On November 4, 1890, the white citizens of South Carolina celebrated the election of serial killer turned governor Benjamin “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman. White South Carolinians were well aware of Tillman’s penchant for mass murder, beginning with his time as a recruiter for the Sweetwater Sabre Club, a clandestine paramilitary fraternity devoted to killing as many Black people as they could. Tillman had already been indicted for murdering at least six Black men in Aiken County, South Carolina, after “the leading white men of Edgefield” decided “to provoke a riot and teach the Negroes a lesson” by
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