Honored w/ statue on SC capitol grounds: White supremacist, terrorist, admitted murderer Ben Tillman

Benjamin Ryan Tillman (born Benjamin Ryan Tillman, Jr.; August 11, 1847 – July 3, 1918) was a politician of the Democratic Party who was Governor of South Carolina from 1890 to 1894, and a United States Senator from 1895 until his death. A white supremacist who often spoke out against blacks, Tillman led a paramilitary group of Red Shirts during South Carolina's violent 1876 election. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, he frequently ridiculed blacks, and boasted of having helped to kill them during that campaign.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Tillman

In Ellenton two months later, on September 17, several Red Shirt gangs converged to slaughter more than a hundred African Americans. Simon Coker, a black state senator who was in the area to investigate violence against black citizens, was captured; two of Tillman’s men were selected to execute him. His executioners informed Coker that he was about to die, according to Tillman’s account, and Coker said, “Here is my cotton house key; I wish you would please send it to my wife and tell her to have our cotton ginned and pay our landlord rent just as soon as she can.” [6]

Then Coker said he would like to pray, and went to his knees. According to Tillman, after a few moments, one of his men said, “’You are too long’. . . .the order ‘aim, fire’ was given with the negro still kneeling.”

In his commentary on the murder, Tillman wrote, “It will appear a ruthless and cruel thing to those unacquainted with the environments. . . . The struggle in which we were engaged meant more than life or death. It involved everything we held dear, Anglo-Saxon civilization included.”

http://downwithtillman.com/


Must go nicely with the Confederate flag and the Strom Thurmond statue on the grounds.

Speaking of, also from Wikipedia:

Others who knew and at one time admired Tillman included Strom Thurmond, son of Tillman's Edgefield attorney, who saw and was inspired by Tillman's campaigning style as a boy.[2] Other southerners were highly negative: Lyndon B. Johnson said of Tillman, "He might have been president. I'd like to sit down with him and ask how it was to throw it away for the sake of hating."[159]

This is what South Carolina conservatives choose to revere.

But, yeah, Nikki Haley, you're right. No one can possibly understand how such racist attitudes can develop in your state.