Orangeburg, South Carolina · Founded 1896 · Bulldogs
“South Carolina's only public HBCU — Bulldog country in Orangeburg since 1896.”
Full 4K field show of the Marching 101 at the 2025 Clayton County Marching Exhibition — the modern 101 at full power under Patrick Moore. Verified live.
The Marching 101 and Clemson's Tiger Band joined forces for a 9/11 twentieth-anniversary first-responders tribute — a rare joint halftime between the HBCU and its cross-state rival. Verified live.
The 101's halftime in the 2026 FAMU matchup — the personal one, with new director J. William Nicholas facing his alma mater's Marching 100.
2009 halftime footage from the Eddie Ellis era — singer Eddie Moe performing with the 101.
Classic 2009 halftime band battle: Ellis's Marching 101 against the Marching 100 — two of the most storied bands in the land, one field.
Marching 101 halftime at the SC State–North Carolina Central home game in Orangeburg, 2022.
Full 2023 halftime show — the band's own caption dates the program to 1918 and promises to 'transcend, conquer, and leave nothing to be desired.'
Band-centric recounting of a 21-point halftime comeback win that went to four overtimes — Bulldog football lore through the 101's lens.
August 29, 2026 — the 101 hosting Savannah State's Powerhouse of the South for a halftime showdown to open the season.
The 101 at NC A&T in Greensboro for the Battle of the Border under Eddie Ellis — billed as one of the great live band battles in HBCU football.
September 2026 combined halftime: the 101 and Furman's Paladin Regiment on one field.
2008 Democracy Now retrospective on Feb. 8, 1968 — the night highway patrolmen opened fire on SC State students — including an interview with Cleveland Sellers, the only person convicted. Verified live; the school's defining historical moment.
Class of 1961 — longtime U.S. Congressman from South Carolina, former House Majority Whip; delivered the House tribute honoring 100 years of Bulldog football.
Pioneering early-20th-century biologist whose work on cell fertilization reshaped marine biology.
Attended SC State before becoming president of Morehouse College and a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr.
SC State law school graduate — the first Black lawyer from the Jim Crow South appointed to the federal judiciary.
SC State law school graduate — first Black chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court; served as interim university president 2002–03.
The first African American woman elected to the South Carolina Assembly.
SC State alumnus who became president of Tuskegee Institute.
Class of 1960 — the winningest football coach in school history; first Black head football coach at a majority-white Division I university (Wichita State, 1979).
Attended SC State; legendary defensive end (Rams, Chargers, Redskins), Pro Football Hall of Fame 1980.
SC State linebacker; New York Giants great, Pro Football Hall of Fame 2006.
SC State safety; Pittsburgh Steelers legend and member of four Super Bowl teams.
Class of 1992 — Detroit Lions defensive end, three-time Pro Bowler.
SC State offensive lineman who became a mainstay for the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens.
Class of 2010 — NFL defensive back (Saints, Lions, Bills).
Class of 1973 — NFL defensive end for the Denver Broncos.
SC State outfielder who became an MLB slugger.
Claim: SC State linebacker drafted by the Indianapolis Colts in 2018, multi-time Pro Bowler. Widely reported but not checked against a school source during this research session.
Claim: SC State defensive tackle, 2016 NFL draft pick, Steelers/49ers/Eagles. Widely reported but not checked against a school source during this research session.
The General Assembly created the South Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical Institute under the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Act and attached it to Claflin University, a Methodist school in Orangeburg. For twenty-four years the Black land-grant mission lived inside Claflin's walls, funded in part by the second Morrill Act of 1890. That arrangement shaped a generation of Black farmers and teachers in Orangeburg. The state's 1895 constitution and the Jim Crow order made separation inevitable, and the Assembly finally split the institute off on its own.
In 1896 — the same year as the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling — the SC Assembly established the Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural, and Mechanical College of South Carolina in Orangeburg. Thomas E. Miller, a Black former U.S. congressman and state legislator, became its first president. When the first students and faculty arrived, Morrill Hall was still under construction; there were no paved roads, no running water, and no electricity. All students were required to work — on the campus farm, in the laundry, or in the dining hall — and many early buildings were raised by student labor under faculty supervision.
What was then South Carolina State Agricultural and Mechanical College played its first football game in 1907, against Georgia State in Savannah. Three years later the school became a charter member of the GA-SC Athletic Association, which later became the South Atlantic Association. The Bulldogs went on to win their first GA-SC Intercollegiate Association championship in 1919. By 1927 they posted a perfect 7-0 conference record with six shutouts to take their second South Atlantic title, building an early reputation as a Southern Black college powerhouse.
Robert Shaw Wilkinson succeeded Miller as president in 1911 and held the office until his death in 1932. His twenty-one-year administration increased faculty and enrollment, established steady income from federal and state sources, and expanded the building program. He built a cooperative working relationship with Clemson and Claflin, started a State Teacher Summer School, and oversaw the college's twenty-fifth birthday celebration. Wilkinson died in office on March 13, 1932, after steering the school through the hardest years of Jim Crow funding.
In 1918 the college began its marching band program with military drills and Sunday school performances. Dr. William H. Jackson, the first director of bands, led it from 1918 to 1924. The program would grow through student directors, the Thomasson years, and the Sarjeant era into the Marching 101 — a band that prides itself on memorizing all of its music and marching the high 'chair step.' Over a century later it remains one of the most recognizable bands in HBCU football.
Architect Miller F. Whittaker, a former director of the college's Mechanical Department, was catapulted from acting president to president in May 1932 after Wilkinson's death. His tenure (1932–1949) brought the college onto the Southern Association of Colleges' approved list in 1933, established an Extension School with units in fifteen South Carolina communities, and stood up an ROTC Infantry Unit. He also oversaw the establishment of a law school for Black students — born of the civil rights fight against the University of South Carolina's segregated law program. The first formal Founders' Day was observed in March 1938.
Oliver C. Dawson was named head football coach in 1937, opening a beloved chapter of Bulldog athletics — he taught classes and coached multiple sports, and the stadium now carries his name. After a World War II hiatus, his 1947 team went undefeated in regular-season play and met Shaw University in Washington, D.C. for the Black National Championship, falling 8-0. The near-miss cemented SC State's image as a program that played with famous Bulldog tenacity.
Black WWII veteran John Wrighten III sued to desegregate the University of South Carolina's law school, represented by Thurgood Marshall. Federal Judge J. Waties Waring gave the state three choices: admit Wrighten, open a Black law school, or close legal education in South Carolina. The state chose segregation: in 1947 it established the SC State School of Law. The first class had eight students; over nineteen years, 50 men and one woman graduated. Among them were Matthew J. Perry, the first Black lawyer from the Jim Crow South appointed to the federal judiciary, and Ernest Finney Jr., later the first Black chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court. The school folded in 1966 after USC integrated.
Benner C. Turner, former dean of the law school, became president in 1950 and served seventeen years. His administration grew undergraduate and graduate enrollment, increased doctoral faculty, reorganized the school, and put up a wave of new buildings — academic halls, men's and women's dormitories, a cafeteria — plus new roads, walkways, and landscaping. But Turner was caught between the state's white power structure and rising student militancy. In 1953 he fired historian Dr. Lewis McMillan after McMillan published a book indicting how the state ran its Black colleges, and in March 1956 protesting student leaders boycotted classes and hung Turner in effigy.
In 1954 the school was renamed South Carolina State College, and a graduate program and law school were created — part of South Carolina's explicit strategy to pour money into the Black college rather than face NAACP desegregation lawsuits against the University of South Carolina. The name change marked the state's attempt to buy its way out of integration. Federal pressure kept mounting anyway, and the decade ahead brought the student demonstrations that would define the campus nationally.
In 1965, Bulldog player John Devlin of Greenwood was stricken while on the field and died. The loss revived the team's spirit, and the Bulldogs went 8-1-0 that season under Coach Oree Banks, with several players earning All-Conference honors and Banks named SIAC and NAIA District 6 Coach of the Year. Devlin's #31 jersey became the first number ever retired in SC State athletic history.
The college opened its doors to white students in 1966, ending seventy years of official exclusion — though the campus remains overwhelmingly African American to this day. The same year, with the University of South Carolina integrated, SC State's law school closed its doors after nineteen graduating classes. The civil rights era had made the segregation-born law school obsolete, and the campus was already bracing for the confrontations that would follow.
On February 6, 1968, students from SC State College and neighboring Claflin began protesting segregation at Orangeburg's only bowling alley, the All-Star Bowling Lanes; the next night's protests brought fifteen arrests. On the evening of February 8, roughly 200 students gathered on the SC State campus, lit a bonfire in the street in front of campus, and all-white South Carolina Highway Patrolmen opened fire into the crowd — most of the wounded were shot in the back or side as they fled. Three young men were killed: SC State freshman Samuel Hammond Jr., shot in the back; SC State student Henry Smith, 18, shot three times; and Delano Middleton, a 17-year-old Wilkinson High School student waiting on campus for his mother, shot seven times. Twenty-seven others were wounded. All nine officers were acquitted by an all-white federal jury; the only person convicted of wrongdoing was SNCC activist Cleveland Sellers, who was shot in the arm and convicted of rioting. The killings happened on SC State's own campus, and a memorial plaza near the campus entrance — alongside the Smith-Hammond-Middleton Memorial Center named for the three victims — commemorates them. Families and survivors still gather at SC State every February 8 to keep the history alive.
M. Maceo Nance Jr. took over as acting president during the 1967–68 transition and became the fifth president in 1968 — the same year as the massacre. Under his leadership from the late-1960s to 1986, the campus experienced unprecedented growth: a new library (1968), the 14-story Sojourner Truth Hall (1972), the tallest building in Orangeburg County, Nance Hall (1974), and Belcher Hall (1986), plus new residence halls and renovations across the campus. He also led the school to become a charter member of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) in 1970. And he opened the I.P. Stanback Museum & Planetarium — the only facility of its kind on an HBCU campus in the United States.
In 1973, SC State tapped alumnus Willie Jeffries — class of 1960 — to revive a program that had just gone 1-9. Jeffries, who had won three straight state championships at segregated Granard High and assisted at North Carolina A&T and Pittsburgh, went 50-13-4 in six seasons, won the first of the school's many MEAC titles, and captured the 1976 Black National Championship with a 26-10 win over Norfolk State. In 1978 he left to become the first African American head football coach of a predominantly white Division I university, at Wichita State — where he rebuilt a team that had lost 14 of its last 15 games into an 8-3 squad. He returned to Orangeburg in 1989 for a thirteen-year second stint, winning six MEAC titles and two more Black National Championships before retiring in 2001 as the winningest coach in school history.
Coach Willie Simon guided the Lady Bulldogs to the 1979 AIAW Division II women's basketball national championship, beating Dayton 72-67 at Fargo, North Dakota. Simon had taken over the women's program in 1974 and built a 305-91 record through 1988; his team had been runners-up the year before, losing the title game to High Point. As an assistant under Willie Jeffries, Simon also helped the football Bulldogs to their 50-13-4 run from 1973–78. It remains the national championship in SC State women's basketball history.
Former Jeffries assistant Bill Davis led the Bulldogs to their second Black National Championship and to the first of two straight invitations to the Division I-AA playoffs, producing back-to-back 10-win seasons in 1980 and 1981 and dominating the MEAC. Davis, who succeeded Jeffries after his departure for Wichita State, ran the program through 1985. His teams cemented SC State's reputation as the team to beat in Black college football in the early 1980s.
Dr. Albert E. Smith assumed the presidency in 1986 after Nance's eighteen-year run and served through 1992. Among his signature achievements was the creation of an honors college in 1988. His tenure bridged the construction era into the university era: the school formally became South Carolina State University in 1992, shortly after he left office.
In 1992 the institution formally became South Carolina State University (SCSU). The upgrade reflected the graduate programs and research profile built over the Turner and Nance decades. The 1990s brought rapid presidential turnover — Barbara Hatton (1993–95, the first woman president), Leroy Davis (1996–2002), and a stretch of interims — but the university status held, and the school kept producing nationally known alumni across law, politics, and sports.
The 1994 Bulldogs went 10-2 under Willie Jeffries, swept the MEAC at 6-0, and met SWAC champion Grambling State in Heritage Bowl IV — the only time in the bowl's history both outright conference champions faced each other. Behind a big day from quarterback Marvin Marshall, Jeffries' Bulldogs beat Eddie Robinson's Tigers 31-27 at the Georgia Dome, the first MEAC victory in the Heritage Bowl, on the game's ESPN television debut. The 1994 team finished ranked No. 22 and was named Black college national champion. SC State had lost Heritage Bowl III to Southern 11-0 in January 1994 and would fall to Southern again 34-28 in Heritage Bowl VII in 1997.
Dr. George E. Cooper became the 10th president in 2008 and led the school through 2012. His administration captured the 2008 MEAC football championship and a berth in the prestigious FCS playoffs, launched the Gateway Program with Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College, and began construction on the Hodge Hall Annex. The university was reaccredited by SACS through 2020, the Leroy Davis Sr. Hall was dedicated, and in 2010 Coach Willie Jeffries was named head football coach emeritus with Willie E. Jeffries Field dedicated at Oliver C. Dawson Stadium.
In 2013 the dedication and open house for the Engineering and Computer Science Complex was held, anchoring the school's STEM ambitions — SC State ranks nationally in degrees granted to African Americans in mathematics and runs the only undergraduate Nuclear Engineering program in South Carolina. Under interim president W. Franklin Evans, the university was removed from SACS probation, a major victory since the school could have lost its accreditation. Thomas J. Elzey (11th president, 2013–15) and the SC State tennis teams' 2013 MEAC men's and women's championships rounded out the year.
James E. Clark, a business executive (AT&T, Exxon, Gillette, GE) and MIT Sloan graduate, became the 12th president in 2016. That fall the Bulldogs traveled to Death Valley to face Clemson — the first meeting in years between the state's HBCU and its biggest PWI, drawing national attention to the shared land-grant roots of the two Orangeburg-adjacent institutions. Clark's tenure, however, was defined by a steep enrollment slide: from about 4,500 students in 2011 to under 2,500 in fall 2019 and fewer than 2,000 in spring 2021.
In July 2021 the board of trustees voted 10-3 to terminate President Clark, largely over the enrollment collapse, and named retired U.S. Army Colonel Alexander Conyers — an SC State alumnus, class of 1989, who had joined the school as vice president for strategic alliances and initiatives that spring — as acting president, then interim that August. On April 28, 2022, the board unanimously named Conyers the 13th president. He brought a 28-year Army career, including Pentagon tours and service in Korea, Afghanistan, Canada, and Guantanamo Bay, plus a mantra he repeats constantly: 'Bulldog tenacity is more than a catchphrase — it's a promise.'
By 2025–26 SC State had earned R2 research classification, and in 2026 the school launched a $41 million fundraising campaign — the largest in its history — co-chaired by former football coach Buddy Pough, with $10.4 million earmarked for an Oliver C. Dawson Stadium renovation (LED lighting, modernized press boxes, a second elevator, and a premium 'Dog Park' fan experience), $5.5 million for scholarships, and $2 million for endowed professorships. Ground was broken on a $20 million, 44,000-square-foot Kirkland W. Green Student Center expansion and a $50 million, 500-bed freshman residence hall near the stadium — the first time in decades the state fully funded a new campus building. A $54.7 million academic building to replace Turner Hall broke ground in February 2026, the 14-story Sojourner Truth Hall is getting a $25 million top-to-bottom renovation, and plans are in motion for a new $30 million library, a $60 million convocation center, and a Midlands campus in Columbia/Cayce.
The defining SC State football rivalry, played continuously since 1958; SC State leads the series 32-18 with two ties. A&T dominated the early decades, going 7-0 from 1952 to 1973, before Willie Jeffries' 1974 Bulldogs finally broke through — and went on to win the MEAC that year. The rivalry has produced signature moments both ways: A&T spoiled SC State's shot at a perfect 1976 season with a 15-14 upset (though SC State still won the MEAC and the Black national title), and SC State returned the favor in 2003, handing A&T its only MEAC loss 49-9 to spoil the Aggies' undefeated conference run. The band rivalry is just as intense: the Marching 101 vs. NC A&T's Blue & Gold Marching Machine, including the 'Battle of the Border' halftime showdowns in Greensboro.
MEAC-vs-SWAC history turned into a full-scale rivalry of names and bands: the Marching 100 (never actually 100 members when named) against the Marching 101. The 2024 Tallahassee matchup pitted the two storied bands at halftime, and the September 2026 edition made it personal — new SC State director J. William Nicholas, a FAMU alumnus and former Marching 100 member, faced his alma mater with the 101. On the gridiron the two programs are among the most decorated in Black college football history.
Three Heritage Bowl meetings in the 1990s — the de facto Black college national championship game — forged this rivalry. Southern shut out the Bulldogs 11-0 in Heritage Bowl III (January 1994, Georgia Dome, 36,128 in attendance), and edged SC State 34-28 in Heritage Bowl VII (December 1997, 32,629 in attendance). SC State's lone Heritage Bowl win came against Grambling, not Southern, in between — but the Southern games remain the most-watched Bulldog football losses of the decade.
The two Orangeburg HBCUs — SC State's campus and Claflin's sit blocks apart — have played each other and marched against each other for over a century, and their students protested side by side in the 1968 All-Star Bowling Lanes demonstrations. Claim marked unverified: no source on the football series record was opened this session.
🥁 Marching 101 · since 1918
The Marching 101 is known for its high 'chair step,' for memorizing all of its music (no sheet music on the field), and for an aggressive, powerful sound built on 12-to-14-hour summer rehearsal days. Signature repertoire includes the Bulldog Fight Song, 'Get Up for the Bulldogs' (off Parliament's 'Up for the Down Stroke'), and the J.B.'s classic 'Pass the Peas.' Historic moments include the 2007 NFL halftime at the Georgia Dome, fan-favorite crowns at the Honda Battle of the Bands in 2011 and 2012, the 2021 combined 9/11 tribute halftime with Clemson's Tiger Band, and the long-running band rivalry with FAMU's Marching 100 and NC A&T's Blue & Gold Marching Machine.
First director of bands; built the program from military drills and Sunday school performances.
Carried the young band through its second decade.
Student director who kept the program alive during the Depression years.
Brief Depression-era tenure.
Two stints totaling over three decades; the longest-serving director before the modern era, shaping the band's mid-century identity.
Wartime and postwar director who carried the band through the World War II years.
One-year transitional tenure.
Led the band through the late-1960s, including the 1968 massacre era on campus.
Short early-1970s tenure.
Directed during the Jeffries football revival years.
One-year tenure before the Sarjeant era.
Twenty-eight years — the longest continuous modern tenure; presided over the band's rise into a nationally recognized HBCU show band.
Arrived from Morris Brown (of 'Drumline' fame); led the 101 to Honda Battle of the Bands fan-favorite honors in 2011 and 2012, the 2007 NFL halftime show at the Georgia Dome (Falcons–Panthers), and the annual Medal of Honor Bowl performances in Charleston.
Transitional two-year tenure.
Built a reputation on discipline — 12-to-14-hour rehearsal days in July camp; his mantra: 'We pride ourselves on how strong we are, mentally, physically, and playing ability.' Led the 2024 showdown against FAMU's Marching 100.
Hired September 2025 from Tuskegee, where he doubled the Marching Crimson Pipers; holds a DMA in wind conducting from the University of South Carolina and is a FAMU alumnus — which made his first Marching 101 vs. Marching 100 matchup against his alma mater personal.
Eight of the nine Divine Nine chapter names are verified at SC State (Sigma Gamma Rho's and Iota Phi Theta's chapter names could not be confirmed). Chapter strength and yard culture — which lines or plots dominate — were not independently checked; that still needs a live campus check. Charter dates were not verified.
Still digging this up — check back soon.
New main library built during the Nance construction boom; later named for President Whittaker, the architect-president. It houses the university archives, including the Orangeburg Massacre collections — the Crawford letters, the William C. Hine oral histories, and the presidential files from 1967–69.
Fourteen-story residence hall, the tallest building in Orangeburg County. Students had been housed only on its lower floors in recent years because the upper floors were inaccessible to fire trucks; a $10 million fire-suppression retrofit began work in 2024, and a $25 million top-to-bottom renovation is now underway to bring it fully back online.
Academic building named for President M. Maceo Nance Jr., erected at the height of his eighteen-year rebuilding presidency.
Completed in the final year of Nance's presidency, closing out the great 1970s–80s campus expansion.
The only museum-and-planetarium facility on an HBCU campus in the United States; it has exhibited the Cecil Williams 'Visual Chronicle of African American History' collection and a James Brown legacy collection, and houses the Dr. Clemmie Emily Webber Educational Resource Center.
Coach Willie Jeffries was named head football coach emeritus and the field inside Dawson Stadium was named for him — honoring the winningest coach in school history at the stadium that carries the name of his beloved predecessor.
Dedicated as the home of the Department of Physical Sciences, named for the eighth president (1996–2002).
Dedication and open house held in 2013; the complex anchors SC State's STEM identity — the school ranks 4th nationally in degrees granted to African Americans in mathematics and operates South Carolina's only undergraduate Nuclear Engineering program.
Three remodeled buildings in the Queens Village student apartment complex neared completion to ease the housing crisis, adding suites for 24 more beds; the $10 million Truth Hall sprinkler retrofit was also underway to unlock 200 beds.
Ground broken April 2026 on a 44,000-square-foot expansion — the first time in decades the state fully funded a new campus building. The addition near Miller Hall and the campus rose garden brings a new cafeteria and student-life space; the 1954-era original student center is being renovated rather than torn down.
Ground broken April 2026 next to Mitchell Hall and Oliver C. Dawson Stadium on a five-story, 500+ bed hall financed through bonds/HBCU Capital Financing — removing the housing cap that forced Conyers to limit freshman enrollment for three straight years. Target completion: fall 2027.
Centerpiece of the $41 million 'Bulldog' campaign launched May 2026: new LED lighting, modernized press boxes, a second elevator for accessibility, and a premium pregame 'Dog Park' fan experience — designed to elevate recruiting and the game-day atmosphere at one of Bulldog country's most visible symbols.
Notable faculty and staff include the late Dr. William C. Hine, the SCSU history professor who was on campus during the 1968 massacre and built its oral-history record, and the I.P. Stanback Museum staff who steward the Cecil Williams civil-rights photography collection.
Retired Army colonel driving R2 status and the construction boom.
Quoted publicly as the academic voice behind the 2025 band-director hire of Dr. J. William Nicholas.
The winningest coach in school history (19 seasons across two stints); field at Dawson Stadium named for him in 2010.
Tied to the fundraiser as a living link to modern Bulldog football history.
Campus life runs on Bulldog football Saturdays at Oliver C. Dawson Stadium, the 101's halftime shows, and a deep institutional memory of 1968 that shapes student identity — the memorial plaza sits near the campus entrance so no one walks in without seeing it. Greek life anchors the yard, and the school's land-grant roots still show in its agriculture, engineering, and ROTC programs. Enrollment has rebounded enough under Conyers that housing, not applicants, is the bottleneck — the $70 million in 2026 groundbreakings are the direct answer.