SC House speaker blocks renaming Winthrop’s Tillman Hall

When the Legislature voted last week to remove the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds, lawmakers overrode a hard-fought 2000 compromise meant to protect the flag and other historic monuments to controversial people and periods in the state’s past.

Lawmakers’ vote on the flag opened the possibility that other changes could be possible – including renaming Tillman Hall, Winthrop University’s most iconic building, which is named for an avowed violent racist.

This week, that door seemed to slam shut.

House Speaker Jay Lucas, the Hartsville Republican whose district includes southeastern Lancaster County, issued a statement Thursday saying the vote to move the flag is as far as he is willing to go.

The S.C. House “will not engage in or debate the specifics of public monuments, memorials, state buildings, road names or any other historical markers,” Lucas said. “The General Assembly, the House in particular, made it abundantly clear during the debate (on) the Confederate flag that the only issue they were willing to discuss was the placement of the battle flag on the north lawn of the Statehouse.”

The speaker’s statement leaves Winthrop in the same position the university was in last year, when two former students formally asked the Board of Trustees to consider changing the name of Tillman Hall. At the time, trustees pointed out that the 2000 Heritage Act prevented them from taking any action without the approval of a two-thirds majority of the Legislature.

Last year, Acting President Debra Boyd appointed a committee of faculty and staff to examine what actions Winthrop could take on its own to address the issue, short of getting a change through the Legislature. A Winthrop spokeswoman said Friday that group will remain active with the intention of producing a report or recommendations.

When asked for comment on Lucas’ statement, a Winthrop spokeswoman referred The Herald to a statement the university issued on behalf of Boyd late last month, after Winthrop trustee Glenn McCall said the time had come to change the name of Tillman Hall. She said the university’s position hasn’t changed since President Dan Mahony took office July 1.

“Regarding Tillman Hall, Winthrop will move forward thoughtfully and with respect for all voices,” the statement reads. “Winthrop’s great strength is its tradition of appreciating the array of opinions speaking on important matters facing the university.

“Our campus dialogue will continue this fall, and we will identify and act on campus initiatives that will have a long term impact and that will reflect Winthrop’s culture of diversity. We are committed to Winthrop University being known for taking command of a dark chapter in our past and denying it the power to divide us.”

“Pitchfork Ben” Tillman was South Carolina’s governor from 1890 to 1894 and a U.S. senator from 1895 until his death in 1918. A champion of poor, white farmers, he was instrumental in founding Clemson University and establishing Winthrop College as a teaching school for women.

But Tillman also was famous for his violent rhetoric against the state’s black population. He supported racist lynch mobs and personally boasted of killing blacks. He was instrumental in adopting the state’s current constitution in 1895, which at the time effectively removed any political power blacks had gained since the Civil War.

Winthrop has one of the more diverse student bodies among state universities, where almost a third of the undergraduates are black and about 40 percent of students identify as nonwhite.

In his statement, Lucas acknowledged that “several South Carolina universities and colleges” have asked about changes to campus buildings or historic markers since the flag vote and the murder of nine black worshipers in a Charleston church last month. It is unclear if Winthrop was among those asking for changes.

Nevertheless, calls for changes to Tillman Hall are likely to continue. On July 2, a vandal broke into Tillman Hall and painted the words “violent racist” on a portrait of the former governor and namesake.

But Lucas has made it clear they won’t receive a hearing in Columbia.

“Debate over this issue,” he said, “will not be expanded or entertained throughout the remainder of my time as speaker.”

This story was originally published July 17, 2015 at 12:02 PM with the headline "SC House speaker blocks renaming Winthrop’s Tillman Hall."