The comment about Teddy Roosevelt in the other thread brought to mind a local controversy.
Clemson University (40 min up the road from me) has a prominent building named Tillman Hall. It's named in honor of Ben Tillman, a SC governor and senator (and, of course, a populist Democrat), postbellum paramilitary leader, and a founding trustee of the university.
Upon the occasion of Teddy Roosevelt's dining with Booker T. Washington at the White House, Ben Tillman said this:
"The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that n***** will necessitate our killing a thousand n***** in the South before they learn their place again."
He's also the author of such gems as:
"We of the South have never recognized the right of the Negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be the equal of the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him." (on the Senate floor, no less)
...and many, many others just as vile.
The building was originally known as Main Hall or Old Main Hall until 1946, when it was renamed for Tillman. Why is it considered to be an unconscionable revision of history to rename the building in 2017, but not in 1946?
What was happening in 1946? I can think of a few things. Black Americans were returning from Europe to a country that denied them basic rights. The germ of the modern Civil Rights movement was coalescing. White supremacist voting practices were being challenged in court, and blacks were being killed and menaced for attempting to vote. That year, President Truman established the Commission on Civil Rights. Within two years he ordered the desegregation of the army.
In that context, in South Carolina, what did naming a prominent public building after Pitchfork Ben Tillman signify? Why is it an unforgivable sin against history to consider undoing it?