South Carolina Bill Introduced for a Separate State-Funded College

While South Carolina governor and former farmer Tillman did nothing to create separate but equal facilities for African-Americans, Thomas E. Miller introduced an 1896 bill to “create a separate black state-supported college in Orangeburg, the Normal, Industrial, Agricultural, and Mechanical College of South Carolina,' to which he was elected the colleges first president. (The school was later named South Carolina State College in 1954). The state passed the bill of 1896 and agreed to fund the school for African-Americans.
This reveals the drive for segregation which was made possible by the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Fergussen. South Carolina's Governor Tillman's inaction in creating facilities, albeit segregated facilities for African-Americans, shows the growing tension and rise of inflamed race relations in the south during the development of segregation. The opening of schools and other such facilities as this shows segregation was underway. The decade of the 1890s was one of widespread adoption of Jim Crow laws, thus segregation had already occurred. Now, it was de jure segregation.