BENJAMIN RYAN TILLMAN

Incredible as it seems today, no Black person had ever dined in the White House as a guest of the President. African American servants were common. And Abraham Lincoln had received many Black visitors as had Presidents after him. But no president had ever had a Black person to dine as a social equal. The photo, reproduced here, illustrates the parity. But that was the worst thing a President could do so far as Tillman and his fellow racists were concerned. They had, since the end of the Civil war, used violence and terrorism to murder, maim and/or intimidate the Negro population to remain in an economic and socially inferior position. In Tillman’s state over these decades they had more lynchings than legal executions and there were plenty of them. Newspapers over the South riled up the whites and there was a wave of terror to be sure that the President’s importune action would not be taken as an endorsement of the Negro’s right to any equality or even dignity. This dinner essentially wedded all the Blacks to the Republican Party and all the Southern Whites to the Democratic Party. This would remain the political situation for over 60 years until the Democrats passed the LBJ Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Republicans decided to solicit the Southern White racists who accepted the invitation and within a few years, there was a complete reversal of party loyalty of most Blacks and most Southern White Racists.

TR worked very hard for his press coverage. He literally met with the press every day—often several times. Daily, his barber had to cut and shave with the President talking to the reporters and answering questions. The only time he stopped talking was when the barber was shaving his chin or upper lip.

This quotation illustrates how the racist South defeated the objectives of the Civil War and Reconstruction by the institution of Jim Crowe laws and so called “states’ rights”. It would take more than another half century for the Yankees and the vast majority of the non-Southern Americans decided that the Southerners could no longer “do as they pleased” with fellow human beings. It is hard to believe for us today that an entire section of our country could actually believe in the morality of the South but that is the tragic history of race relations in America.

to prevent blacks from voting

Incredible as it seems today, no Black person had ever dined in the White House as a guest of the President. African American servants were common. And Abraham Lincoln had received many Black visitors as had Presidents after him. But no president had ever had a Black person to dine as a social equal. The photo, reproduced here, illustrates the parity. But that was the worst thing a President could do so far as Tillman and his fellow racists were concerned. They had, since the end of the Civil war, used violence and terrorism to murder, maim and/or intimidate the Negro population to remain in an economic and socially inferior position. In Tillman’s state over these decades they had more lynchings than legal executions and there were plenty of them. Newspapers over the South riled up the whites and there was a wave of terror to be sure that the President’s importune action would not be taken as an endorsement of the Negro’s right to any equality or even dignity. This dinner essentially wedded all the Blacks to the Republican Party and all the Southern Whites to the Democratic Party. This would remain the political situation for over 60 years until the Democrats passed the LBJ Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Republicans decided to solicit the Southern White racists who accepted the invitation and within a few years, there was a complete reversal of party loyalty of most Blacks and most Southern White Racists.

to prevent blacks from voting

TR worked very hard for his press coverage. He literally met with the press every day—often several times. Daily, his barber had to cut and shave with the President talking to the reporters and answering questions. The only time he stopped talking was when the barber was shaving his chin or upper lip.

This quotation illustrates how the racist South defeated the objectives of the Civil War and Reconstruction by the institution of Jim Crowe laws and so called “states’ rights”. It would take more than another half century for the Yankees and the vast majority of the non-Southern Americans decided that the Southerners could no longer “do as they pleased” with fellow human beings. It is hard to believe for us today that an entire section of our country could actually believe in the morality of the South but that is the tragic history of race relations in America.