‘Orangeburg Massacre’ Unearths ‘60s Campus Tragedy : Radio: Twenty-two years after ‘buying into’ a false interpretation of events, the author wants to set the record straight.

It was Frank Beacham’s conscience that led him to write and direct his latest radio drama.

As a cub reporter in 1968 at WIS-TV in Columbia, S.C., one of his first assignments was to cover an incident on the South Carolina State College campus in Orangeburg--three black students shot to death by highway patrolmen. At first believed to be a shoot-out between black protesters and law-enforcement officers, it was later revealed that the blacks did not have guns and were fired at while retreating.

However, the early reports of equal violence were basically left untouched, and Beacham admits he was one who “bought into the story.” The event has all but disappeared from the annals of American history, despite the similarities between Orangeburg and the May, 1970, killings at Kent State.

Nearly 20 years after seeing the Orangeburg shootings firsthand, Beacham picked up a 1970 book on the incident by two reporters, The Times’ Jack Nelson and Jack Bass of the Charlotte Observer, and couldn’t believe what he read.

“As I looked back on it and realized what happened, I wanted to correct it,” said Beacham, 42. “I had participated in giving out bad information.”

Beacham’s attempt to set the record straight is a one-hour radio play, “The Orangeburg Massacre,” airing Sunday at 6 p.m. on KPCC-FM (89.3). The drama is being performed by California Artists Radio Theatre, with David Carradine, Blair Underwood and James Whitmore as guest stars.

An event of the Los Angeles Open Festival, the radio play is an adaptation of the Nelson and Bass book of the same title. The authors were both involved in shaping the play, and Bass called the script “precisely accurate” in its representation.

“It might call attention to a significant episode in American history that has been ignored,” said Bass, 56, now a professor of journalism and Southern politics at the University of Mississippi.

The program cost Beacham about $8,000, but $4,752 of that was covered by an L.A. Cultural Affairs Grant. His goal is to distribute the program to as many public stations as possible. “I’m offering it for free,” he said. “I just want to correct the record.”