Ben Tillman & the reconstruction of white supremacy

Description:

"Through the life of Benjamin Ryan Tillman (1847-1918), South Carolina's self-styled agrarian rebel, this book traces the history of white male supremacy and its discontents from the era of plantation slavery to the age of Jim Crow. Born into a wealthy slaveholding family, Tillman spent his career attempting to re-create the world he had lost. As an anti-Reconstruction guerrilla and local Democratic activist, he helped defeat black and white challenges to white supremacy. Later, during two terms as governor and four as U.S. senator, he steered a complicated political course between conservatives and Populists, seeking a balance of local control and state-level reform that would protect white men and their households from federal intrusion, "Negro domination," and the machinations of the "money power."". "Friend and foe alike - and generations of historians - interpreted Tillman's physical and rhetorical violence in defense of white supremacy not as part of a strategy to maintain social and political authority but as a matter of racial and gender instinct. This book instead reveals that Tillman's white supremacy was a political program and social argument whose legacies continue to shape American life."--BOOK JACKET.

subjects: Politics and government,  Political culture,  Legislators,  White supremacy movements,  White Men,  United States. Congress. Senate,  Race relations,  United States,  History,  Political activity,  Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877),  Biography,  Reconstruction,  Rassismus,  Südstaaten,  Rassenverhoudingen,  Tillman, benjamin ryan, 1847-1918,  United states, congress, senate, biography,  Legislators, united states,  South carolina, politics and government,  Southern states, race relations,  Southern states, history

People: Benjamin R. Tillman (1847-1918)

Places: South Carolina,  Southern States,  United States

Times: 1865-1950