Delano Middleton
Age 17
A star high-school athlete known as "Bumpy" to his friends
Orangeburg, South Carolina
February 8, 1968
"They called it the Orangeburg Riots in the paper and it was not a riot."
Zachary Middleton & Robert Caldwell
Great-grandnephew and Best Friend of Middleton
START
ZM: Can you tell me a little bit about my great uncle? How did you meet him? What was he like?
RC: We used to call him ‘Bumpy’ and there wasn’t no features or nothing. I think that name came because he was a little one after his brothers and his sisters. I met Bumpy in elementary school. I could have caught the bus home, but your great grandfather’s property was right behind from where I lived. So we walked home together. That gave me and him more time to talk.
He was determined. He was a competitor and he was about having a goal, even at that young age. When we got into junior high school, we got tighter. And when we got into high school, it was even much more a connection because him and I was the only two freshmens that made the varsity football team.
He would come to my house. My brother and I would go to bed and leave him up watching football games. And I came to his house early in the morning to wake him up for football practice ‘cause we had to be leaving at 4 to be on the field by 5, 5:30.
He was one reason why I started going to the library because he always talked about going to college. We talked about him and I going to the same school. We always had each other’s back. When he got killed, he was only 17 years old so the impact of Delano’s death has never left me. And talking about it right now, I still feel like 52 years ago was yesterday.
How did all this hit you when you found out who Delano Middleton was?
ZM: I’m named after my great uncle. And so this is something that from a very young age, was very important in the story of my family. Some of my earliest experiences is going to the memorial ceremony of the Orangeburg Massacre. February 8th was like a sacred event for us. We were very intentional about never forgetting that moment and passing it on to future generations, not out of bitterness or anger, but saying that this did happen and how do we move forward from there? I see it now as an opportunity that I can help and serve the next generation. And so it’s not just for the sake of reflection, but also for the sake of trying to help someone else.
What is the last thing you would want the world to remember about your friend, Delano Middleton?
RC: The Orangeburg Massacre wasn’t called that when I was a kid. They called it the Orangeburg Riots in the paper and it was not a riot. Delano Middleton was not a rioter. He was about change even at that young age, in a positive way. He was a good guy inside and out. He was true. And he was Black.
END
Photo by Point Shoot Media
Delano Middleton was a football and basketball star at his high school. One evening on the way home from basketball practice, he stopped by the campus of the historically Black South Carolina State College (now South Carolina State University) to see his mother, who was employed there as a maid. While there, he was shot by law enforcement in what has come to be known as the Orangeburg Massacre. The information in this summary comes from a host of media reports about the incident and the investigations that followed.
Students at the college had conducted a series of protests decrying the whites-only policy at a local bowling alley. Even though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had outlawed segregation in most establishments, some white-owned businesses still refused to follow federal law — among them, Orangeburg’s only bowling alley. The students were also demanding the regional hospital, which had resisted integration, provide equal treatment to people of all races.
The night of Feb. 8, 1968, students had gathered on campus for another protest. Scores of members of the National Guard and state highway patrol and police officers had amassed near the campus; hundreds more troops were nearby. The officers were armed with deadlier ammunition than typically used for dispersing riots.
When a patrol officer was struck in the head by an object, another officer fired his gun in the air as a warning. After that first shot, at least eight other troopers and a police officer opened fire on the unarmed students. As the students fled, some were shot in the back, sides and feet. Middleton was shot seven times. As he lay dying, he asked his mother to recite the 23rd Psalm for him. Students Samuel Hammond Jr. and Henry Smith, both 18, were also killed. About 27 other protestors were injured.
The event did not spark extensive public outcry at the time, but historians believe it was the first deadly confrontation between college students and law enforcement in the United States.
Initial Investigation
After the incident, the state’s governor, Robert McNair, called it “one of the saddest days in the history of South Carolina” and blamed “black power advocates.” He also said the shooting occurred off campus, despite evidence to the contrary. McNair asked the FBI to investigate but did not mandate a state investigation.
More than a year later, nine state troopers were tried on a charge of imposing summary punishment without due process of law. A federal jury acquitted them in less than two hours. Cleveland Sellers, an activist shot during the protest, was sentenced to one year in state prison on a riot charge from a protest at the bowling alley two days before the incident at the college.
In the years since, South Carolinian leaders have repeatedly acknowledged the state’s responsibility for the tragedy. More than two decades after his conviction, Sellers was officially pardoned for the riot charge. In 2001, Gov. Jim Hodges said, “We deeply regret what happened on the night” of February 8. Two years later, Gov. Mark Sanford officially apologized for the event, writing, “I think it’s important to tell the African-American community in South Carolina we don’t just regret what happened in Orangeburg 35 years ago, we apologize for it.”
The state has never formally investigated the incident.
Till Act Status
In 2007, the FBI announced it was reviewing the Orangeburg deaths as part of its examination of civil-rights-era killings. Several months later, a spokesperson said federal officials had declined to reopen the investigation out of concern for double-jeopardy, since the troopers involved had already been acquitted.
Despite that announcement, Middleton’s, Smith’s and Hammond’s names appeared on a list of cold cases being investigated by the Department of Justice in a 2010 Attorney General report to Congress. The names have remained in each DOJ project report through 2019, and no memos announcing the cases’ closures have been published.
Case Status open
Themes
- Children
- Incident on Campus
- Deaths Involving Law Enforcement
- Open Cases
- Storycorps Stories
About the Project
This multiplatform investigation draws upon more than two years of reporting, thousands of documents and dozens of first-hand interviews. FRONTLINE spoke to family and friends of the victims, and witnesses, some of whom had never been interviewed; current and former Justice Department officials and FBI agents, state and local law enforcement; lawmakers, civil-rights leaders and investigative journalists, to explore the Department of Justice’s reopening of civil rights-era cold cases under the 2008 Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.
In addition to an examination of the federal effort, the project features the first comprehensive, interactive list of all those whose cases were reopened by the Department of Justice. Today, the list stands at 151 names. Among the victims: voting rights advocates, veterans, Louisville’s first female prosecutor, business owners, mothers, fathers, and children.
The project consists of a web-based interactive experience, serialized podcast, a touring augmented-reality exhibit, documentary and companion education curriculum for high schools and universities.
A project like Un(re)solved would not be possible without the historic and contemporary contributions of universities, civil rights groups, and the press, particularly the Black press, who have ensured the ongoing public record of racist violence in the United States. To pay homage to these groups, the web interactive begins with a quote from journalist, activist and researcher Ida B. Wells, one of the first to document with precision the horrors of racial terror in America. “The way to right wrongs,” she wrote, “is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
At the outset of the project, FRONTLINE forged a relationship with Northeastern University’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ), bringing them on as an academic partner. Launched in 2007 by Distinguished Law Professor Margaret Burnham, CRRJ is a mission-driven program of interdisciplinary teaching, research and policy analysis on race, history, and criminal justice. Their work has expanded beyond the names on the Justice Department’s list, archiving documents in over 1,000 cases of racially motivated homicides.
With support from the CRRJ, FRONTLINE reporters gathered what could be known about the individuals on the list, conducting interviews with family, friends and witnesses, delving into newspaper archives and gathering documentation including headstone applications, draft cards and archival photographs.
At the heart of the project has been a drive to center the voices of the families of those on the list. FRONTLINE partnered with StoryCorps to record nearly two dozen oral histories with victims’ next of kin, which are featured both in the web-based interactive and traveling AR exhibit. These oral histories will also be archived in the National Library of Congress.
To lead the creative vision for the web experience and installation, FRONTLINE partnered with Ado Ato Pictures, a premier mixed reality studio founded by artist, filmmaker, and technologist Tamara Shogaolu.
Shogaolu rooted the visuals in the powerful symbolism of trees. In the United States, trees evoke the ideal of liberty, but also speak to an oppressive history of racially motivated violence. In Persian myth, trees are humanity’s ancestors, while in Toraja, Indonesia, they serve as sacred burial sites.
“I was really inspired by looking at the role of the tree as a symbol in American history” Shogaolu said. “It’s been looked at as a symbol of freedom, we look at it as a connector between generations, and also there’s the association of trees with racial terror.” When designing the creative vision for Un(re)solved Shogaolu wondered whether she might be able to reclaim the symbol of the tree. “As a person of color, we’re often terrified of being in isolated places in the woods. And I thought it was kind of crazy that there are natural environments that instinctually give great fear because of this connection with racial terror and I wanted to reclaim that — to turn these into beautiful spaces.”
Un(re)solved weaves imagery of trees, which also recall family ties, into patterns and textures from the American tradition of quilting. Among enslaved African Americans forbidden to read or write, quilts provided an important space to document family stories. Today, quilting remains a creative outlet rich with story and tradition for many American communities.
We invite you to enter this forest of quilted memories — a testimony to the lives of these individuals, and the multi-generational impact of their untimely, unjust loss.
(Credits to come)