1968-2008 Rebel Year: bloedbad in Orangeburg

Op 8 februari 1968 openden politie en de National Guard het vuur op een geweldloze demonstratie van studenten tegen de segregatie in een bowlinghal. Drie zwarte studenten werden gedood, en vele anderen raakten gewond.

Diezelfde maand schreef de zwarte schrijver James Baldwin:
‘Let us attempt to face the fact that we are a racist society, racist to the very marrow, and we are fighting a racist war. No black man in chains in his own country, and watching the many deaths occurring around him every day, believes for the moment that America cares anything at all about the freedom of Asia. My own condition, as a black man in America, tells me what Americans really feel and really want, and tells me who they really are. And, therefore, every bombed village is my home town.’