The Hamburg Massacre, which occurred on July 8, 1876, was a violent confrontation between white paramilitary groups… otherwise known as the Klan, and black militia members… otherwise known as black folks protecting themselves, in Hamburg, South Carolina. Benjamin Tillman, a prominent politician in South Carolina, was one of the main instigators and leaders in the events leading up to and during the massacre. Tillman was a well-known virulent racist who singlehandedly changed the course of African American political participation in South Carolina which has lasted to this very day. In other words, he was a real son of a one, and as my contribution to CRT (Critical Race Theory) and TMDV (That MoFo Done Violated), it’s time to talk about Benjamin “Pitchfork” Tillman.
Not One House…
So Benjamin Tillman was born in 1847 and lived on the family’s plantation called Chester, in Trenton, Edgefield District, South Carolina. His parent were of English descent and I guess that accounts for the name of the plantation… Chester. I’m more of an Evergreen or Tara type of guy. Anyway, he was the youngest of 11 children. The plantation enslaved 86 African Americans and was sitting on close to 2500 acres. In addition, the Tillmans also ran an inn. They were the largest slave-holding family in the Edgefield District. Now Edgefield was one of those places you didn’t want to be caught short in. By that I mean there were more gangsters in Edgefield than in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather”. It was a violent place. Of his six brothers, one was killed in a duel, and another one was stabbed to death in his sleep by his wife who had said she wished that a Moe would go to sleep… okay… history doesn’t exactly say how he died in the domestic dispute, so I’m just using my journalistic freedom and covering my azz from a lawsuit. Anywho, one died from disease, one was killed in the Mexican-American war and another was killed in the Civil War. The one that was left killed somebody else and was put into prison for a few years. He ran for office and was elected a state senator even though he was incarcerated. Yessiree, them Tillman boys were something else. Imagine what they were doing to the slaves under their control. At the age of 17, Benjamin Tillman lost sight in his left eye due to a cranial tumor, and his eye had to be removed. Having to convalesce, he didn’t regain his health until after the Civil War ended. Now South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union, and as such when General William Tecumseh Sherman got there after he finished burning Atlanta to the ground, he wanted to make sure they knew that they had gotten him “ucked” up! A South Carolina resident named Emma Florence LaConte wrote in her diary on December 31, 1864…
“They are preparing to hurl destruction upon the State they hate most of all, and Sherman the brute avows his intention of converting South Carolina into a wilderness. Not one house, he says, shall be left standing, and his licentious troops—whites and negroes—shall be turned loose to ravage and violate” … and that’s exactly what he did. Sherman and his boys kicked everybody’s azz that walked on two legs in that state… took everybody’s name in 1865 in South Carolina!! To this day it is illegal to even say “William Tecumseh Sherman” in South Carolina… on pain of death!!!
Reporter: ‘Sheriff Bullwhip, is it true that an African American went into the State House and told Senator Roy Rebel,’ “That’s why Willie Sherman kicked ya’ll azz cause ya’ll was violating?”
Sheriff: Yes he said that to Senator Rebel… but I want ya’ll to know, we are doing everything in our power to find him. This is 2023 and he has a right to be disrespectful to gawd fearing white folks…
Reporter#2: Sheriff can you tell us anything about the investigation? Do you have any leads?
Sheriff: Well I can tell you we do know that he was in there because we found a shoe and a sign he was carrying that belonged to him… and a witness said he heard someone yell “Naw Nigra!!,” about the time he disappeared…
Reporter: Sheriff!! Sheriff!! Just one more question please… We have a source that said they saw “you” take out your gun and Senator Rebel pointing at the protester just before he disappeared… can you…
Sheriff: That’s all the questions for now.. thank you…
You Know What This Is…
Anyway, I am bringing this up because after Sherman turned South Carolina into a desert, Benjamin Tillman and his brother were left having to rebuild Chester. So although historians don’t say this is where he started hating for real on black folks, I peg it to this time because after the war the people who had been forced to work on his plantation as slaves were now free. When he approached them about being hired as free men, most of them told him something about ” where the sun doesn’t shine” and left. The ones that stayed, although free, were still put under the lash by Tillman. He rode through his fields on horseback like a true Massa, and historians say at the time he thought it necessary because he said he had to “drive the slovenly Negroes to work.” Of course, you and I know that it ain’t no way in the hell he used the word “Negro.” So because of an inheritance of 170 acres and his purchase of an additional 650 acres in Edgefield, Tillman became the largest landowner in the “county”. Edgefield had been a district. In 1868 the districts changed back to counties in South Carolina. It had something to do with lawlessness and establishing judicial boundaries. I told you earlier about Edgefield and how violent it was, but generally speaking, white folks were acting up everywhere down south after the Civil War. It was a different time… Nigras were looking at folks in the eyeball and walking around with white women… and when they weren’t doing that they were running things. The trades they had been taught by their slaveholders had now been turned into businesses. A significant number of skilled southern men had been killed in the war, so white folks had to learn to deal with doing business with black folks. That was until Rutherford B. Hayes removed all the Union troops from the south and ended Reconstruction, but before then, with most of the south still in ruins, whites were shooting, stabbing, robbing, and killing everything that moved. Nothing was sacred, it was dog eat dog.
Shenanigans
Now with the South still picking up the pieces from the azz whooping that Grant and Sherman had given them, there still was another unavoidable obstacle left, courtesy of running a slave state. In South Carolina, the slave population outnumbered the white population, and now that those slaves were free, they outnumbered the Democratic voting population with which most South Carolinians were affiliated. Racist: “Hot diggity-dog!!” At first, it didn’t matter because the state legislators had enacted the “Black Codes”, which curtailed African Americans voting rights among other things. However, Congress didn’t see it their way, and since they still had Union troops stationed there in case there were shenanigans, African Americans started voting in droves and changed the state legislative representation to be more “representative”… but not without a cost. The 1868 general election in South Carolina was one of the most violent campaigns in American political history. Half of the ropes in the country were sold in South Carolina during that time. Okay, I’m kidding, but the fact of the matter is over 19 Republicans and Union League activists were killed in South Carolina’s 3rd congressional district alone!! There were four congressional districts in South Carolina in 1868… so it may not have been half the ropes in the country that were sold, but it was a lot of them. In the 1868 campaign, Republicans took all four seats and as a result of the election, in 1873 a couple of lawyers and two confederate generals came up with something called the “Edgefield Plan.” They calculated correctly that since blacks outnumbered whites in South Carolina, they could never win an election by numbers. Secondly, they were too proud to sit down at the table and compromise with black folks… Racist thinking to himself: “Boy there was a time, I could have had you hanging from the tallest tree I could find… for just peeking in the door where white men were talking about the law…” Black Compromiser: HEY!! Are you listening to me? You need to focus! I said it’s against the “LAW!!” You do know what the “LAW” is… don’t you?” Finally, they didn’t want to share power with black citizens and believed that white men must be restored as the elite political power brokers. So the Edgefield Plan was really very simple… whip dey azz if they come within a mile of a voting booth. This was to be accomplished through the use of domestic terrorist organizations known as rifle clubs. They would use intimidation and force to drive blacks from power. One of the most widely known of these notorious rifle clubs was called the “Red Shirts.” They are said to have numbered in the thousands at their peak and originated in Mississippi. Now, as the saying goes, a rope has two ends. Back then in Mississippi, a Red Shirt was always at one of the ends. Anywho, the rifle club we are going to be discussing right now was called the “Sweetwater Sabre Club,” of which Benjamin Tillman was a recruiter and member. From 1873 to 1876, Tillman and the Sweetwater Sabre Club attacked and intimidated would-be African American voters and assassinated black political figures and community leaders. They also employed economic coercion, like not renting to black sharecroppers and penalizing whites who did.
Who Made The Mac?
So although now, many African Americans don’t hold July 4th in the same patriotic spirit as do other US citizens, after the Civil War it was a big deal in our communities, especially down South where we used the holiday to not only celebrate our independence but also to celebrate the downfall of the South and how the “United States Of America” had pulled “Massa” down from off his high horse and kicked his cotton-picking azz. Naturally, southerners hated that shat… African Americans made it their business to party like it was “1999” on Independence Day after the Civil War and it “peeisssssssed them racist offffffffff.” As a matter of fact, the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, was so mad, they didn’t celebrate July 4th again after the Civil War until 1943!! So when you’re sitting in the backyard eating ribs and chicken, Mac and Cheese and potato salad and stuff on the 4th of July, remember back then it was not only about being patriotic, it was also about rubbing the southern racist nose in it… that BBQ is a legacy left to us long ago, courtesy of our ancestors.
So I bought this up because it was one of these 4th of July celebrations that led to the events which unfolded in the Hamburg Massacre. Hamburg was a black town in Aiken County, Mississippi, which was next to Edgefield County, Mississippi. On July 4th, 1876, just like we had been doing since the end of the Civil War, we were celebrating… uh America’s Independence Day. Now, shortly after the Civil War ended and because of the hostility directed toward African Americans, black towns formed militias for their protection, and during celebrations, these militias would participate in different festivities by marching. So the Hamburg militia was marching in the Hamburg July 4th festivities when two farmers from Aiken decided they were going break that shat up. Racist Farmer: “Billy Joe, you know good and darn well this ain’t about no patriotism! That’s why ain’t nobody carrying a flag!!” Anyway, these two farmers decided they were going to ride their buggy right down the middle of the militia ranks as they were marching. They demanded that the troops let them pass through the middle of the parade. The Captain of the black militia asked the two men to go around them. The street was about 150 feet wide so there was no obstacle preventing them from going around. Getzen, the driver of the buggy refused, saying that he wasn’t about to move aside for “no damned n*ggers!” Reminds me of that meme where you are backing out of a parking space and somebody blows their horn at you to hurry up… now you gonna have to wait until both of ya’ll die before you move… at least that’s what I’d do. However, after a brief argument, the troops moved out of the way and let them pass.
Business As Usual
Two days later one of the farmers filed charges against the militia in Hamburg for obstructing the public highways.” The town’s black magistrate set a hearing for July 8, 1876. However, the black militia did not attend as on the day of the hearing a white mob from Edgefield had also come to Hamburg. Led by a former confederate general, named M.C Butler, they demanded an apology and that the black militia give up its arms. Giving up their arms to a white mob and apologizing wasn’t even gonna happen. If they surrendered their arms, they would be helpless, and as far as apologizing, they rather cut their azz off and serve it to a bunch of monkeys with a glass of grape Kool-Aid, rather than say I’m sorry, our parade got in your way and made you late for your Klan meeting. To augment the mob, Butler had brought in additional men from Georgia and South Carolina, including Tillman and his “Sweetwater Sabre Club.” So the black militia being outnumbered and outgunned barricaded themselves in their drill room above a store and waited for the attack. All told, there were about 200 armed white men against about 40 black men, of which 25 were in the militia. When the mob attempted to take the building, shots were fired. A white man went down in a hail of bullets. The mob then stormed the room, capturing 30 people. Five men were immediately executed as being “enemies of white men,” including the town constable who had been accused of arresting white men. The rest were allowed to flee… Racist: “Now the rest of you gigaboo’s SCRAM!!” As the black men fled, the mob started taking indiscriminate shots at them, killing seven more. On the way home to Edgefield, Tillman, and others had a meal to celebrate the events at the home of the man who had pointed out which African Americans should be shot. Tillman later said that he had led the white men of Edgefield in order to seize the first opportunity to teach the “N-word” a lesson by “having the whites demonstrate their superiority in killing as many of them as was justifiable.” Ninety-four white men were indicted for the killings, including Tillman, but none were ever convicted.
No Good Deed…
Coup d’état carried out by a group of white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898.
On November 4, 1890, Benjamin “Pitchfork” Tillman, was elected Governor of South Carolina. It ushered in an era of unbelievable horror and hardships for African Americans under his administration. In 1909 during a reunion of Red Shirts in Anderson, South Carolina, he recounted the events of 1876 and the Hamburg Massacre…
“The purpose of our visit to Hamburg was to strike terror, and the next morning… Sunday, when the negroes who had fled to the swamp returned to the town… some of them never did return, but kept on going… the ghastly sight which met their gaze of seven dead negroes lying stark and stiff… certainly had its effect … It was now after midnight, and the moon high in the heavens looked down peacefully on the deserted town and dead negroes, whose lives had been offered up as a sacrifice to the fanatical teachings and fiendish hate of those who sought to substitute the rule of the African for that of the Caucasian in South Carolina.”
During Tillman’s campaign for the governorship of South Carolina, in one of his particularly racist and violent speeches, he advocated the use of “pitchforks and shotguns” by the farmers of the state to keep black citizens from voting. Later after winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, he threatened to use a “pitchfork” to prod that “bag of beef”, President Grover Cleveland. Tillman’s use of the phrase “pitchforks and shotguns” became notorious and it stuck as a nickname throughout his career in politics. Personally, I like “Pitchfork,” it’s becoming… Anyway, Tillman died on July 3, 1918, of cancer of the ass… okay no he didn’t… he died from a cerebral hemorrhage and I was gonna leave the former like that… but I think it is more ironic that he died the day before he would have celebrated another year of the massacre at Hamburg. In 1898 there was a coup d’état carried out by a group of white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina. As a result of the insurrection, the city government was overthrown and replaced with a white supremacist government. Many African Americans were forced to flee the city, and the political and economic power of the African American community in Wilmington was severely curtailed for decades. While Benjamin Tillman was not physically present during the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, he was one of the political leaders who helped to create the environment of racial hatred and violence that led to the coup d’état and he was one of the instigators who demanded to know why Alex Manly, a black, outspoken newspaper editor in Wilmington wasn’t hung from the tallest tree they could find. When Manly, who had barely escaped the Wilmington Insurrection, read of Tillman’s death in 1918, he said to his wife… “I wonder who is making hash out of him in hell tonight?” Me too Alex… I wonder too.
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