47 years later, protester recalls fanfare for freedom

By Maria Clark

It’s been 47 years since Joan Young, the music minister at St. Stephen’s Church in Marble Hill, stepped out onto a football field at South Carolina State College in her band uniform and played one of the best shows she can remember.

It was a performance that took place soon after she was released from a detention center where she had been sent for joining a civil-rights protest in her college town of Orangeburg, S.C.

“We were in the middle of football season when we marched downtown. They told us to disperse, but we refused to. The men and women were separated and sent to two different detention centers,” said Ms. Young, 64, who also teaches music at the Saturday Music School at St. Stephen’s.

Ms. Young participated in the church’s celebration of Black History Month, held there every Sunday in February. The events featured short, detailed discussions of prominent figures and locations during the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 60s.

In 1963, Ms. Young played the trumpet for the South Carolina State Marching 101, the marching band at South Carolina State College, now known as South Carolina State University.

“When we were released, we knew we had to play the best show we could. And we did. It was a wonderful feeling,” she said about the half-time show.

Her fellow band member, Tedd Nell, an Orangeburg native, also demonstrated downtown and was booked along with 100 other male students in the state’s correctional facility in Columbia, S.C. His memories of the half-time show differ from Ms. Young’s and are less pleasant.

He recalls how the troupe leader asked all band members who could not commit themselves to all of the band practices to identify themselves. Attending every practice would mean having to miss demonstrations.

“His point, supposedly, was to aid the band in counting upon only the members who made all rehearsals so that the performance was tight,” said Mr. Nell. “Along with five or six other band members I stepped forward as a person convicted to improving my future as a person of color, not a bandsman.”

Alphonso Brown, a music major at South Carolina State College, was among the students arrested at the same protest as Ms. Young and Mr. Nell.

“I was only 17, immature, and too young to fully comprehend what was going on. The hopelessness, and fear was overwhelming for me, but I managed to put up a good front. I can still hear the echoing of “you under arrest, you under arrest … etc.,” said Mr. Brown.

Orangeburg entered the national spotlight five years later when three African-American students were shot and killed and 27 others were wounded two nights after trying to bowl in the city’s only bowling alley.

Students continued protesting in downtown Orangeburg after the owner of the alley refused to let them in. Approximately 66 state troopers were called to the scene on Feb. 8, 1968. They later told the FBI that they fired their riot guns at the students after hearing shots, according to an article published in 2003 in Nieman Reports.

“Those students died needlessly. You look back now and it’s hard to believe,” said Ms. Young. “You couldn’t drink from the same water fountains, you sat in the back of the bus, you weren’t allowed to sit at a counter to get food.”