When the Alliance in other states moved toward the Populist Party and its radical "Ocala Demands", Tillman arranged for the South Carolina Democratic Party to adopt the platform, wholesale. He helped establish Clemson College, now Clemson University. He was elected Governor of South Carolina, in 1890, and served from December 1890 to December 1894. Posing as the friend of ordinary white farmers, Tillman took over the South Carolina Farmers Alliance, and used the organization as a platform for his political ambitions. During Reconstruction, he became a paramilitary fighter in the struggle to overthrow the interracial Republican coalition in the state and disempower the black majority he was present at the Hamburg Massacre, in July 1876, during which black Republican activists were murdered by Tillman's fellow "Red-shirts." He left school, in 1864 when he was disabled by an illness, which resulted in the removal of his left eye he never served in the Confederate Army. Tillman, of German descent, was born to a wealthy planter family in Edgefield County, South Carolina. A man of violent rhetoric, he was called "Pitchfork Ben" after promising to poke President Grover Cleveland (in the ribs, according to the published version). He was known as the foremost spokesman for white supremacy, and as the champion of white farmers and millhands, and the enemy of blacks and the upper class. He served as governor of South Carolina, from 1890 to 1894, and as a United States Senator, from 1895 until his death. Ben Tillman (Born Benjamin Ryan Tillman, 1847 - 1918) was a Democrat from South Carolina famed for his racist hostility toward blacks, his support from poor whites, and his opposition to conservative Bourbon Democrats in Charleston and New York.
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