The Tillman Movement in South Carolina. [Inscribed Copy]

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Study of white supremacist South Carolina politician and later Democratic governor and U.S. Senator, Benjamin Tillman (1847–1918), and the popular movement he championed. This copy inscribed by the author to Southern historian James Elliott Walmsley.

In order to understand the Tillman Movement in South Carolina…it is necessary, first, to show to what degree the social system of ante-bellum South Carolina was destroyed by forces unloosed by the Civil War and how these new forces made possible the rise to economic and social importance of a class of the white population with little previous influence. This will be followed by an attempt to explain the political changes which made possible an increase of political power on the part of this new class and why this class became dissatisfied with the type of political control existing in the state between 1877 and 1890. (Chapter 1)

“While African-American participation in state politics had been kept at a minimum since [South Carolina’s] “redemption” in 1876, white Democrats such as Tillman, who sought to challenge other white political leaders, played on the fear of possible African-American resurgence at the polls and the potential for their alliance with the state’s conservatives. Tillman called a state constitutional convention in 1895 to enact “the sole cause of our being here,” namely to deny African Americans their voting rights. Tillman’s disfranchising techniques included a poll tax, educational and property requirements, and an interpretive test concerning the Constitution, which allowed registration officials to pass whites and fail blacks.” (ANB)

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