Moredock gives us just one example of what Roof was taught in his hometown of Columbia, SC. On the state capitol grounds is a statue of Ben Tillman with an inscription that describes his "life of service and achievement ... In the home loving and loyal, to the state steadfast and true for the nation." That's a lie.

snip

Later, the terrorist leader Tillman explained his intentions on that fateful July 8 day: "It had been the settled purpose of the leading white men of Edgefield to seize the first opportunity that the Negroes might offer them to provoke a riot and teach the negroes a lesson; as it was generally believed that nothing but bloodshed and a good deal of it could answer the purpose of redeeming the state from Negro and carpetbag rule." In a 1909 speech at a Red Shirt reunion in Anderson, Tillman reiterated this point, noting that he believed in "terrorizing the Negroes at the first opportunity by letting them provoke trouble and then having the whites demonstrate their superiority by killing as many of them as was justifiable."

He added, "That we have good government now is due entirely to the fact that Red Shirt men of 1876 did all and dared all that was necessary to rescue South Carolina from the rule of the alien, the traitor, and the semi-barbarous negroes."

As long as a state capitol contains a monument revering a man who was a terrorist, the insurgency lives on. And we will continue to teach our children to hate. Because children will listen.