February 8

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February 8 in Clemson History

Events on February 8 in Clemson's History

  • 1913: The Clemson College Rifle Club has a meet with Lehigh.
  • 1915: Filmmaker D.W. Griffith's polarizing silent film "The Birth of a Nation" debuts in Los Angeles, California.
  • February 6-February 10, 1961: Clemson observes National Religious Emphasis Week. Two speakers are presented. Dr. Edmund Perry speaks in the college auditorium in the evenings of February 7-February 9, and Dr. W. F. Dewan, C.S.P., speaks the same evenings in the College Chapel in the dormitories (located on the 8th level above the Loggia in Johnstone.) The public is invited to join Clemson students, faculty and staff to hear the visiting clergymen. Dr. Perry, a native of Georgia, received his A.B. degree from the University of Georgia in 1944, in philosophy, his B.D. in 1946 from Emory University and his Ph.D. from Northwestern in 1950. He has served as director of the Wesley Foundation at Georgia State College for Women and the Georgia Military College. He was assistant professor of religion at Duke University and director of undergraduate studies from 1950-1954. At present Dr. Perry is chairman and associate professor of history of religions department at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. He is also an ordained minister in the Methodist Church. Dr. Dewan, Catholic speaker for Religious Emphasis Week, will speak on subjects concerning the spiritual life, chosen primarily but not exclusively for Catholic students and faculty. Father Dewan will also direct a three-day retreat for Catholic students with a brief talk each morning before breakfast on "Thoughts for Today," preceded by Mass and Communion. (The Tiger, Friday, 13 January 1961, Volume LIV, Number 14, pages 1,3.)
  • 1968: The Orangeburg Massacre takes place at the almost all-black South Carolina State University when state law enforcement officers fire on a crowd of African-American students as firemen extinguish a bonfire, lit in protest of the refusal two days earlier of the white owner of the All Star Bowling Lane, the only alleys in Orangeburg, to let black students bowl there. When the shooting stops, 28 are injured and three students are killed. At trial, billed as the first federal trial of police officers for using excessive force at a campus protest, all nine defendants were acquitted. Cleveland Sellers was the only person imprisoned as a result of the incident. He represented the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was convicted of inciting the riot that preceded the shootings. He wrote The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC in 1973. Sellers was later pardoned for the offense and is now the director of the African-American Studies program at the University of South Carolina.
  • 1975: The Clemson Little Theatre presents the Edward Albee play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf in the Food Industries Auditorium. Admission is $2.50 for adults, $1 for students. Central Dance Association presents one heckuva show in Littlejohn Coliseum. Bonnie Bramlett (of Delaney and Bonnie & Friends fame) opens, followed by R.E.O. Speedwagon with headliners Lynyrd Skynyrd, all for $5.25 (advance), $6.25 for floor.
  • 1980: Dean Walter T. Cox meets with the University Union in talks on how to cut down on vandalism and arrests at Clemson rock concerts. Cox had summarily cancelled concerts in December after minor incidents at the Kansas performance on November 3.
  • 1987: The University Union travel committee sponsors road trip to see production of Cats. Fee is $35 and includes transportation and ticket. (CUU Entertainment Spotlight, The Tiger, Friday 30 January 1987, Volume 80, Number 16, page 14.)


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