Another step forward in my adopted home state
An Important development in S.C. History. From The State:
McNair takes responsibility for tragedy in book
In a new biography, former Gov. Robert E. McNair takes responsibility for the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre.
Three black students were killed and 27 wounded at South Carolina State College on Feb. 8, 1968 following days of escalating tensions between students and police.
“The fact that I was governor at the time placed the mantle of responsibility squarely on my shoulders, and I have borne that responsibility with all the heaviness it entails for all those years,” McNair told Philip G. Grose, author of “South Carolina at the Brink: Robert McNair and the Politics of Civil Rights” (USC Press, $39.95). ...
Historians believe the courtly Berkeley County native got many things right during six years as governor, 1965-71, as he guided the state away from an agrarian past and a discredited system of racial segregation. ...
“Bob McNair isn’t often given the credit he’s due,” said Walter Edgar, a USC history professor and director of USC’s Institute for Southern Studies. “I think McNair’s decision to lead South Carolina down the path of law and order instead of massive resistance, like most of the lower South states went, was really a gutsy one and is often underappreciated by South Carolinians and historians in general.” ...
But Grose, a former journalist at The State who went to work as a speech writer for McNair, suggests McNair was at the heart of the transformation.
“The South Carolina that headed into the last three decades of the 20th century was one that had gone to war with its past and had not only survived but faced its future with a new sense of purpose and direction,” Grose wrote.
McNair takes responsibility for tragedy in book
In a new biography, former Gov. Robert E. McNair takes responsibility for the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre.
Three black students were killed and 27 wounded at South Carolina State College on Feb. 8, 1968 following days of escalating tensions between students and police.
“The fact that I was governor at the time placed the mantle of responsibility squarely on my shoulders, and I have borne that responsibility with all the heaviness it entails for all those years,” McNair told Philip G. Grose, author of “South Carolina at the Brink: Robert McNair and the Politics of Civil Rights” (USC Press, $39.95). ...
Historians believe the courtly Berkeley County native got many things right during six years as governor, 1965-71, as he guided the state away from an agrarian past and a discredited system of racial segregation. ...
“Bob McNair isn’t often given the credit he’s due,” said Walter Edgar, a USC history professor and director of USC’s Institute for Southern Studies. “I think McNair’s decision to lead South Carolina down the path of law and order instead of massive resistance, like most of the lower South states went, was really a gutsy one and is often underappreciated by South Carolinians and historians in general.” ...
But Grose, a former journalist at The State who went to work as a speech writer for McNair, suggests McNair was at the heart of the transformation.
“The South Carolina that headed into the last three decades of the 20th century was one that had gone to war with its past and had not only survived but faced its future with a new sense of purpose and direction,” Grose wrote.