The fracas with McLaurin caused President Theodore Roosevelt , who had succeeded the assassinated McKinley in 1901 , to withdraw an invitation to dinner at the White House . Tillman never forgave this slight , and became a bitter enemy of Roosevelt . Tillman was inclined to oppose Roosevelt anyway , who soon after becoming president had dined at the White House with Booker T. Washington , an African American , provoking Tillman to say , " the action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they learn their place again . " Tillman believed , and often stated as senator , that blacks must submit to either white domination or extermination . He was reluctant to undertake the latter , fearing hundreds of whites would die accomplishing it . He campaigned in the violent 1898 North Carolina elections , in which white Democrats were determined to take back control from a biracial Populist-Republican coalition elected in 1894 and 1896 on a fusion ticket . He spoke widely in North Carolina in late 1898 , often to crowds wearing red shirts , disheartening his Populist supporters . Terror and intimidation again won the day for the Democrats , who were elected statewide . They failed to win in the coastal city of Wilmington , but white supremacists took it over by force . South Carolina saw violence as well : an effort to register black voters in Phoenix led whites to provoke a confrontation , after which a number of African Americans were murdered . Tillman warned African Americans and those who might combine with them that black political activism would provoke a murderous response from whites
took it over by force
Wilmington insurrection of 1898
Benjamin Tillman