Opinion: Resistance even in the nadir

In this July 17, 2015 file photo, the statue honoring former South Carolina governor and U.S. senator “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman is seen on the grounds of the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C.

In this July 17, 2015 file photo, the statue honoring former South Carolina governor and U.S. senator “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman is seen on the grounds of the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C. Jeffrey Collins / AP

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD

Published: 11-18-2024 6:00 AM

Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot.

I admit to a fascination with the holes in American history. That is, the time periods outside our blockbuster events like the Revolution, the Civil War, and the 20th-century World Wars. There are periods where historical memory has failed and our collective past is lost.

One such period is the time after the betrayal of Reconstruction in the 1890s. What is remembered, if at all, might be the name of a president or a Supreme Court decision. President-elect Trump cited President William McKinley who served from 1897 to 1901 to promote his tariff ideas. Lawyers remember Plessy v Ferguson, the separate but equal decision. The narrative thread about the 1890s is non-existent. It is a black hole.

I was reading an article by Sherrilyn Ifill, the civil rights activist, who quoted a historian who had called the period after the end of Reconstruction “the nadir.” She mentions lynching, convict leasing and sharecropping as aspects of that era. It was a period of racial fascism in the South and it was a time when white supremacy ruled the country as a whole. Protest against racism, certainly as reflected in the two major political parties, was at a low ebb.

However, contrary to the shreds of history we have inherited, there was more opposition to the prevailing order than is now remembered. When I was down South in September, I learned about the 1895 anti-racist struggle in South Carolina. The story has been sidelined but it is important to remember because it contradicts the misleading impression that people didn’t fight back.

After the Civil War and during Reconstruction in 1868, South Carolina passed a new progressive state constitution that gave rights to all. For over 30 years, Black people ran for and were elected to high political office in South Carolina. Under the 1868 constitution, South Carolina removed discrimination and allowed voting rights for Black men. An effort to extend suffrage for women was defeated.

The Reconstruction government in South Carolina created a public school system. Nothing like that existed before. It was the first law passed in the South to desegregate public schools. For the first time, Black and white students attended public school together.

It would be hard to overstate the racist reaction engendered by the desegregation effort. Following the example of Mississippi, South Carolina’s Governor, “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, organized a constitutional convention designed to strip Black citizens of the right to vote even though the 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution had been passed to prevent exactly efforts like this.

Tillman had a long history of stirring up racial hatred. He was part of a mob that massacred Black people in 1876 at Hamburg, South Carolina, and he bragged about murdering Black South Carolinians during Reconstruction. Later as a U.S. senator, he defended lynching on the floor of the Senate. He ran on a goal of eliminating Black political power.

In the 1890s, civil rights, particularly voting rights, had deteriorated so much that on Aug. 29, 1892, this notice appeared in the Charleston News and Courier:

“A separate list of all Negro voters must be kept and returned with the poll list. Every Negro applying to vote must produce a written statement by ten white men who will swear that they know of their own knowledge that such voters voted for [Governor Wade] Hampton in 1876 and have voted the Democratic ticket continuously ever since. This statement must be placed in the ballot box by the managers.”

On July 10, 1895, several months before Tillman’s convention was to take place, 60 Black leaders convened in Columbia. Six Black delegates were elected to attend the constitutional convention. These included Robert Smalls, a Civil War hero and later a congressman, and William J. Whipper, a lawyer. Both had played a role in drafting the progressive 1868 state constitutional convention. Smalls had been the architect of the amendment creating public schools in South Carolina.

Both Smalls and Whipper had distinguished records. Smalls smuggled his family out of slavery when he commandeered a Confederate transport ship in Charleston Harbor in 1862. He piloted the ship to a Union-controlled area. He became famous for that and his example helped to persuade President Lincoln to accept Black soldiers into the Union army. Smalls went on to a political career serving in the Louisiana State House and Senate and then Congress.

Whipper was an abolitionist, a state legislator, a circuit court judge, and an outstanding trial lawyer. He was one of the first Black lawyers practicing before a legal tribunal in South Carolina. In the 1868 South Carolina constitutional convention Whipper made a motion, ultimately unsuccessful, to extend the right to vote to women.

In the face of racist insults and ridicule, the six Black leaders eloquently made the case for universal suffrage. They contended with white delegates voicing racist slurs and with a vicious press campaign accusing Black people of incompetence, criminality and corruption.

A number of the most powerful speeches are quoted in a book by Damon L. Fordham, “The 1895 Segregation Fight in South Carolina.” Fordham cites Whipper’s speech in response to Tillman’s allegations of Black corruption:

“The car of Negro progress is coming, and instead of allowing it to come on, you wish to stop it. You may just as well make up your minds that the Negro will rise. He will not be crushed. The Negro will rise, sooner or later, crush us as you may.”

The final vote on the Convention was 116-7 in favor of Tillman’s constitution. The Black delegates refused to sign the completed constitution. Smalls said he would rather “walk home” to Beaufort before signing such a document. Not only were Black voting rights curtailed but under the new constitution schools and public facilities were segregated again.

Tillman’s constitution didn’t explicitly say Black people couldn’t vote to avoid a 15th Amendment violation but it included a requirement of owning $300 in property and a literacy requirement targeted at Black people. The requirements effectively precluded Black voting. Fordham writes that the literacy test allowed registrars to allow illiterate white voters while denying most literate Black voters. Tillman and his allies stacked the deck.

The bravery of the Black leaders in the context of that nadir exposed the barbarism of South Carolina’s power structure. They resisted nobly and inspired those who learned about their speeches and actions. We are now in a new nadir. We can learn about the imperative of courage and resistance from those who faced a far more difficult situation than what we face today.