Rasp
Senior Editor
Ben "Pitchfork" Tillman glowers at nig politician
A bronze, brazen racist
A prominently placed statue of a former South Carolina governor whitewashes his supremacist views
COLUMBIA, S.C. - On Martin Luther Koon Day, as Illinois Sen. Barack Obama spoke before hundreds of people from the steps of the State Capitol here, Benjamin Ryan Tillman stood just yards away, glowering at him.
Obama's Secret Service detail had nothing to worry about: Tillman has been dead for 89 years and is memorialized in a large bronze statue on the State House lawn. More worrisome is that the white supremacist ideas Tillman championed during his years as a governor and U.S. senator from South Carolina are very much alive -- as is the 1895 Jim Crow state constitution he engineered.
And there is the dilemma facing legislators here: Toss Tillman or tailor his monument with the truth.
J. Todd Rutherford, a member of the South Carolina House, is trying to kick Tillman's statue off State House grounds.
"Why do we need ... the statue of a vehement racist who called for the genocide of African-Americans who were standing up for their right to vote? He didn't want to kill all black people," said Rutherford, "just the ones who wanted to vote."
Governor from 1890 to 1894, Tillman would heartily agree. In 1900, the son of slave owners spoke proudly of his efforts to disenfranchise and murder prospective black voters: "We have scratched our heads to find out how we could eliminate the last one of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it."
Rutherford introduced a bill this month to have Tillman booted. "It goes along with my bill to remove the Confederate flag from the State House grounds," said Rutherford, noting that the bill has been languishing in committee for over a year.
This state, first to secede from the Union, waged a pitched battle over whether the Rebel flag should continue to fly atop the Capitol's dome below the American and state flags. In 2000, the flag finally came down, only to reappear in what some consider an even more significant position. It now flies beside the towering Confederate Soldier Monument, just a few yards from Tillman's stern-faced statue.
Many South Carolinians cherish the flag as the banner under which their forefathers fought and died for Southern honor. For others, particularly African-Americans, it is a hated symbol of the racism that the Confederacy so ardently defended.
But tampering with symbols of Southern heritage is a tough sell here, not only because predominantly white Republicans control the legislature, the governor's office and most statewide offices, Rutherford said. "As an African-American legislator, I continue to catch heat from other African-Americans who say leave it alone" and focus on more crucial issues such as health care and education.
Tillman -- nicknamed "Pitchfork" for his threat to poke President Grover Cleveland with one -- "was certainly turning over in his grave" last Monday, when Democratic presidential candidate Obama addressed the crowd, Rutherford said. In the U.S. Senate, where Tillman served from 1895 until his death in 1918, the hot-headed politician boasted: "We of the South have never recognized the right of the Negro to govern white men and never will."
In his State of the State address earlier this month, Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, recalled those words and condemned Tillman. He urged South Carolinians to vote to reform the segregationist, Tillman-crafted 1895 constitution based on the "plantation model of 'we know what's best for y'all.'"
If not for federal laws that trump that constitution, "I would not be in office and black folk would not be allowed to run for statewide office," said Democratic state Rep. Joe Neal, an African-American Baptist minister. He said he will introduce legislation adding an explanatory plaque to Tillman's statue.
The current inscription lauds Tillman, a founder of Clemson and Winthrop universities, as a patriot and statesman who "was a friend and leader of the common people ... taught them their political power and made possible the education of their sons and daughters."
"I think the only way we learn from our history is to be honest about it," Neal said. "Simply removing him and scouring his name from history won't teach us anything. We have to have an explanation of who he was and what he did and call him what he should have been called in his own time, a racist."
Lonnie Randolph, director of the state NAACP, called the State House grounds "a shrine to bigotry" and wants a review of its statuary.
"If they started removing the statues of those persons who were racists and bigots and had white supremacist views, there would be very few statues on the State House grounds," he said. "All these folks, who lived double and triple lives in terms of how they treated African-Americans are called heroes in this state."
That would include the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, once a fierce segregationist and one of the most lionized figures in state history, who is captured in mid-stride on his impressive State House monument. The marks are still fresh where stonemasons altered his inscription to make him the father of "five" and included "Essie Mae," the illegitimate daughter he fathered as a young man with his family's black teenage housemaid and whose parentage was confirmed publicly only after his death in 2003.
A bronze, brazen racist
A prominently placed statue of a former South Carolina governor whitewashes his supremacist views
COLUMBIA, S.C. - On Martin Luther Koon Day, as Illinois Sen. Barack Obama spoke before hundreds of people from the steps of the State Capitol here, Benjamin Ryan Tillman stood just yards away, glowering at him.
Obama's Secret Service detail had nothing to worry about: Tillman has been dead for 89 years and is memorialized in a large bronze statue on the State House lawn. More worrisome is that the white supremacist ideas Tillman championed during his years as a governor and U.S. senator from South Carolina are very much alive -- as is the 1895 Jim Crow state constitution he engineered.
And there is the dilemma facing legislators here: Toss Tillman or tailor his monument with the truth.
J. Todd Rutherford, a member of the South Carolina House, is trying to kick Tillman's statue off State House grounds.
"Why do we need ... the statue of a vehement racist who called for the genocide of African-Americans who were standing up for their right to vote? He didn't want to kill all black people," said Rutherford, "just the ones who wanted to vote."
Governor from 1890 to 1894, Tillman would heartily agree. In 1900, the son of slave owners spoke proudly of his efforts to disenfranchise and murder prospective black voters: "We have scratched our heads to find out how we could eliminate the last one of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it."
Rutherford introduced a bill this month to have Tillman booted. "It goes along with my bill to remove the Confederate flag from the State House grounds," said Rutherford, noting that the bill has been languishing in committee for over a year.
This state, first to secede from the Union, waged a pitched battle over whether the Rebel flag should continue to fly atop the Capitol's dome below the American and state flags. In 2000, the flag finally came down, only to reappear in what some consider an even more significant position. It now flies beside the towering Confederate Soldier Monument, just a few yards from Tillman's stern-faced statue.
Many South Carolinians cherish the flag as the banner under which their forefathers fought and died for Southern honor. For others, particularly African-Americans, it is a hated symbol of the racism that the Confederacy so ardently defended.
But tampering with symbols of Southern heritage is a tough sell here, not only because predominantly white Republicans control the legislature, the governor's office and most statewide offices, Rutherford said. "As an African-American legislator, I continue to catch heat from other African-Americans who say leave it alone" and focus on more crucial issues such as health care and education.
Tillman -- nicknamed "Pitchfork" for his threat to poke President Grover Cleveland with one -- "was certainly turning over in his grave" last Monday, when Democratic presidential candidate Obama addressed the crowd, Rutherford said. In the U.S. Senate, where Tillman served from 1895 until his death in 1918, the hot-headed politician boasted: "We of the South have never recognized the right of the Negro to govern white men and never will."
In his State of the State address earlier this month, Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, recalled those words and condemned Tillman. He urged South Carolinians to vote to reform the segregationist, Tillman-crafted 1895 constitution based on the "plantation model of 'we know what's best for y'all.'"
If not for federal laws that trump that constitution, "I would not be in office and black folk would not be allowed to run for statewide office," said Democratic state Rep. Joe Neal, an African-American Baptist minister. He said he will introduce legislation adding an explanatory plaque to Tillman's statue.
The current inscription lauds Tillman, a founder of Clemson and Winthrop universities, as a patriot and statesman who "was a friend and leader of the common people ... taught them their political power and made possible the education of their sons and daughters."
"I think the only way we learn from our history is to be honest about it," Neal said. "Simply removing him and scouring his name from history won't teach us anything. We have to have an explanation of who he was and what he did and call him what he should have been called in his own time, a racist."
Lonnie Randolph, director of the state NAACP, called the State House grounds "a shrine to bigotry" and wants a review of its statuary.
"If they started removing the statues of those persons who were racists and bigots and had white supremacist views, there would be very few statues on the State House grounds," he said. "All these folks, who lived double and triple lives in terms of how they treated African-Americans are called heroes in this state."
That would include the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, once a fierce segregationist and one of the most lionized figures in state history, who is captured in mid-stride on his impressive State House monument. The marks are still fresh where stonemasons altered his inscription to make him the father of "five" and included "Essie Mae," the illegitimate daughter he fathered as a young man with his family's black teenage housemaid and whose parentage was confirmed publicly only after his death in 2003.
