South Carolina and the Tillmanites

After laboring for weeks to eliminate African Americans voting rights the South Carolina Constitutional Convention believes they have succeeded.

The South Carolina Un-constitutional “Constitutional” Convention has been laboring for weeks to eliminate the colored man as a factor in politics.
It believes it has succeeded and thus the trial of us as a race by the fires of persecution goes on.
We shall await the onslaught and stand the test believing that the violation of great principles will surely react upon the violators.
No laws which Senator Tillman and his illiterate white crew may enact can injure us further.
The ballot has been wrested from our hands in that state with the revolver, the shot-gun, the Winchester rifle and the gibbet. Our liberties sleep beneath the bloody soil of South Carolina, and from further political injury we are secure.
The action of these South Carolina buccaneers is taken to ease conscience. Certainly for no other cause could they resort to such tiresome efforts to disfranchise a people who have, so far as politics in that state is concerned abandoned hope.
We are satisfied that what they have done is constitutional for no act of an unconstitutional body can be otherwise.
They are handing down a legacy of blood and trouble to their children and will fail to accomplish the object of all their toil.

“South Carolina and the Tillmanites,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed December 7, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1466.