Benjamin Downs, who was one of the Greenville Eight, talks about the 1960 Greenville library sit-in that led to the integration of the Greenville library system. JOSH MORGAN/Staff


The year 1968 has gone down in American history as one of the most tumultuous and consequential of the 20th century, with the Civil Rights Movement reaching a violent climax amid a season of discontent on multiple fronts.

The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4, and the riots that broke out in numerous cities across the country in the days that followed, were central to the epic story of that year. A few weeks earlier in South Carolina, state troopers had killed three and wounded 27, mostly college students, in a melee that came to be known as the Orangeburg Massacre.

To mark the 50th anniversary of that pivotal time, The Greenville News embarked on an oral history project, chronicling the role that several key civil rights activists from Greenville played.

This second installment focuses on Benjamin Downs.

Benjamin Downs was a 16-year-old student at the all-black Sterling High School in Greenville when he was asked to participate in demonstrations and sit-ins in protest of racial inequality.

He eventually became one of the renowned Greenville Eight – a group of three young men and five young ladies – who were arrested following a sit-in at the all-white Greenville main library in the summer of 1960.

This sit-in led to the integration of Greenville's library system after a lawsuit was filed, and the students took their battle to court.

Downs said he was arrested several times for participating in demonstrations and sit-ins.

"We felt as though this were a social wrong and if we could do anything to correct this wrong, well then we would do it," he said.

Here are some of our questions and Downs' responses as part of our oral histories project. 

Why did you get involved?

"I think I was in the 10th grade when I took the Scholastic Aptitude Test, and it was given at Greenville High School. They wanted to segregate the blacks who were taking the test from the whites. But we all took it in the same room which was in the library at Greenville High School and what truly amazed me was the size and the depth of their facilities. They had more doggone books in there than we had in the supposed, so-called colored library here. That really made an impression upon me and that was one of the reasons why I decided that I was going to participate in the sit-ins."

What was one of the impacts of your participation? 

"It was new and we were regarded as troublemakers among the whites and even some of the blacks. I had a cousin who had said, 'What do you call yourself doing down there? We have a library down here on McBee Avenue. Why did you have to go to the one on Main Street?' I told him because if you went to the one on Main Street, you would see that all of their reference materials were not accessible to the Negro population here, the colored population. They had up-to-date Encyclopedia Britannicas and so forth.

Ours were maybe five, six years old.You could request a book from the main library but as far as encyclopedias or major reference articles, you could not obtain them.
Mama pays taxes. So does everybody else around here. Why shouldn’t we have access to these materials that everyone else had? And besides that, at 16 you think you know everything anyway so I went willingly."

What is the one memory that still sticks with you?

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"The fact that we were supposed to have been a nonviolent movement. We had about five sit-ins that transpired the same day. When I was up at Woolworth’s and I saw this young Caucasian fellow, a college student I think, getting hit and smacked and there were two or three officers standing right there. They just completely ignored it. That is the thing that stood out most for me. I said, 'These people, you know, not only do they hate blacks but they hate anyone who would even sympathize with blacks.' That really struck me as being just completely off the doggone charts.This man had not done anything, but I remember him getting his behind stumped out there on Washington Street and here were these three big burly cops standing out there and they just acted like, 'Oh well it serves him right.' I couldn’t believe it."

Do you have any regrets?

"I have no regrets. I have a granddaughter who graduates from Southside this year and I don’t think she knows anything except integration. She just accepts it as part of everyday life. I doubt if the younger people today... I know they would not accept what we had to go through. But what we went through as young boys and girls, it was a way of life. That’s the way it was in the South.The fact that Obama was elected president of the United States, that really made my day. It made my life. Anything that I may have done to enable him to attain this high office, the presidency, I think, is worth it. It doesn’t make any difference how many times I was spat upon, called the n-word and other stuff like that. They had to look upon him as the president, even though they did the most they could to make him one-term. Yes, yes, yes. It was worth it."

More: Ruth Ann Butler recalls her involvement in the civil rights movement in Greenville

If you could select one example of progress today that you are proud to see happen, what is it?

"If you qualify and you have the financial resources, you can attend any university in the United States. We've got some HBCUs - Historically Black College and Universities - and I noticed that there are a number of whites who care to attend these. These were, as we say, equal opportunity demonstrations, so it didn’t just benefit blacks, it benefited the whole United States."

What one area do you most want to see improvement in and why?

"I feel as though there has to be greater accountability for individual law enforcement people who are supposed to be enforcers of the law, rather than the law themselves. The fact they can get away with killing anyone and especially, and when I say anyone, I’m referring to the blacks. It’s happening all over the United States and there has been no accountability for these people out here killing unarmed individuals. I just feel as though instead of making progress in some areas, we’re falling back to stuff that transpired in the 20s and the 50s. We seem to be going backward. It was a period of enlightenment but then we’re going back to the Dark Ages. That ticks me off."

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