University of Virginia Library

Orangeburg Riots

How To Kill Students

By Alan Ogden

The Orangeburg, S.C., massacre
a couple weeks ago should open
our eyes and open them wide. Four
dead and fifty wounded for breaching
the status quo. The status quo
means keep quiet, no demands,
no rallies, no justice. And are any
of the corpses white? Of course
not. Massacre is stage one of the
final act in the story of the oppression
of the black man in
America.

The black victims of Orangeburg
stand in relation to the Afro-American
group as a whole as the
Vietnamese stand to the human
group as a whole. The lesson is
this: if you threaten the dominance
of the American colossus you
die. If the warnings, the massacres,
do not make their point, there are
the Big Bombs in readiness.

The American capitalist structure
demands a vastly disproportionate
share of the world's
(material) wealth, oppresses the
poor, rewards the rich, and hates
the truth.

It is evident by now that the
grossest repressions of American
capitalism are done in a quite
bloodthirsty, conscious manner.
What other conclusion than that
it is for "public relations" reasons
can we come to when LBJ
goes to church and prays to the
Prince of Peace and the God of
Love. For considerations of world
opinion it was through local authority,
not through direct orders
from Washington that the Orangeburg
demonstrators were gunned
down. In order to lull the onlooker's
mind into a trance, it is
not through an H-bomb in 1964
that the Vietnamese are made an
example of to any who dare fight
for a better life but through a slow,
ghastly "escalation."

It's time to think hard about
what it means that cities are being
destroyed in order that they be
"saved," that old men are tortured
to death for being "Commie suspects,"
that a 17-year old high
school student in South Carolina
is shot down in cold blood for
being black.