FBI Probing Racial Harassment at South Carolina Military School

The FBI announced Monday that it has started an investigation into racial harassment at the Citadel because of possible civil rights violations at the 144-year-old military college.

Bill Nettles, the head of the FBI’s bureau in Charleston, said his agents are looking into the hazing of black former cadet Kevin Nesmith.

He said the investigation was requested by the Department of Justice and results of the preliminary investigation are expected to be turned over to the department within two weeks.

The inquiry focuses on an Oct. 23 incident in which five white cadets burst into Nesmith’s room, shouted racial insults and burned a paper cross. The whites were dressed in Ku Klux Klan-type attire--sheets, pillow cases and towels.

Nesmith, 17, resigned from the Citadel shortly after the incident, and his family and the NAACP have indicated that they will file lawsuits in the case.

The grievances include allegations that the school violated Nesmith’s civil rights, restricts freedom of speech and assembly on campus and has not pursued its desegregation policy vigorously enough, said Delbert Woods, president of the Charleston branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

Retired Maj. Gen. James A. Grimsley Jr., president of the Citadel, has confined the five cadets to campus for the rest of the year when the college is in session, and he ordered them to march an extra 12 hours a week for the remainder of the school year.