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Ben Tillman and Strom Thurmond Benjamin Ryan Tillman entered his world on the eleventh of August 1847. The future senator was born in a rich family. His father owned four dozen slaves and 2, 500 acres of land, which was more than most of his neighbors. Ben Tillman inherited the formal citizenship as well as the social power that came with wealth.
Masters hoped that if they stated the rules clearly enough, slaves would accept the legitimacy of their masters' authority. As one planter said, as long as the slave thinks he is unjustly held in bondage, just so long will he be impatient, unwilling and rebellious. Slaves had to understand that they had a simple choice: obedience or retribution. The slaveholders never forgot that it required fear to keep slaves under control. But, at that time, wealthy slaveholders began looking for loosening their strict regimes.
Such a change of attitude was motivated by the fear of revolution that would destroy their entire society. This fear was reinforced by news of murderous assaults committed by slaves. In their turn, slaves suffered physical and emotional brutalities from their masters. In addition, inequalities between masters and slaves and between wealthy and less wealthy whites created serious social tensions. Ben Tillman's whole life depended on two factors: maintaining dominance over slaves, black people, and solidarity with non slaveholding white men. Tillman's actual policy positions were so inflammatory that he once said to the Congress: "I have three daughters, but so help me God, I had rather find either one of them killed by a tiger or a bear and gather up her bones and bury them, conscious that she had died in the purity of her maidenhood, than to have her crawl to me and tell me the horrid story that she had been robbed of the jewel of her womanhood by a black fiend. " Tillman was so vehemently in favor of looser monetary policy that many Americans associated him with populism in 1896.
Though clearly a populist in the broad sense -- appealing to the common man in his speeches -- Tillman remained a silver Democrat and never endorsed the Populist platform. In Republican cartoons, though, he often appears in league with Populist leaders. By 1896 the Populist organization was in even more turmoil than that of democrats. Two main factions had appeared.
One, the fusion Populists, sought to merge with the Democrats, using the threat of independent organization to force changes in the major party's platform. But kind of democracy can we talk about counting the further events in Tillman's further carrier. In 1876, a local militia which he supervised rode into a small black community near Augusta. They pulled several blacks out and summarily shot them in the head. There was no a substantial reason for such an action except that the lesson had to be given to black people. They had to know their place.
Tillman said he left before the people were killed, but he hinted that he was there and participated. Tillman earned his nickname, Pitchfork, when he urged his followers to send him to Washington as their senator. And he said: so I can stick my pitchfork in Grover Cleveland's old ribs. This nickname began symbolizing his own angry attitude toward blacks.
Tillman preached reform to the poor, landless farmers and hated the blacks. Ralph McGill, the great editor of the Atlanta Constitution, once wrote: The Negro became the scapegoat for all the resentments of small farmers and plantation owners caught in an economic and political squeeze. And Tillman played upon these fears and emotions. This is the message I bring to my people, U. S.
senator Benjamin Ryan Tillman warned the South Carolina state Democratic convention in 1918: The world is passing through the greatest crisis in history. In that final year of his life, some of the particulars of the crisis were new, but the race problem were not. The people of Tillman's times seemed to stand always on the edge of racial, economic, and political catastrophe. Ben Tillman defined his world against the revolutions of emancipation and Reconstruction.
The mastery over individual households and Southern society seemed to face obstacles. Tillman sought to reconstruct white male authority in every sphere from the individual household to national politics. The idea of white supremacy had been implicit in the legal, social, and economic system of slavery. It had been enforced and reinforced at every level of society from the plantation to the U. S.
Supreme Court. Thurmond, the same as Tillman, was a product of his times. He was born in rural South Carolina just after the turn of the century. His family was friends with Pitchfork Ben Tillman. But, in 1971, Thurmond became the first Southern senator to hire a black aide. In 1982, he promoted the extension of the Voting Rights Act.
He created a federal holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. He put his service team at the service of South Carolinians of every race. Thurmond came to support civil rights laws after African-Americans were guaranteed the right to vote. Comparing Thurmond political view with that of Tillman's, we can see substantial or, it is rather to say, opposite point of view as to the racial identification in the society.
But, what were the reasons for such an attitude to the Black people? To answer this question, we will look closer at the social and political backgrounds of Strom's carrier time. While Thurmond's greatest impact on the nation may have come nearly in 1968 when he left the Democratic Party. In 1964, still frustrated with the Democrats for their support of civil rights, he became a Republican and supported Barry Goldwater for president. This action made a noticeable historic change in American politics. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, in 1948, while running for President on the State's Rights Party ticket, won attention by saying that the results of civil strife may be horrible beyond imagination.
He turned to be a prophet. Given forty-six years of hindsight, Thurmond's remarks seem astonishingly accurate. There was the greatest breakdown of law enforcement in the history of the nation. Thurmond led the opposition. It caused the Senator to be seen by Americans concerned with racial integrity as one of their most beloved advocates: the laws that are essential to the protection of the racial integrity and purity of the White and Negro races alike. In the eighties, Strom began voting for "civil rights" legislation in Congress.
He also supported making Martin Luther King Junior's birthday a national holiday. Thurmond told a Black University Student: When I was Governor the laws said the races should be separated. But now the law is different, customs are different, public opinion has changed, and it's an entirely different situation. Briefly, Strom Thurmond might be worthy of student for those who are looking for answers to American initial question of "where did segregation go?" Thurmond's support of Nixon over Reagan in 1968 and his rejection of the Wallace campaigns of 1968 and 1972 indicates.
Ever creative, the Senator himself recently offered his version of events: I don't think I've sacrificed any principle throughout my career, but times change. When I grew up the Black people were all just servants. Now they " ve developed and come up and we " ve got to acknowledge people when they deserve to be acknowledged, and the Black people deserve to be acknowledged. There is a little doubt that most Southern politicians and citizens sincerely supported segregation in the period of 1930 s- 60 s. Perhaps Thurmond was among them. Their eventual acceptance of its demise was due to three factors.
For all the rhetoric about "defending their way of life to the end", most Southerners were very vague about what they meant by either of those two phrases. What precisely was the Southern "way of life?" . Did it involve religiosity, a code of conduct, a shared view of life, an approach to home and family or White supremacy? Nadine Cahodas, in his book, expresses his opinion about the real motives for Thurmond's supporting race mixtures. Once, the Senator said: I have never opposed a day of recognition for Dr. King provided the cost problem could be adequately addressed...
to the creation and preservation and development of our great nation. " Thurmond was merely observing the absolute law of contemporary public debate: White racial identity is an unmentionable evil. A White man may have any sort of economic or other motivations; but he may not have a racial self awareness. What Thurmond or any White leader could have said, but never managed to, would say something like: Dr King may be a hero for Black men for he advanced their interests. For me, however, as a White man, he was instrumental in breaking down segregation - a system which protected and preserved my race. Since the triumph of his revolution White people are far worse off than before... Should anyone reply that Black people are better off with the changes brought by Strom's actions?
Some people would disagree and maintain that a paternalistic segregation was better for the average Black than is life in the underclass. The situation did not change much for those people. As we see, both politicians actually did not care much about the destiny of the Black people. They only used different circumstances, characterized by the times they lived in, for supporting their carriers. Ben Tillman suppressed the Black people to sustain his power. Strom Thurmond, in his time, realized the inevitability of going towards racial equality and gaining social power by the Black people.
He used this situation for gaining his own goals. Words: 1, 600 Bibliography: Nadine Cahodas. Strom Thurmond and the Politics of Southern Change. New York: Simon and Schuster Publishers, 1993. Stephen Kantrowitz.
Ben Tillman and The Reconstruction of White Supremacy. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, Inc. , 1983.
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Research essay sample on Ben Tillman And Strom Thurmond
