg with signs saying: “All Sit or All Stand,” “Segregation is Obsolete,” “No Color Line in Heaven,” and “Down With Jim Crow.” . . . Not long after reaching the main street, the marchers were met by a contingent of state police who requested identification of leaders and asked that the signs be taken down. The group leaders were informed that they would be held responsible for any outbreak of violence and that if this occurred, they would be charged with inciting to riot. There was no violence. Only two persons were arrested, and these were not participants.²⁴

  The growing student demonstrations in Orangeburg and South Carolina presented vexing challenges for local and state leaders who claimed their control of law and order was slipping away. The large demonstration on March 1, 1960, prompted S. Clyde Fair, mayor of Orangeburg, to issue a statement forbidding future marches without permits.

  We regret that the situation in Orangeburg has led to a public demonstration in the form of marching students apparently designed to force integration of services to all races at the lunch counter of a local store. . . . As far as we can determine, this student demonstration is the outgrowth of a movement engineered by outside non-Southern organizations to force integration of lunch counter services and to foment troubles that might be used to influence the current Senate debate in Washington on the so-called Civil Rights bill.²⁵

  The mayor asserted that the new measures were urgently needed to prevent “an outbreak of rowdyism should someone lose his temper.” He stated, “Therefore, as mayor and member of Council responsible for the preservation of law and order, I have ordered the police not to allow another such demonstration in the city of Orangeburg."²⁶

  The historical record of Orangeburg student demonstrations is enhanced by the silent two minutes and forty-seven seconds of footage in the MIRC archive. Originally misidentified as student demonstrations from March 15, 1960, the footage outtakes offer a compelling portrait of what transpired when students departed the campuses of Claflin and South Carolina State.²⁷

  The footage is likely the first documented television recording of McDew, one of the principal organizers of the early Orangeburg movement, who several weeks later became a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Raleigh, North Carolina. Born in Massillon, Ohio, in 1938, McDew arrived on the South Carolina State campus in 1959. After experiencing the violence of the South’s rigid Jim Crow laws and customs, he agreed to lead the Orangeburg student movement.²⁸

  Orangeburg Newsfilm Annotations

  00:02–0:12     African American male students walking in dress clothes along sidewalk, pan right to students walking down dirt path on grass hill to cross train tracks, evidently to join march. Some look right into the camera. 

   

  0:13–0:14     Claflin University campus entrance sign.

   

  0:15–0:18     South Carolina State campus entrance sign. 

   

  0:18–0:22     Line of students on sidewalks on downtown Orangeburg streets. Law enforcement is in distance. 

   

  0:23–0:31     Close view of students passing by in columns walking on streets. 

   

  0:32–1:05     Different location, 365 Russell Street, students walking on streets, pan to left, SLED Chief J. P. Strom and other uniformed (Chief Hall) and plainclothes officers (possibly Harry C. Walker, Governor Hollings’s legal aide) block their path and approach them. Charles “Chuck” McDew in the lead, dressed in a striped blazer, with a tall student next to him. Cut to side view of Strom blocking path of students and questioning McDew, who is speaking to a city officer in uniform. Cut to three-quarter-angle shot of McDew and angle of police chief and Strom. Lower to shot of chief’s and McDew’s hands, McDew opening wallet to show identification or permit. Cut to close side shot of students in columns behind McDew and pan right to show close shots of more faces. This segment is filmed near Fersner Hardware store, 335 Russell Street.

   

  1:05–1:13     Line of uniformed state law enforcement officers in a traffic island. Cut at 1:09 to students walking on sidewalk under gaze of uniformed police officer. Pan to right shows a line of students. Cut to shot of a Kress store sign. This segment is filmed at the corner of Russell and Middleton Streets.

   

  1:14–1:24     Male student with hand raised at street crossing to guide marchers, first in line with woman beside him. At light change, long columns of students cross the street. Note a tall male student has his sign held down. This segment is filmed on Russell Street near a Belk-Hudson store.

   

  1:25–1:35     Police officer in uniform wrestles an older white man in a suit while a line of students look on, stopped in their march in front of the Fischer Rexall Pharmacy, located at 196 Russell Street. The camera looks over the shoulder of an African American man watching from across the street. Other officers run to the white man, and the group wrestles him to the ground as students clear additional space on the sidewalk. At 1:33 a pistol flies from the man’s body, and a uniformed officer picks it up immediately. An African American police officer is present. No documentation has been located to clarify what transpired in this scene beyond a brief mention.²⁹

   

  1:40–1:45     Different location, columns of students walking side by side. Close shot from right of students walking to the right, facing camera as they walk. The remainder of this footage appears to come from Montgomery, Alabama, where a thousand students marched from the Alabama State College campus to the capitol.³⁰

   

  1:45–1:47     Different location, residential neighborhood, shot from car driving along the street, students walking away from camera to the right. Possibly two police officers walking to the side of students. 

   

  1:47–1:55     Farther along same street, now commercial/warehouse district, long columns of students walking on sidewalk. Camera now stopped, not moving in car. 

   

  1:55–2:00     Distant shot of City Hall, Greek revival–style white building with dome and columns. Low-angle shot as female students walk between camera and City Hall. 

   

  2:01–2:22     Students massed in front of City Hall. Camera angle from elevated angle in City Hall looking down on students. Cut to wider-angle shot of students. Cut right to wider angle, showing crowd of more than three hundred students. Cut to shot of City Hall dome. 

   

  2:23–2:29     Ground-level shot across lawn to students walking on sidewalk, from right to left of frame. Three men, likely officers, watch from across the street in the distance. 

   

  Blank to 2:47.

   

  The students’ plan for greater public attention and scrutiny of Jim Crow practices succeeded as they attracted news coverage in South Carolina. Clearly the demonstrations and the subsequent media attention sparked considerable alarm among white citizens and elected officials. On March 5, 1960, George F. Coleman, a solicitor and lawyer based in Winnsboro, wrote a five-page letter to Governor Hollings outlining his reaction to the escalating cases of student protests in Rock Hill, Columbia, and Orangeburg.

  Almost daily, now, we hear on the radio, see on television, or read in the newspapers of well organized negro demonstrations designed to implement what is apparently a plan which is state-wide in scope. I am certain that you fully appreciate the extreme racial tensions which result from such activity in the unusual difficulties experienced by our law enforcement people. I’m afraid our effort to abate these demonstrations has achieved little success. Events of the past several days would indicate that the demonstrations, instead of lessening, are increasing geographically and in intensity. I believe our failure to control these local situations is due to the novelty of the many problems incident to the demonstrations and the inadequacy of the law of our state to abate the causes of these problems. 

   

  This is a lengthy letter and I apologize for the volume of words, but I have deep convictions about what is happening to us now unless these demonstrations are curbed I am convinced that we are witnessing the beginning of the end of segregation as we know it.³¹

  The MIRC footage provides a visual narrative of critical scenes that deepened Coleman’s anxiety about the “end of segregation.” Undoubtedly, Gaither and his peers strategically used television news to their advantage as they illuminated the stark racial boundaries that impacted nearly every facet of life in the Jim Crow South. The media attention also sparked greater participation among students. Despite facing a spate of negative attacks, public admonitions, and an antipicketing ordinance in Orangeburg, Gaither noted that “some 1,000 Claflin and South Carolina State students” attended training sessions to prepare for future protests.

  Gaither observed: “After the March 1 demonstration, the lunch counters were closed for two weeks. With a view to strengthening our local movement and broadening it on a statewide basis, the South Carolina Student Movement Association was established. I was named chairman of the Orangeburg branch. We initiated a boycott of stores whose lunch counters discriminate.”³²

  Two weeks after the March 1 demonstration, the student struggle in Orangeburg captured the lead headline and photograph in the New York Times: “350 Negro Student Demonstrators Held in South Carolina Stockade.”³³ According to Gaither:

  March 15 was the day of the big march—the one in which 350 students landed in the stockade. The lunch counters had reopened the previous day and a sit-in was planned in addition to the march. Governor Hollings had asserted that no such demonstration would be tolerated. Regarding us, he said: “They think they can violate any law, especially if they have a Bible in their hands: our law enforcement officers have their Bibles too.” 

   

  Of course, we were violating no law with our peaceful demonstration. As for the law enforcement officers having their Bibles, they may have them at home, but what they had in their hands the day of our demonstration were tear gas bombs and fire hoses, which they used indiscriminately. The weather was sub-freezing, and we were completely drenched with the water from the hoses.³⁴

  When John Brehl, a white journalist for the Toronto Daily Star, toured Orangeburg, he visited with a local white leader who described the student protests as the “most frightening thing I have ever seen.” Brehl observed, “There is something awesome about these Orangeburg boys and girls who have pledged themselves to take blows without returning them and yield to an arrest without a fight.” When he interviewed McCollum, the Methodist minister noted: “Sometimes I think the white man really thinks we are a different kind of human being. He doesn’t seem to understand us; he doesn’t realize how many times the human spirit is murdered every day.”³⁵

  Photojournalist Cecil J. Williams

  Cecil J. Williams, a classmate of Gaither’s at Claflin College, witnessed the student demonstrations as both a participant and a documentarian. Trained in photography before he attended high school, Williams was a leading African American journalist in his hometown of Orangeburg. Typically, he received advanced notice of NAACP events from activists such as James Sulton, McCollum, and Newman. Usually equipped with two cameras, Williams attended preliminary briefings with students, then joined them in the march lines. During one demonstration in 1960, he recalled, “Highway patrolmen actually picked me up in the air, onto the patrol car, took my camera from me and exposed my film.” In late February, a Columbia reporter observed, “A negro accompanying the group began taking pictures of the sitdown as soon as the demonstration began.” The unidentified photographer was very likely Williams. On March 1, 1960, Williams closely followed his classmates and captured their protest walk through the city.³⁶ Today his collection of negative images from the 1960s provides a rich complement to the moving image archives and stands as “a vivid testament to the people who gave much of their lives in the struggle for freedom, justice, and equality.”³⁷

  March 14, 1960, Columbia, South Carolina: Bouie

  On the day the large student demonstration caught Orangeburg law enforcement and political officials off guard, the local Times and Democrat ran a short article, “Two Arrested in Columbia Demonstration.” It noted that Simon Bouie of Allen University was the secretary of the “Student Movement Assn., an organization of Negro college students formed to protest segregation policies.”³⁸ Earlier in the month, Bouie and approximately fifty students from Allen University and Benedict College conducted the first sit-in protests in Columbia at the Woolworth and S. H. Kress stores. The next day, five hundred students followed suit and staged protests at other establishments in the heart of the city’s commercial district. 

  The MIRC newsfilm of the larger march, titled Allen and Benedict students demonstrate on Main Street, Columbia—outtakes, has more than a minute of footage documenting young African American men and women siting in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter at the corner of Hampton and Main Streets. Just as soon as the students take their seats, white waitresses begin removing condiments. The camera quickly turns to another set of booths where a white man in a light-colored trench coat can be seen carefully guarding his camera. A waitress places a “This Section Closed” sign on the counter. In the next segment, Simon Bouie can be seen sitting at the lunch counter writing with a book before him. For just a few seconds, the side profile of a gentleman with a camera (likely Covington, filming for the Charlotte station) appears in the frame. Another white photographer is seen passing through the crowd, holding his camera to his chest. Reverend David Carter and Reverend Moses Javis, students at Benedict College, are filmed talking while seated. The students and a tall white man wearing a hat and holding a camera exit the building on Main Street. A few minutes later, walkers—including Simon Bouie—can be seen in front of the Kress store.³⁹

  Weeks earlier, Bouie, the head of the Allen University NAACP chapter, traveled with his twin brother and other students to Greensboro, where they conferred with friends at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University who were involved in the downtown sit-ins. “We talked to them, you know, and they were telling us that it was time for us to do something. . . . I think that’s where I got my inspiration, from them, and we stayed and talked to them the whole afternoon about their strategies and how they kind of organized. . . . I knew I had to do something. If they could do it, then we could do it,” Bouie recalled. Within days of the March 2 and 3 protests, the South Carolina Student Movement Association (SCSMA) was established, and it received a strong endorsement from the South Carolina Council on Human Relations (SCCHR). The council described the sit-ins as “understandable protest against continued unequal treatment in the use of public facilities and services.”⁴⁰

  During this formative moment, obvious misgivings and concerns were evident. Later during the afternoon of March 3, Bouie and his peers drafted and circulated a formal letter to city officials, journalists, and law enforcement officers. While the letter pledged to forgo further public sit-ins “with the hope and prayer of the achievement of first-class and full American citizenship,” the students maintained their opposition to “unfair, inequitable, discriminatory treatment at public and transportation services patronized by Negroes. . . . We as students fully understand that freedom has a price tag on it and that those who wish to be free must be willing to suffer and pay the penalty.”⁴¹

  On the Benedict College campus, Carter, a military veteran, and his peers obviously disagreed with some of the sentiments shared in Bouie’s letter. Carter saw no room for caution and sought to capitalize on the growing student movement by staging a large rally on the grounds of the South Carolina State House. Clearly unnerved by the prospect, Governor Hollings conducted a televised press conference where he delivered a blistering attack against the sit-ins and their organizers. He warned students at Benedict College and Allen University that they would be arrested if they participated in a planned “pilgrimage” to the State House on March 11. “We will not tolerate any such pilgrimage, assemblage, or demonstration at the state capital building or anywhere else in South Carolina,” Hollings declared. The governor ridiculed “hot-headed student leaders and confused lawyers” who were wrongly influenced by “outside, selfish, antagonist groups.” He added:

  This we will not tolerate. We have sufficient evidence, in my judgment, from incidents in Montgomery, Nashville, Chattanooga, and other cities that show that regardless of the purpose, groupings together, parades, pilgrimages, sit-downs, silent marches, or whatever they may be characterized, are explosive in nature. We shall not allow such explosive situations to develop in South Carolina.⁴²

  As student activists and the governor clashed, South Carolina’s attorney general, Daniel R. McLeod, made his views of NAACP quite clear. He said the organization “thrives on dissension, turmoil and strife” and had “fallen in step with communistic aims.” In an address before the Fellowship Society in Charleston on March 9, McLeod said NAACP “was conceived in a spirit of hatred and vengeance. . . . We are a great people, and we must remain a great people. Unfortunately, every dog has its fleas and we have our share.”⁴³

  Ultimately, SCSMA called off the protest demonstration at the State House. Carter observed, “Our own governor of South Carolina is the victim of an acute tension attack, simply because students planned a peaceful freedom pilgrimage to the State House on Saturday morning.” He indicated that the march was suspended “because we are law abiding citizens and not hoodlums or gangsters who will have to be met with brass and guns. . . . We will be back.”⁴⁴

  Within days, Carter, Bouie, and their colleagues were back downtown. Bouie recalls the open letter to the mayor and police chief as a strategic move so the city officials would not be prepared with police already on the scene for their sit-ins. On the morning of March 14, 1960, Carter, Javis, Bouie, Talmadge Neal, and others (as seen in the footage) entered Eckerd’s drugstore, located at 1530 Main Street. Bouie and Neal, childhood best friends, took seats in a booth in the lunch counter area and waited to be served. After refusing to leave their seats when instructed by local police, they were arrested, charged with criminal trespass, and convicted. 

  Bouie and Neal entered the store at 11:02 a.m. on March 14, 1960, and took their seats at 11:04, according to Bouie’s court testimony. They had books in their hands and sat for about fifteen minutes. Dr. Guy E. Malone, the store manager, later testified, “We didn’t want to serve them.” When the police attempted to move Bouie from his seat, he is accused of saying, “Take your hands off me.” According to arresting officers, Bouie started clapping and asked, “I wonder how many they’re going to arrest tomorrow.”⁴⁵

  The March 15, 1960, issue of the Charlotte Observer carried the headline “Two Negro Students Put Under Arrest” and reported:

  Two 20-year-old Negro college students were arrested Monday when they and two others sought to obtain service at an all-white lunch counter in a Columbia drug store. . . . Simon Bouie of Allen University was charged with breach of peace and resisting arrest; and Talmadge Neal of Benedict College with breach of the peace. David Carter, a Benedict theology student and president of the South Carolina Student Movement Association, and an unidentified fourth Negro, were not arrested.⁴⁶

  The archival television footage clears up the missing identification of Javis, who is seen exiting the store’s front entrance with Carter. Identified by a print journalist as the chairman of SCSMA, Carter told journalists that he and his peers would seek service “until we get an arrest. That’s what we’re here for.”⁴⁷ According to the Charlotte Observer, “two newsmen were forcibly ejected from the store for taking pictures of the incident.” Portions of what transpired inside of Eckerd’s are clearly shown in the film footage. It is likely that one of the reporters is Joseph Barnett of the State.⁴⁸

  Years later, Bouie recalled the march from Allen University to Eckerd’s. He was surprised when his classmates remained outside on Main Street as he and Neal entered and sat in a lunch counter booth. “Once Talmadge and I walked in, they stood at the door. I don’t know why they did that. I thought they were behind us.”

  Here were all these white people looking at us strangely, like they were going to really kill us, you know what I mean, or shoot us, I think that we got a little frightened, we got a little frightened, and he [Talmadge] said, “What are you going to do?” And I said, “I can’t run. I guess we’re just going to have to stay here until somebody comes.” We had the courage to sit there. And when the sheriff came in and asked us to move, we said, “We’re not going to move. We have a right to be here.” I was about a hundred and twenty-five pounds at that time, and he kind of grabbed me, and I kind of resisted.

  In Bouie’s trial testimony, he reminded the court of the media who were on the premises documenting the incident:

  I couldn’t have run. People were there looking at me. There were reporters at the time at the front door. I couldn’t do anything but go with the gentleman, and the only remark I said to the gentleman, after he pulled me by my belt, I said to him: “That’s all right, Sheriff, I’ll come on” because I didn’t want to make any scene because I knew the reporters were there and I didn’t want anything to even look violent. Those were the only remarks I made to him after he pulled me by my belt.⁴⁹

  According to the arresting officer, Shep Griffith, Bouie remarked, “Don’t hold me, I’m not going anywhere.” As they moved closer to the front entrance, Griffith said Bouie pushed back and remarked, “Take your hands off me, you don’t have to hold me.” As he did so, a woman in the store screamed, “Get him out, get him out.”⁵⁰

  Within hours of Bouie’s arrest and release on bail, he reported to his shoe-shining job at the barbershop of Joshua Martin, an African American who catered to wealthy white clients. As Bouie polished shoes, the evening news played on the television. And as fate would have it, an episode appeared about the Eckerd sit-in with footage of a student being escorted to a police car. Bouie remembered, “A white man looked down and said: ‘That boy looks like that boy up on that television. Look up there, Josh, can’t you see?’” Martin was quick to respond: “Best not be. Best not be. No, he wouldn’t be in here. I wouldn’t have those kind of troublemakers in my place.”

  After the arrest, Bouie rightly worried about the reaction of his family and the Allen University leadership. “You know we had a lot of people at that time who really felt we had no business opening lunch counters. One of the things my grandmother said to me, ‘You’re going to bring the wrath of God down on me and my family.’” Mrs. Bouie certainly had reasons to be concerned. Her home address and that of the Neals appeared in local newspapers. Later, her teaching position in the small town of Mullins was threatened when local school leaders discovered her grandson’s civil rights activism. 

  The arrests of Bouie and Neal, captured on camera on March 14, 1960, set the stage for an important United States Supreme Court case, Bouie v. Columbia. On March 15, 1960, colleagues of Bouie and Neal were arrested at another drugstore only blocks from Eckerd’s. The resulting case, Barr v. Columbia, also made its way to the Supreme Court.

  On June 22, 1964, the United States Supreme Court ruled on a set of selected sit-in cases—just three days after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Barr and Bouie were two of five sit-in cases decided on that day. These decisions provided a legal foundation for undermining segregation in public space and upholding the rights of protestors. In Justice William O. Douglas’s concurring opinion in the case of Bell v. Maryland, he wrote:

  Segregation of Negroes in the restaurants and lunch counters of parts of America is a relic of slavery. It is a badge of second-class citizenship. It is a denial of the privilege and immunity of national citizenship and of the equal protection guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment against abridgment by the States. When the state police, the state prosecutor, and the state courts unite to convict Negroes for renouncing that relic of slavery, the “State” violates the Fourteenth Amendment.

  Bouie Newsfilm Annotations

  WIS-TV News Story 60-5011

  Filmed on March 14, 1960

  Silent

  0:00–0:11     Simon Bouie (front). Man opens door as Griffith escorts Bouie out, book in hand. On the far left, a white woman is yelling. In published records, a woman is reported to yell: “Get him out! Get him out!” Bouie is directed to an unmarked car. Belk’s store is in the background. As Griffin is standing at the door, Neal is taken to the car. Bouie can be seen in the car waving his hands. 

   

  0:11–0:15     Talmadge Neal (back).

   

  0:19–0:24    Bouie, wider shot (front).

   

  0:24–0:28     Neal, wider shot (front). Man with a moving camera at 0:27.

   

  0:28–0:36     Neal (back), same footage as 0:11 but longer.

   

  0:37–0:45     Bouie, Neal, officer in back, tall officer in plainclothes driving to city jail. 

   

  0:48–1:05     Inside store, removal of white man with two cameras, man in suit blocks camera from front, chain has been extended. Sign reads “No trespassing.” A man can be seen with two cameras. 

   

  1:06–1:17     Outside store, scan from door to Javis with Carter observing; storefront with man in suit inside looking out, smiling.

   

  1:18–1:28     Two older men (forties or fifties) in suit coats, hats, with glasses outside store, unidentified white man looking in, unidentified Black man looking toward street, white man allowed in as door unlocked. Camera operator visible in the window at 1:27.

   

  1:29–1:42     White woman inside store holding handwritten sign up to camera, pan to “Closed” sign, camera operator and others reflected in the glass door.

   

  1:43–1:57     Inside store with police (city, state, detectives) interviewing Carter and Carter walking away after conclusion of interview, police and store staff looking toward camera. Court testimony identified Carter and another man, presumably Javis, as entering the store with Bouie and Neal; at 1:42, store is closed. Bouie’s memory of a large crowd of students marching behind them might be conflated with that of a march of students a week earlier. 

   

  When Bouie reflected upon his experiences decades later, he recalled meetings with colleagues around the state, the challenges of coordinating events, and the intense opposition he felt from African American and white citizens alike. Despite his grandmother’s misgivings and his own cautious actions, he later regarded his protests as critical steps that “sharpened the movement.” He recalled, “We sort of kept the fire going.” Writing in November 2020, Bouie observed: “As a college junior at Allen University all I wanted was equality; never did I imagine my actions would end up in the United States Supreme Court in Bouie vs. City of Columbia. But we were tired of asking for freedom. We were tired of the injustices and inequity.”⁵¹

  Following the arrests of Bouie and Neal at Eckerd’s and Benedict students at the Taylor Street Pharmacy the following day, the South Carolina Protest Movement Commission circulated a flyer.⁵² Addressed to teachers, the headline read, “DON’T GO IN THERE!”

  BEWARE of Eckerd Drug Stores and of TAYLOR STREET PHARMACY near COLUMBIA TOWNSHIP AUDITORIUM. Students jerked out of TAYLOR STREET PHARMACY and ECKERD’S and JAILED are now being tried for TRESPASSING and DISTURBING THE PEACE. Their most courteous service always extended in other departments turned into demands for arrests at lunch counters.

   

  If BLACK AMERICANS are to have TOMORROW and the Next Day what WHITE AMERICANS have had YESTERDAY, DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY, AND THE DAY BEFORE THAT, WE MUST LET OUR DOLLARS AND OUR VOTES DO OUR TALKING.

  March 2, 1961, Columbia, South Carolina: Edwards

  For much of the fall of 1960, sit-ins and demonstrations in Columbia waned, but student leaders were anxious to reignite earlier protest campaigns. On February 5, 1961, SCCHR held a series of workshops at Allen University called “The Role of the Student in Achieving Human Rights.” A featured speaker was Ella Baker, a leading organizer with NAACP, SCLC, and the newly formed Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Within days of Baker’s event, student demonstrations resumed in Columbia. 

  At the time, Bouie was the president of the Student Committee on Human Rights at Allen. As demonstrations unfolded, he noted that Allen did not participate in the latest marches and firmly believed that demonstrations should be “conceived, planned and led by students in the immediate community.” He noted that he and his Allen peers

  deplore the lack of leadership our students have received thus far from Columbia Negro adults, none of whom has yet had the courage to fight this battle they urge us young people to fight. . . . We know that further sit-ins can only mean enrichment for lawyers and city and county treasuries. However, there are other more effective approaches, and we’re presently working on these.⁵³

  Despite Bouie’s reservations, other college and high school students were preparing for a frontal assault on segregated facilities across the South. In Greenville a regional NAACP meeting was held at the Springfield Baptist Church. More than one hundred high school and college members attended workshops conducted by Herbert L. Wright and Julie Wright, the southeastern youth field secretary. In keynote remarks, A. Leon Lowry, president of the Florida chapter of NAACP, described the growing demonstrations as “a dramatic way of bringing into focus the deep and profound sense of dissatisfaction the Negro has in America.”⁵⁴ Days later, on February 21, 1961, students in Columbia faced arrests as they staged sit-ins at Eckerd’s and Woolworth’s.⁵⁵

  With students forging strong protests in Columbia, Orangeburg, Rock Hill, and other cities, plans evolved to stage what Newman penned in his calendar as the “March on State Capitol.”⁵⁶ On the morning of March 2, 1961, Irving McNayr, Columbia’s city manager, received a phone call at 10:30 from Columbia police chief L. L. Campbell informing him of a meeting at Zion Baptist Church, located at 801 Washington Street, at the intersection with Gadsden. Upon arriving at the church at 10:45 a.m., he saw people entering the basement. According to McNayr, he spoke with a guarded David Carter about what was transpiring. 

  Transported by buses and cars from across the state, hundreds of high school and college students gathered in Zion. After praying, singing, and hearing words of advice about nonviolent action, the students dispersed from the historic church in clusters of fifteen and marched to the South Carolina capitol six blocks away. Some carried signs, such as “You may jail our bodies, but not our souls,” “I am proud to be a Negro,” and “Down with segregation.” After reaching the capitol grounds, the students began to march and sing protest songs. 

  Dorris D. Wright, a student from Sterling High School in Greenville, president of the Youth Council of the NAACP Greenville Branch, and secretary of the State Youth Council, joined her friends for the journey. She recalled, “When we met at the church, we were told that we were going to march to the capitol and that we would be nonviolent. We should march straight ahead. We would not be distracted by the crowds that may be standing on the side of the street. We walked from Zion Church to the capitol.” Before departing the church, Wright and her colleagues made a series of posterboard signs, which are clearly seen in photographs. Her sign read “Give us our God given rights.” In the archival television newsfilm footage, the signs are not visible. However, Wright and her poster appear in a photo of a student group starting the march from Zion.⁵⁷

  As Wright and peers encountered jeers and taunts in their walk from Zion, McNayr moved to the State House grounds and communicated with Harry C. Walker, the legal aide to Governor Hollings. The students walked around the State House for upward of forty-five minutes. More than three hundred students and adult advisors wanted

  to submit a protest to the citizens of South Carolina, along with the Legislative Bodies of South Carolina, our feelings and our dissatisfaction with the present condition of discriminatory actions against Negroes, in general, and to let them know that we were dissatisfied and that we would like for the laws which prohibited Negro privileges in this State to be removed.

  “So we quietly march to the capitol,” Wright remembers. “And then we were asked to leave. We didn’t leave. And we continued to sing and go around the circle in front of the capitol. And one of the songs that we were singing, I remember was ‘We Shall Not be Moved.’” With her photograph prominently featured in the newspaper, Wright was deeply concerned about her family’s well-being.⁵⁸

  When the first group arrived on the grounds around 12:35 p.m., Walker informed McDew that the grounds could not be used for demonstrations. McDew, the leader of the first group of fifteen students, listened and then asked, “May I pass?” Permitted to pass, the group then entered the grounds at the Main Street entrance, directly in front of the State House central staircase. They then headed west on Gervais Street along the front of the State House, where they again attempted to enter the State House grounds. After taking ten steps, they were placed under arrest. 

  Upon reaching the grounds of the State House, Wright recalled Carter preaching: “We are protesting the indignity and inhumanity of segregation. . . . Do you want to be free? . . . Do you want to go to jail for your rights?” When asked to disperse, Carter told the students. “I don’t think that’s right. . . . But let your conscience be your guide.” And with that, the students broke out in song. They began clapping, dancing, and singing “We Shall Not Be Moved” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” After McNayr asked Carter to dismiss the groups, officials alleged that Carter “harangued each group with a religious chanting type of voice.” Clearly encouraged by Carter, as seen in the archival footage, the original planned silent protest gave rise to clapping, dancing, and singing of religious and patriotic songs. 

  After reading reports of the State House arrests and hearing directly from Newman and other colleagues on the ground, Roy Wilkins, the head of NAACP, sent a telegram to Hollings.

  We feel these arrests unjustified. The rights of free speech, peaceful assembly and petition of redress of grievances are all guaranteed by the constitution. All over the nation various groups are protesting to state legislatures, some demonstrating in front of their capitals in support of or against some issue. Democracy is compromised and our nation’s image blurred all over the world by this unwarranted abuse of police power and depriving citizens of their constitutional right to assemble and protest against discrimination.⁵⁹

  In Newman’s annual report on December 7, 1961, he observed:

  News releases on NAACP activities, and Press Conferences are other methods that have been employed to bring about a public awareness and appreciation of the NAACP progress. The State Conference President, Church Committee chairman, and Legal Redress Committee chairman have been prolific writers and speakers discriminating the program and points of view of the Association. Press, radio and television facilities in South Carolina have been utilized as media of expression.⁶⁰

  Many details of the State House demonstration were captured by print reporters, photographers, and television news crews who were alerted, with little lead time, by NAACP officials. In a March 1, 1961, message to Gloster Current, Herbert J. Wright, NAACP’s youth leader, acknowledged that he received a call from Newman for assistance with a “mass student rally” scheduled for the following day on the “steps of the Capitol at Columbia.” Wright reported, “Rev. Newman stated that he is expecting several thousand students from the NAACP Youth and College units throughout South Carolina to converge on Columbia and participate in this rally.”⁶¹

  On the day of the State House demonstration, Julie Wright, a graduate of Claflin University, relayed a press release by telephone as the march unfolded. “Two hundred students from Greenville, Spartanburg, Charleston, Florence, Camden, Orangeburg, South Carolina, march in single file down the street in front of the Capital of South Carolina. They were given 15 minutes to disperse and leave. A carload of students have already been arrested. The students are still continuing to march.”⁶²

  On the day following the State House demonstration, Herbert Wright and Ruby Hurley called a press conference at Zion Baptist Church after the final students were released from jail. They contended that the students faced a “double standard of justice,” and they called for an economic boycott during the Easter holiday. In a prepared statement designed for the press, NAACP officials noted that the demonstrators were “protesting the antiquated and unjust pattern of segregation as it is supported by the constitution and laws of South Carolina.”⁶³

  Barnett observed, “The entire move had an out-of-state flavor to it; a New York City newspaper had information about the planned demonstration hours before the March actually took place.”⁶⁴ In fact, James Edwards, Carter, Newman, and countless others were natives of South Carolina.

  The resulting case, Edwards v. South Carolina, reached the United States Supreme Court for oral arguments in December 1962. The arguments were crafted, in part, by Columbia attorneys Perry and Jenkins. Then, on February 25, 1963, in an 8–1 decision, the court affirmed the peaceful student demonstrations and concluded that the 1961 arrests of participants violated “constitutionally protected rights of free speech, free assembly and freedom to petition for redress of their grievances.” Opening the door to continued demonstrations nationwide, the court’s landmark decision ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids a state “to make criminal the peaceful expression of unpopular views.” The Edwards v. South Carolina ruling provided an important legal precedent for future civil rights demonstrations around the country. Perry later described the case as “one of the pearls in First Amendment jurisprudence.” 

  Among the 187 arrested were NAACP leader and future South Carolina state senator Reverend I. DeQuincey Newman; Dr. B. J. Glover, the pastor of Charleston’s Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church; future United States Congressman James E. Clyburn; future South Carolina state representative Leola Robinson-Simpson; Charles Barr; and Charles McDew, a founder of SNCC. “We felt that our state capitol building belongs to the people and that any time individuals desired to march on that building, they should have the right to do so,” Robinson-Simpson recalled.⁶⁵

  The first named defendant, James Edwards Jr., had arrived at Benedict College fresh from a short stint in New York City. A native of Ninety-Six, South Carolina, Edwards met Newman during an address in Antisdel Chapel. “I came to Benedict College not knowing that I was going to be in a movement,” the career educator remarked decades later. “We wanted to let the leaders of South Carolina know that we were determined to fight for justice and equal opportunity. . . . We wanted to send that message directly to the people in the Statehouse.”⁶⁶

  Frederick Hart, a student at the University of South Carolina and the only white participant arrested in the protest, is seen in the footage sitting in jail with African American students. Within hours of his arrest, his photograph appeared in newspapers across the region. Roundly ridiculed and harassed, Hart was branded a “highly emotional campus liberal who sets out to rearrange the thinking of an entire region.” Seemingly undaunted by the threats, he penned a letter in the University of South Carolina student newspaper, the Daily Gamecock, and wrote a column that was carried by UPI. He noted that he had no premeditated plan to join the demonstration.

  I felt like I had to shake hands with the arrested demonstrators because I was in sympathy with them. I really had no part in the demonstration, but one of the police officers forced me to answer whether or not I was in sympathy with it. . . . Though many of the students at the university don’t care one way or another, I would prefer to go to jail to carry out my protest rather than have anyone post bond for me. When the officer brought me to jail, I asked one of the Negro students to loan me this NAACP button. If I wasn’t a member of the NAACP before, I am now.⁶⁷

  Hart’s commitment to the civil rights struggle sparked protracted debate on the campus. Some white students encouraged their peers to “fight hard to preserve segregation of the races.” A fellow student retorted: “This boy was stepping over the bounds that a stranger to a place should observe. He should have kept his nose and the chip on his shoulder out of our local problems.”⁶⁸

  Convinced that he had no future on the Carolina campus in the face of such vehement opposition, Hart departed from the university within a week of his arrest and went on to a distinguished career in art. In the Daily Gamecock, he wrote: “Sympathizing is not enough. I beg you to stand up for what you believe is right. The situation is appallingly unjust. To let it go on would be defeating the whole purpose of democracy. If you are ever going to stand up, stand up now.”⁶⁹

  Within two weeks of the Supreme Court’s February 25, 1963, decision, about half of the original Freedom Marchers, their parents, and their attorneys returned to Zion Baptist for a Sunday afternoon celebration program, where participants were given certificates saluting their “courageous and unselfish service in the area of human rights and the determination to secure equality of opportunity in behalf of the underprivileged.”⁷⁰

  With members of the press positioned in one of the church’s choir lofts, clearly visible in Cecil Williams’s photographs of the event, Newman spoke of the significance of the ruling and recounted what had transpired two years earlier. “We were arrested, herded like cattle, forced to walk to the Richland jail where we were locked up, not because we had done any violence nor broken any laws, but being black, the judgment of South Carolina law officers was that we had no rights of free speech, free assembly, and freedom to petition for the redress of grievances.” Referring to the Supreme Court’s ruling as “an epochal decision,” Newman asserted, “We intend to march again and again and again, until the officials of South Carolina, from the governor down and from the lowliest magistrate up, recognizes the equality of men under the law, regardless of race, creed, color or previous condition of servitude.”⁷¹

  The legal significance and historical interpretation of the Edwards ruling are enhanced by the remaining archival footage that shows what transpired on March 1, 1961. The WIS-TV collection contains a one-minute silent clip labeled Integration Demonstrations at Statehouse. Similar footage—with significant variations—is part of the NBC national archives. The original MIRC content description read:

  Exterior; day: long shot rear crowd watching marchers on Gervais Street. Closeup two African-American men with white men around. Low medium shot marchers. Medium shot pan African-American man leading chant. Long shot marchers pass camera. Long shot pan Richland County jail. Interior: medium shot pan African-American and white men. Long shot crowd in courtroom.

  After the research of Columbia SC 63 and the Center for Civil Rights History and Research, the MIRC archival entry was expanded. 

  Integration demonstrations at State House—outtakes

  WIS-TV News Story 61-81

  Filmed on March 2, 1961.

  Silent

  00:55

  African-American students from Benedict College, Allen University and other schools march on State House grounds. This demonstration led to the U. S. Supreme Court case, Edwards v. South Carolina. David Carter speaks to reporters prior to the march. Marchers lined up on Gervais Street begin the walk around the State House. Flanked by police officers, the march progresses around the State House. Among those shown on film is Reverend I. DeQuincey Newman. Final sequences show some of the protesters in the County jail.

  
  In the first moments of the film, students assemble near Gervais and Main Streets; the Wade Hampton Hotel is in the background. As a wave of students come from the west and ascend a slight incline up Gervais Street in front of the State House, they are greeted by Carter and Reverend Saul Williams, students at the Starks School of Theology at Benedict College. As the students marched, lawmakers and staff stood on the steps of the State House and observed. Covington was present as a freelance journalist for WBTV in Charlotte. Alerted about the approaching march, he rushed to the scene. He appears in a UPI newswire photograph in front of the State House with his camera pointed toward Harry Walker and McDew.⁷²

  Meanwhile, Williams, the young African American photographer from Orangeburg, arrived at the capitol grounds. In advance of the demonstration, he received a message from Newman. “I walked around the entire state capitol and took pictures on each corner,” he recalled. “There were an enormous number of students. I shot the front part [of the capitol] on Main Street, the rear side, the side of the capitol. I was unaware of those others taking photographs.” Williams was fully mindful that NAACP leaders wanted to be sure that these efforts were being recorded and documented. 

  Edwards Newsfilm Annotations

  0:01–0:07     View from behind of a crowd of white people looking at something not visible. In this scene Harry C. Walker is speaking with David Carter, who is hidden by the crowd, and Saul Williams, who is partially obscured.

   

  0:08–0:15     MIRC Description: “David Carter speaks to reporters prior to the march.” 

  Benedict College theology student David Carter speaks to news reporters in front of the State House as Saul Williams listens in. Carter and Williams were student leaders of the march. Carter and Williams have small NAACP buttons on their lapels. Two reporters visible, both smoking. Three visible law enforcement officers, one in uniform, stand behind the pair and listen in. Someone in front of Carter and Williams, to the side of a reporter, draws their attention as Carter speaks. 

   

  0:15–0:22     “Marchers lined up on Gervais Street begin the walk around the State House.” 

  Saul Williams motions by swinging his arm to direct students walking in columns along Gervais Street. Students are dressed formally in dresses, skirts, or suits and ties. Sunglasses on several of the students. Marmac Hotel visible in background across the street. Clifford Rice, a student at Benedict College, Harold Bardonille, a founder of SNCC, and George Anderson, later a civil rights attorney in Aiken, South Carolina, are seen; at the end of this segment, Reverend Lennie Glover is briefly seen on the right. It appears that Glover is responsible for collecting protest placards from the participants. 

   

  0:22–0:28     David Carter waves his arm like a conductor to direct student singing of hymns and patriotic songs. The camera pans left to show Saul Williams also waving his arm to direct the singing. Looking on about fifteen feet away in a line to the right side of Carter are four young white men in shirtsleeves. Carter is joined by Glover, a divinity student at Benedict College. To Glover’s right about ten feet away is a uniformed male city police officer.

   

  0:28–0:33     “Flanked by police officers, the march progresses around the State House. Among those shown on film is Reverend I. DeQuincey Newman.” 

  Uniformed male city police officers walk to either side at the head of a column of student marchers led by three young women. About ten rows back on the left side of the column is NAACP State Conference Field Director Isaiah DeQuincey Newman, a Methodist minister. He is joined by Reverend Benjamin J. Glover, pastor of Emanuel AME Church, who is smiling as he marches. A female student holds her head down as she walks next to the police officer. Another young woman smiles and raises a clenched fist as she walks. One young man covers his face as he sees a television camera. Another young man waves his hand.

   

  0:34–0:48     “Final sequences show some of the protesters in the County jail.” 

   

  0:34–0:37     Exterior of Richland County Jail, a concrete building, man walking in front of building, tree budding in early spring. Camera pans left along exterior side of building, showing heavily barred, large windows. 

   

  0:38–0:46     Interior of jail with students seated on a long bench; camera pans right to show eight young men on the bench, six in suits and ties and two in sunglasses; the seventh student is white University of South Carolina student Frederick Hart. The person speaking with Hart is Thomas Hornsby. Neither student joined the court appeal. 

   

  0:47–0:54     Interior of courtroom, pretrial, with students mostly filling the seats. Three white uniformed law enforcement officers stand at rear door, two in city police uniforms. At the foreground of the frame, Carter, Glover, and a third student speak with a white man, likely the reporter from 0:08–0:15, distinguished by his beard and moustache. 

   

  0:49–0:55     “Final sequences show some of the protesters in the County jail.”

  Camera pans right to show two other white men, possibly other reporters. Students John Land and Harold Bardonille can be seen. Woman wearing a beanie and Henry Harris are standing in the courtroom aisle. Carter, Newman, Williams shown. The last frame shows Duke Missouri and James E. Clyburn.

  Conclusion: Stories Matter

  Speaking to a large room full of civil rights movement veterans in 2013, Congressman Clyburn said, “There’s so much, so much that this community—Columbia, Orangeburg, Rock Hill, Sumter—so much that we gave to this effort that you can’t find anywhere. To those who are here, we have north of seventy [movement veterans], and we need to take a little time and make sure that we fill in the gaps. There are a lot of gaps that we need to make sure that we fill in.”⁷³

  Ten years after the first message to my graduate assistant and many hours of exploration of the newsfilm archive with MIRC archivists Dr. Gregory Wilsbacher and Amy Meaney, we have worked to “fill in the gaps” as we document the civil rights activities of hundreds of South Carolinians. The “faceless force” of the movement displayed on television reports in the 1960s have become individuals with important memories to reconstruct and share. We have recovered their identities by sharing the newsfilm clips at public events and exhibitions and in conversations. We have interviewed several of the surviving participants and filmed interviews to expand the historical record beyond the time of the events. Some of the student demonstrators, including Clyburn, have gone on to write memoirs about their movement experiences. 

  In a 2022 interview, Charles Barr—one of those civil rights veterans—said the work in the intervening years to identify the people and acknowledge their work publicly and visibly “means that my children, grandchildren, and everyone else will see that they came from two people who had a thought of trying to do something and being strong and making it work.”⁷⁴
  
  A list of external links featured in this essay can be found here.⁷⁵
  
  A native of Augusta, Georgia, Dr. Bobby Donaldson serves as Associate Professor of History and the Executive Director of the Center for Civil Rights History and Research at the University of South Carolina-Columbia. He holds the James E. and Emily E. Clyburn Endowed Chair of Public Service and Civic Engagement. He received his undergraduate degree in History and African American Studies from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, and his Ph.D. in American History from Emory University. Professor Donaldson’s teaching and scholarship examine southern history and African American life and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He also serves as the lead scholar for and director of Columbia SC 63, a documentary project that examines the struggle for civil rights and social justice in Columbia and around the state of South Carolina.
  
  Title Image: Orangeburg March, South Carolina Moving Image Research Collection (MIRC)
  
  “The Most Frightening Thing I Have Ever Seen”: Moving Images and the South Carolina Civil Rights Movement © 2025 by Bobby Donaldson is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
  
  The Journal of e-Media Studies is published by the Dartmouth Library.