“S” is for Sellers, Cleveland Louis, Jr. [b. 1944]. Civil rights activist. Educator. Sellers attended Howard University where he met several student activists, including Stokely Carmichael—later chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. In 1967, he returned to South Carolina and sought to organize students at the state’s historically black colleges—especially South Carolina State College in Orangeburg. Student demonstrations at a segregated bowling alley led to what has been termed the “Orangeburg Massacre.” Sellers was blamed for inciting a riot, indicted, convicted, and imprisoned. He later obtained graduate degrees from Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In 1990, he joined the faculty of the University of South Carolina and became director of its African American Studies Program. In 2008, Cleveland Louis Sellers, Jr., became president of Voorhees College.
Standards
- 8-7 The student will demonstrate an understanding of the impact on South Carolina of significant events of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
