Should plaque be put up about racist South Carolina governor? (Tillman statue on Statehouse grounds)

Island Packet ^ | January 15, 2008 | JOHN MONK

[Between the Lines]

Here we go again, just in time for MLK day.

[stainlessbanner]

Dixie Ping

[robomatik]

pc drivel. i was talking to a fellow student years ago and genghis khan came up. she said, “he was EVIL! he was a mass murderer.” i asked her how she could judge an ancient conquerer though the prism of our modern times.

[stand watie]

SB, i get SOOOOOOOOOOOOO TIRED of "PC-idiots".

why don't they just GO AWAY???

free dixie,sw

[Bob]

They sure went out of their way to avoid mentioning that he was a dimocRAT.

[17th Miss Regt]

I hope the plaque they put on Mr. Tillman’s statue mentions his party affiliation - DEMOCRAT.

[Between the Lines]

I also noticed no mention of the NAACP, seems they are trying to make this sound like a grassroots kinda thing.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Why not?

How about an end to an overly romanticized, sanitized, fantasy history?

Tell all sides of the story instead of shying away from the shameful bits.

---

And, stand watie, 'willfully ignorant idiots' stick in the craw.

[Hexenhammer]

Sure, and I hope they mention his roll in the Hamburg massacre, in which black republicans were lynched by democrats.

[Hexenhammer]

whoops, meant “role” not “roll”

[Mojohemi]

I don’t see the problem, the old people of South Carolina is dead !! The people that lives in SC today are mostly immigrants from up North/Illegal Immigrants and a few blacks that happen to hang around while times did not get any better.

If you don’t like the old flag in the state house just go get the old thing and burn it!!
If you don’t like anything else in SC just get a liberal judge to change the law and be done with it!! The old people that once cared don’t care anymore!! Old South Carolina is DEAD!! It can not remain an issue forever!! IT IS ABOUT TIME TO GIVE OLD SOUTH CAROLINA A REST

[goodwithagun]

Will they do the same for all of the things in West Virginia that are named for Robert KKK Byrd?

[2harddrive]

The other option is just to Classify this “history” and not release it for 50 years - like they did with Martin Luther Kinng’s files! Problem solved.

[snippy_about_it]

And what country are you from, certainly not America.

[groanup]

How about an end to an overly romanticized, sanitized, fantasy history?

Like that fantasy history about the North fighting the WBTS over slavery?

[fieldmarshaldj]

I’d get rid of the statue altogether. Tillman was one of the most odious, racist, rodent liberal demogogues in the South, even by turn-of-the-century standards. Put up a statue of one of the heroic Black Republican Congressmembers from the Reconstruction era in its place.

[Rb ver. 2.0]

Why not? We have slave owners on our dollar and five dollar bills.

[snippy_about_it]

There is a lot of Southern history that folks don't know or won't admit to. From this article you'd think they were all in chains. Progress was slow after Reconstruction destroyed the South but progress was made.

The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed the right to vote, but did not guarantee that the vote would be counted or the districts would be apportioned equally. As a result, even states with majority African American population often only had one or two African American representatives in Congress, with the exception of South Carolina. At the end of Reconstruction, four of its five Congressmen were African American.

African Americans in Office 1870-1876
State	State Legislators	U.S. Senators	U.S. Congressmen
Alabama	69	0	4
Arkansas	8	0	0
Florida	30	0	1
Georgia	41	0	1
Louisiana	87	0	1*
Mississippi	112	2	1
North Carolina	30	0	1
South Carolina	190	0	6
Tennessee	1	0	0
Texas	19	0	0
Virginia	46	0	0
Total	633	2	15

[Non-Sequitur]

Why not? We have slave owners on our dollar and five dollar bills.

One, two, twenty, and fifty. Maybe the ten. Lincoln and Franklin didn't own slaves.

[Between the Lines]

Words at the base of Ben "Pitchfork" Tillman's statue, a prominent gathering place near the State House steps, describe Tillman as a great South Carolinian who worked for peoples' rights.

Benjamin Ryan Tillman Monument

On the East side:

Erected by the Legislature, the Democratic Party, and private citizens of South Carolina, dedicated May 1, 1940.

On the North side:

Benjamin Ryan Tillman
Born August 11, 1847
Died July 3, 1918
Married Sallie Stark, January 8, 1868
Patriot
Statesman
Governor of South Carolina, 1890-1894
Senator, 1895-1918
In the World War, Chairman Senate Committee on Naval Affairs
A life of service and achievement.

On the West side:

In the home, loving, loyal. To the State, Steadfast, true. For the Nation, The country belongs to us all and we all belong to it. The men of the North, South, East and West carved it out of the wilderness and made it great. Let us share it with each other then, and conserve it, giving it the best that is in us of brain and brawn and heart.

On the South side:

Loving them, he was the friend and leader of the common people. He taught them their political power and made possible for the education of their sons and daughters Clemson Agricultural...Winthrop Normal and Industrial College.

Somewhere I missed the part that calls him "a great South Carolinian who worked for peoples' rights".