'Fighting for justice': Orangeburg Massacre survivors speak out 54 years after civil rights-era bloodshed

More than five decades ago, three young Black men were shot and killed by South Carolina state highway patrolmen amid a days-long protest against segregation.

While the tragedy on the campus of what is now South Carolina State University at the height of the civil rights movement garnered some national headlines at the time, the incident remains relatively unknown decades later.

"The Orangeburg Massacre is often overlooked in the story of African Americans who struggled to make the world better during the civil rights movement," SC State interim president Alexander Conyers told ABC News.

Killed that night, when police opened fire, were two of the historically Black college's students, as well as a local high school student.