Home / Full timeline / White students dressed in Ku Klux Klan-type attire broke into the room of Kevin Nesmith, a Black cadet at The Citadel in South Carolina, leaving a charred paper cross in his room.
White students dressed in Ku Klux Klan-type attire broke into the room of Kevin Nesmith, a Black cadet at The Citadel in South Carolina, leaving a charred paper cross in his room.
1986 (Oct 23)
Five white students dressed in Ku Klux Klan-type attire broke into the room of Kevin Nesmith, a Black cadet at The Citadel in South Carolina. The five students taunted Nesmith and left a charred paper cross in his room. Nesmith said that he slept through most of the incident. On November 14, Nesmith resigned from the South Carolina military college because he felt he had been "made the [villain]” in the hazing incident, but added “the [villains] remain at Citadel.” Nesmith also said that "anger and frustration built up, and I felt mentally drained and no longer wanted to subject myself to this humiliation." The five white cadets who cursed Nesmith in the October incident were suspended from the college, but the suspensions were “stayed on the condition they not get into any more serious trouble during the school year.” They were also restricted to campus for the remainder of the school year and “given additional marching tours.” But some Black leaders in the state contended that the five should have been expelled. The NAACP filed an $800,000 lawsuit against The Citadel, alleging that Nesmith's civil rights had been violated and that the school historically had “tolerated and sanctioned” racial bigotry. On November 17, civil rights leader Jessie Jackson met with Nesmith and later requested a congressional investigation of race relations at the college. On November 16, the South Carolina Human Affairs Commission issued a report stating that a “minimal Black representation” on the campus created “an environment lacking in ethnic diversity and cultural sensitivity.” They recommended, among other things, that the school increase its Black enrollment from 6 percent to 10 percent in two years and incorporate "mandatory human relations and cultural sensitivity classes” into the leadership training curriculum.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.