COLUMBIA, S.C. — Years before civil rights activist Cleveland Sellers got caught up in the deadly 1968 protest known as the Orangeburg Massacre, he was on the path to the elite rank of Eagle Scout — until his paperwork was lost.
Next month, the 64-year- old will formally collect the honor. He said he hopes it will add an important layer to a personal narrative that, to many people, will always be linked to his conviction in the civil rights protest at a historically black college, South Carolina State, that ended with three students gunned down by state troopers.
“People have tried to create these monsters and make us something that we weren’t because it helped them make their case,” said Sellers, the director of the African American Studies program at the University of South Carolina. “I think it’s important for people to know who I am, and maybe through the process that will help lower the barrier and lower the kind of imagery they have of me.”
He credited Scouting for his appreciation of nature and a sense of orderliness. He fondly recalls attending the Scouts’ National Jamboree in 1960.
The men who led the troop he belonged to were father figures — something many youths lack today, Sellers said.
“I look around now and there’s no organizations for them other than the gang banging and that kind of stuff,” he said. “I just think we need to take another look at the Boy Scouts as an alternative to the idleness and the crime.”
A formal Eagle ceremony will be held Dec. 3, more than four decades after he earned the rank, which is given to only about 5 percent of all Boy Scouts.
During his early activism days, Sellers worked as a coordinator for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and sat in on planning sessions with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
He became best-known as the only person convicted of a riot charge for being at the Feb. 8, 1968, Orangeburg shootings, which took place during protests over a bowling alley owner’s refusal to allow blacks inside. Three people were killed, and 27, including Sellers, were wounded.
He spent seven months in prison, but 23 years after his conviction, he was pardoned.
