The July 1876 Hamburg Massacre was part of a series of terrorist acts planned by the supporters of former Confederate general Wade Hampton who was running for governor of South Carolina. After the massacre which left six African Americans dead, the white community erected a monument in 1916 to Thomas McKie Meriwether, the only man killed in the white mob that carried out the massacre. The monument says that “In life he exemplified the highest ideal of Anglo-Saxon civilization. By his death he assured to the children of his beloved land the supremacy of that ideal.”
Next week the North Augusta City Council will vote to spend money to “contextualize” the Meriwether monument in the city’s Calhoun Park, named after one of the South’s greatest advocates of White Supremacy.
Many elected leaders had hoped to remove the monument, but a 2021 ruling by the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld a state law taking the power to remove monuments from local governments. Instead, the city is considering placing panels near the site that say:
“Inscriptions on the monument reflect attitudes of people during that period. Those words do not represent the attitudes of the people of North Augusta today…We are a community of people of different races and ethnic backgrounds, bonded together by unity and common rights of citizenship. We choose to learn from our past and ensure that North Augusta’s future reflects a high standard for all of its citizens. The events and legacy of Hamburg do not define us.”
Hamburg does define modern South Carolina with a state legislature passing its Heritage Act in 2000 blocking the removal of an monument put up to a violent white supremacist. As Ben Tillman, the Senator who helped suppress democracy in the 1876 election said a decade after:
“as white men we are not sorry for it, and we do not propose to apologize for anything we have done in connection with it. We took the government away from them in 1876. We did take it. If no other Senator has come here previous to this time who would acknowledge it, more is the pity.”
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Unfortunately we are once again seeing white supremacist legislators and officials speaking with almost the same boldness quoted here from Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman.