Remembering the 42nd Anniversary of the Orangeburg Massacre

Today marks the 42^nd anniversary of the most unknown tragedy in the history of the civil rights movement. On 1968, police opened fire on the campus of South Carolina State University, leaving three young African American men dead and 27 wounded. Unlike a similar incident at Kent State, the incident did not make national headlines and there has never been an official investigation into what occurred that night. The film investigates the continued cover-up of the tragedy and follows ongoing efforts to seek justice.

Haven’t heard of the tragedy? Well, be sure to tune into public television this month to watch the ITVS film Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968, where filmmakers Bestor Cram and Judy Richardson investigate the continued cover-up of the tragedy and the ongoing efforts to seek justice.

Watch an extended clip of this program below:

Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968 airs in February on public television (check local listings).

A co-production of ITVS in association with the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC).

Tags: African American, civil rights, social justice, South Carolina

Reconstructing History: Filmmakers Discuss Objective Storytelling

This is the companion piece to Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968, which airs in February on public television, and investigates the continued cover-up of the tragedy of 1968 on the campus of South Carolina State University and follows ongoing efforts to seek justice.

Filmmakers Bestor Cram and Judy Richardson discuss how they visually reconstructed a shocking historical event of which there is very little archival footage, without influencing the objective telling of the story.

Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968 airs in February on public television (check local listings).

A co-production of ITVS in association with the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC).

Tags: African American, civil rights, social justice, South Carolina

BANISHED Wins Erik Barnouw Award

Marco Williams and Strickland family descendant Dorothy Pemberton from the Erik Barnouw Award-winning film BANISHED.

BANISHED, by Marco Williams, recently was awarded an Erik Barnouw Award, which recognizes outstanding reporting and programming on television or in documentary film that is concerned with American history.

From the 1860s to the 1920s, dozens of towns and counties across America violently expelled entire African American communities, forcing thousands of black families to flee their homes. A century later, these towns remain all white. BANISHED tells the story of three of these communities and their black descendants, who return to learn shocking histories.

BANISHED aired last season of Independent Lens and is a co-production of ITVS, Two Tone Productions, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the National Black Programming Consortium, with major funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Tags: African American, Human Rights, social justice