While the rest of the country is busy commemorating the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the many constructive ways people will choose to do so, students at Clemson University are busy preparing for yet another student demonstration. This one, however, isn’t in support of #BlackLivesMatter or any of the movements happening nationwide. Saturday’s demonstration will be in support of the legacy of Benjamin “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, the controversial former governor of South Carolina.
Tillman was a racist and a white supremacist who [at the very least] advocated lynching Black people. His participation in the Hamburg Massacre propelled him to political prominence. He was also a founding trustee of Clemson University. He was instrumental in the founding of Winthrop University, too, which has a building named for him on their campus that students have expressed interest in renaming. The demonstration Saturday stems from some Clemson students' reactions to the Clemson Faculty Senate’s resolution to rename the iconic building this past week. The Faculty Senate’s resolution was tabled just a week after a coalition of concerned Clemson students marched from Memorial Stadium to Sikes Hall to deliver a list of grievances and demands. One expressed “there are several buildings that are named after individuals who were known for their prejudice against underrepresented groups and makes us feel disrespected, uncomfortable and not welcomed.”
News of the Faculty Senate’s resolution has caused much more conversation about the legacy of Tillman, and has been met with resistance from students who’ve voiced their desire #SaveTillman.
Free speech is a beautiful thing. I think most people would agree on this point. It’s one of the things we love to talk about when we speak of what is great about America. I’d also say that timing is pretty important when voicing our opinions about certain issues. I can’t see how this “counter-protest” helps the counter-protesters make the point that “everything is okay as is” at Clemson [which I assume they believe]. A demonstration to support the legacy of the man who rose to prominence by preaching [what he called], “the gospel of white supremacy according to Tillman” doesn't seem to me the kind of thing that's going to portray the image of a campus community very open to diversity.
Dr. King said, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” I’ll venture to say that many of the people standing in solidarity with Tillman don’t know much about him other than his association with Clemson. I wonder if they knew about his involvement in the Hamburg Massacre if they’d still support him. I think it’s unlikely these students have considered the irony of their demonstration on the weekend following MLK’s birthday. I imagine Tillman wouldn’t mind the timing of the protest, though. He’d likely advocate they take it a step further. He said of Booker T. Washington’s dining with the US President in 1906, “The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they learn their place again.”
But maybe that’s why the protesters are standing in solidarity with Tillman—to help the students wanting change “learn their place again.”
Clemson is a place full of traditions of which many students—present and past—are proud. There was a time, before its "Integration with Dignity" in 1963, when the only Black people on the land were workers. The university’s ties to slavery, sharecropping and convict labor have been discussed quite a bit this past academic year. I’d love to believe those in support of Tillman are operating from the perspective of “sincere ignorance” and not “conscientious stupidity.” I hope that upon learning more about what he stood for those people will act accordingly and educate others.
Dr. King famously said, “Those who stand up for justice will always be on the right side of history.” He also said, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
I don’t know if there’s much question of the evil inherent in the actions and deeds of Pitchfork Ben Tillman; the real question is whether considerate, educated people can conscionably stand with him knowing what he really stood for.