@GoldenBridgeSF having helped to kill them during the 1876 campaign. He was known as "Pitchfork Ben" after he threatened to use a pitchfork to prod that "bag of beef", President Grover Cleveland. abc 3/3
@GoldenBridgeSF Carolina's violent 1876 election. One of his legacies was South Carolina's 1895 constitution, which disenfranchised most of the black majority and ensured white rule for more than half a century. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, he frequently ridiculed blacks, and boasted of 2/3
@GoldenBridgeSF Benjamin Tillman (1847โ1918) was the Democratic Governor of South Carolina from 1890 to 1894 and a United States Senator from 1895 until his death in 1918. A white supremacist who opposed civil rights for blacks, Tillman led a paramilitary group of Red Shirts during South 1/3