Clemson wants to drop Tillman Hall name. It wants SC lawmakers’ help
Clemson University’s Board of Trustees is asking the South Carolina General Assembly to amend a 20-year-old law so the school can rename a campus building named after a slave owner and a white segregationist and supremacist.
During the board’s meeting on Friday, trustees said they want Tillman Hall, named after “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, renamed to Main Building, the original identity. The move comes after protests from students and leaders who have called for the removal of Tillman’s name for years.
The trustees’ action was unanimous. There are 13 trustees, six elected by the Legislature.
Tillman Hall, a three-story brick building with a clock tower overlooking a broad lawn, is a prominent landmark on Clemson’s campus. An academic building, it is named for the former South Carolina governor and U.S. senator, who also was a segregationist who promoted the myth of white supremacy and a member of an all-white, post-Civil War militia responsible for lynching black people.
In the 1890s, Tillman led the state’s effort to disenfranchise African-Americans and usher in the Jim Crow era, where for years South Carolina blacks would routinely be denied the right to vote and other rights.
As a U.S. senator from 1895 to 1918, Tillman became known nationally as a great orator who traveled the country, speaking to large audiences and urging whites to kill black any black people who tried assert rights equal to those of white people, according to Stephen Kantrowitz in his 2000 biography, Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy.
Tillman helped found Clemson University and served as a trustee.
“He’s a part of our history that cannot be changed or erased,” said Clemson Board Chairman E. Smyth McKissick III. “But we can as a university decide how to honor that history properly and put that history into context and tell that history in a manner is consistent with our core values.”
“We need to recognize that the continuing usage of the name Tillman is divisive and hurtful to many,” McKissick added.
Clemson President James Clements said he believes the move by the board to ask the legislature for permission to change Tillman Hall’s name may have eventually happened, but the death of George Floyd, a black man, while in the custody of the Minneapolis police, expedited the move.
Clements said the university is seeking the name change to Tillman Hall because it’s the campus’ signature building.
“The board (members) made a real clear statement about their values several years ago they came out with a strong statement against the actions of Ben Tillman and the things he did,” Clements said. “We’re thankful the legislature will give us the opportunity to discuss it with them and for them to contemplate it. We feel thankful they’re willing to do that and feel very good about our chances.”
The request to the legislature comes the same day the Clemson Board of Trustees took the name of John C. Calhoun, a former U.S. vice president who was a slave owner in South Carolina, off of the honors college and renamed it Clemson University Honors College.
Calls to remove Calhoun’s name from the honors college, which have included students and NFL stars, including Houston quarterback Deshaun Watson, come amid national Black Lives Matter protests after the death of Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd died last month after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes while Floyd said he could not breathe.
Four former police officers have been charged in Floyd’s death.
In order to change the Tillman Hall name, however, Clemson must get approval from the General Assembly.
Clemson University is the first college or university in South Carolina that plans to ask for the Heritage Act to be amended. The act, which helped remove the Confederate flag from the State House dome in 2000, prohibits removal of any state monument, marker, memorial, school or street that honors war monuments or memorials and any Native American or African American monuments or memorials without legislative approval.
State Rep. Seth Rose, D-Richland, meanwhile, has called for the removal of the Tillman’s statue from the Capitol grounds. That statue, which stands front of the State House, has plaques honoring Tillman, but they do not mention his role in depriving black people of rights and advocating violence against them.
The debate over Clemson’s proposed renaming of Tillman Hall is likely to be kicked over to next year. Lawmakers aren’t returning to Columbia until the end of June, when they are limited in what they can take up. The General Assembly’s sine die resolution — outlining when and for what lawmakers can return to Columbia, for instance the budget and COVID-19 — doesn’t include new legislation.
“It’s certainly takes the immediacy out of the situation,” said state Rep. Gary Clary, R-Pickens who is not running for re-election this year who applauded Clemson’s move on Friday.
Clary pointed to how the Confederate Flag was removed from the State House grounds a month after the shootings at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston where nine African-American were killed.
“I think it’s up to the voters to hold their elected officials accountable for any kind of reform when it comes to policing, police recruitment, police training, police transparency, police accountability, things that are so important,” Clary said. “All of these things are going to have to be in important when the General Assembly reconvenes in January.”
Maayan Schechter and John Monk contributed to this report.
This story was originally published June 12, 2020 at 9:51 AM.
