Biography
Cleveland Sellers was the national program director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). On the night of February 8, 1968, South Carolina highway patrolmen opened fire on student protesters at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, killing three young Black men and wounding 27; Sellers was shot and then arrested, becoming the only person imprisoned in connection with the Orangeburg Massacre. Though acquitted of the charges tied to the campus shooting, he was convicted of "riot" over an earlier protest and served about seven months in 1973. South Carolina granted him a full pardon in 1993.
Cleveland Sellers Jr. was SNCC's national program director and a key Black Power-era organizer. On the night of February 8, 1968, South Carolina Highway Patrol officers opened fire on unarmed Black students at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg who had been protesting the segregated All Star Bowling Lane; three students — Samuel Hammond, Delano Middleton, and Henry Smith — were killed, and 27 were wounded, including Sellers, who was shot in the shoulder. Although nine state troopers were acquitted in federal court, Sellers was the only person prosecuted in connection with the Orangeburg Massacre, convicted of riot in 1970. He began serving his sentence in February 1973 at the South Carolina Department of Corrections, was released in August 1973 after seven months, and received a full pardon from Governor Carroll Campbell on July 20, 1993, declining to have his record expunged.
