Nine South Carolina Highway Patrol officers killed three African American students on February 8, 1968 in the Orangeburg Massacre while twenty-eight other students sustained injuries. Historians and the public have largely forgotten about this massacre that was the culmination of a week-long peaceful sit-in protest to desegregate the local All Star Bowling Lanes. The Orangeburg Massacre contributed to the local transformation and radicalization of the national civil rights movement. This thesis examines the historical roots of the radical student civil rights movement at South Carolina State College and Claflin College, how perceptions of reality intertwined with identity performance, and how the process of reconciliation in a southern town was linked to collective memory and identity. Radical black women educators became role models for the students, and the victories that these women achieved created space for the students to become even more radical. The local black community and the students enrolled at the historically black colleges did not fit the stereotypes associated with African Americans that whites held during that time. The collective memory of this massacre and the civil rights movement has continued to exacerbate race relations in South Carolina.