Memphis Massacre of 1866 | |||
---|---|---|---|
Part of the Reconstruction Era | |||
Date | May 1–3, 1866 | ||
Location | 35.1495° N, 90.0490° W | ||
Caused by | Racial tensions | ||
Methods | Rioting, looting, armed robbery, arson, pogrom, rape | ||
Resulted in |
| ||
Parties | |||
| |||
Casualties and losses | |||
|
The Memphis massacre of 1866 [1] was a rebellion with a series of violent events that occurred from May 1 to 3, 1866, in Memphis, Tennessee. The racial violence was ignited by political and social racism following the American Civil War, in the early stages of Reconstruction. [2] After a shooting altercation between white policemen and black veterans recently mustered out of the Union Army, mobs of white residents and policemen rampaged through black neighborhoods and the houses of freedmen, attacking and killing black soldiers and civilians and committing many acts of robbery and arson.
Federal troops were sent to quell the violence and peace was restored on the third day. A subsequent report by a joint Congressional Committee detailed the carnage, with blacks suffering most of the injuries and deaths by far: 46 black and 2 white people were killed, 75 black people injured, over 100 black persons robbed, 5 black women raped, and 91 homes, 4 churches and 8 schools (every black church and school) burned in the black community. [3] Modern estimates place property losses at over $100,000, suffered mostly by black people. Many black people fled the city permanently; by 1870, their population had fallen by one quarter compared to 1865.
Public attention following the riots and reports of the atrocities, together with the New Orleans massacre of 1866 in July, strengthened the case made by Radical Republicans in the U.S. Congress that more had to be done to protect freedmen in the Southern United States and grant them full rights as citizens. [4] The events influenced the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which granted full citizenship to African Americans, as well as the Reconstruction Act, which established military districts and oversight in certain states. [5]
Investigation of the riot suggested specific causes related to competition in the working class for housing, work, and social space: Irish immigrants and their descendants competed with freedmen in all these categories. The white planters wanted to drive freedmen out of Memphis and back to plantations, to support cotton cultivation with their labor. The violence was a way to enforce social order after the end of slavery. [6]
The cotton trade collapsed in the first year of the war, precipitating economic problems in West Tennessee. After the capture of Memphis by Union forces in 1862 and occupation of the state, the city became a center for contraband camps and a haven for refugee slaves seeking protection from former masters.
In Shelby County and the four adjacent counties around the city, the total slave population in 1860 was 45,000. As escaped and freed slaves migrated to the city, the black population of Memphis increased from 3,000 in 1860 to nearly 20,000 in 1865. [7] The total population of Memphis in 1860 was 22,623 and, while it was growing rapidly, the thousands of black people had a major effect. By 1870 the city totaled 40,226. [8]
While some black people lived in the camps, families of the 3rd Artillery—a black unit that had been stationed there—built cabins and shacks. They settled beyond the city limits near Fort Pickering, near what was called South Memphis. [9] Other blacks moved there in hopes of military protection and federal assistance. [10]
Unique among the states because of the long-term military occupation, during the war Tennessee created a kind of de facto Black Code, which depended on the complicity of police, lawyers, judges, jailers, etc. [11] Slaveholders of Tennessee and the Memphis area struggled with a labor shortage due to slaves escaping to freedom behind Union lines, and they could no longer rely on profits from forced labor. White people resented and were alarmed at the many freedmen at large in Memphis and urged the military to force black people to work. The military took into custody black people classified as vagrants and forced them to accept labor contracts on plantations. [12]
To General Nathan Dudley, who established this labor policy for the Memphis Freedmen's Bureau, local Reverend T. E. Bliss wrote:
How is it that the colored children in Memphis even with their spelling books in their hands are caught up by your order & taken to the same place & there insolently told that they 'had better be picking cotton.' Is it for the purpose of conciliating' their old rebel masters & assisting them to get help to secure their Cotton Crop? Has it come to this that the most Common rights of these poor people are thus to be trampled upon for the benefit of those who have wronged them all their days? [13]
Black soldiers counteracted efforts to force their people back to the plantations. General Davis Tilson was head of the Memphis Freedmen's Bureau prior to Dudley. Referring to activities of the soldiers dispatched to threaten idle people to return to work on the plantations, he said that "colored soldiers interfere with their labors and tell the freed people that the statements made to them ... are false, thereby embarrassing the operations of the Bureau." [14]
Prior to the war, Irish immigrants had constituted a major wave of newcomers to the city: ethnic Irish made up 9.9 percent of the population in 1850 when there were 8,841 people in the city. [8] The population expanded at a rapid rate by 1860 to 22,623, [8] and the Irish constituted 23.2 percent. [15] [16] [17] They encountered considerable discrimination, but by 1860, they occupied most positions in the police force and had gained many elected and patronage positions in city government, including the mayor's office. [18] But the Irish also competed with free black people for lower-class jobs rejected by white people, contributing to animosity between the two groups [7] Municipal politics in Memphis was plagued by corruption. The mayor, John Park, often appeared in public drunk, and the police chief complained that he had little control over his officers. [19]
Most of the Irish had arrived beginning mid-century, since the Great Famine of the 1840s. Many settled in South Memphis, a new and ethnically diverse neighborhood constructed on two bayous. South Memphis was home mostly to families of craftsmen and semi-skilled workers. When the Army occupied Memphis, they took over nearby Fort Pickering as a base of operations. The Freedmen's Bureau also set up an office in this area. [20] Black refugee settlement was concentrated further to the South and outside city limits.
In the early years of the occupation, the Union Army permitted civil government, while prohibiting known Confederate veterans from taking office. Because of this, many ethnic Irish gained office during this period. General Washburne dissolved the city government in July 1864, but it was restored after the end of military occupation in July 1865. [21]
The Daily Avalanche was one of the local papers that exacerbated tensions toward black people, as well as against the federal Reconstruction efforts after the war. [22] The report by the Freedmen's Bureau after the riot described the long "bitterness" between the black people and the "low whites," aggravated by some recent incidents between them. [23] Having been told by the mayor and citizens of Memphis in 1866 that they could keep order, Major General George Stoneman had reduced his forces at Fort Pickering, and had only about 150 men assigned there. They were used to protect the large amount of matériel at the fort. [24]
Social tensions in the city were heightened when the US Army used black Union Army soldiers to patrol Memphis. There was competition between the military and local government as to who was in charge; after the war, the developing role of the Freedmen's Bureau added to the ambiguity. [21] Through early 1866, there were numerous instances of threats and fighting between black soldiers going about the city, and white Memphis policemen, who were 90% Irish immigrants. Numerous witnesses testified to the tensions between the ethnic groups.
Officials of the Freedmen's Bureau reported that police arrested black soldiers for minor offenses and usually treated them brutally, in contrast to their treatment of white suspects. "One historian described the composition of the police force as being like "taking a troop of lions to guard a herd of unruly cattle"(U.S. House 1866:143)." [21] Police were used to interacting with black people under Tennessee's slave laws and resented seeing armed black men in uniform. [25]
Incidents of police brutality mounted. [5] In September 1865 Brigadier General John E. Smith banned "the public entertainments, balls, and parties heretofore frequently given by the colored people of this City." Police sometimes violently intervened in black gatherings, and on one occasion attempted to arrest a group of women on grounds of prostitution; they were married to the soldiers at the gathering. Soldiers prevented the arrest and an armed standoff ensued. [26] Police shoved and beat black people in the street for the social crime of "insolence." [27]
Officers commended black soldiers for restraint in these cases. But rumors spread among the white community that black people were planning some type of organized revenge for such incidents. Trouble was anticipated after most black Union troops (the Third United States Colored Heavy Artillery Regiment) were mustered out of the army on April 30, 1866. The former soldiers had to remain in the city for several days while they waited to receive their discharge pay; the Army took back their weapons, but some of the men had gained private ones. They passed the time by walking around town, drinking, and celebrating.
On the afternoon of April 30, a street fight broke out between a group of three black soldiers and four Irish policemen. After taunting on both sides and a physical collision, a police officer hit a soldier in the head with a firearm, hard enough to break his weapon. After more fighting, the two groups went their separate ways. News of the incident spread across town. [28] [29] That night, drunken black veterans fired pistols in the streets. [30]
On May 1, 1866, a large group of black soldiers, women, and children gathered in a public space, forming an impromptu street party. [31] The group coalesced around South Street, and some of those present began shouting and discharging firearms. [32] At about 4 pm, City Recorder John Creighton ordered four police officers to break up the group. The police obeyed, although the area was outside their jurisdiction, and Creighton was outside their chain of command. [33]
Tension escalated as the soldiers refused to disperse. The four officers, being outnumbered, retreated and called for reinforcements. [34] The soldiers gave chase and gunfire broke out. Officer Stephens accidentally shot himself in the leg while drawing his firearm. His injury was blamed on the soldiers; it served as a rallying cause for police reinforcements and other participants in the riot. The conflict escalated and Officer Finn was shot and killed on Avery Street. [23] [35] [36]
Creighton and O'Neill left the scene to report that two police officers had been shot. A force of city police and angry white residents assembled to engage the black soldiers. [37] Several soldiers were shot and killed early in the evening, including some who were fleeing and wounded, and one who was already under arrest. [38]
General George Stoneman was asked to use military force to restore order; he declined and suggested that Sheriff Winters create a posse. [39] [40] Stoneman authorized Captain Arthur W. Allyn to deploy two units of soldiers from Fort Pickering. They patrolled Memphis from about 6 to 10 or 11 PM, by which time most of the black soldiers had retired. Stoneman also ordered all black soldiers returning to Fort Pickering to be disarmed and kept on base. [40]
Finding no soldiers in the late evening, the white mob that had formed turned to attack various black homes in the area, looting and assaulting the people they found there. [41] [42] They attacked houses, schools and churches, burning many, as well as indiscriminately attacking black residents, killing many. Some died when the mob forced them to stay in their burning homes. [23] [43]
These activities resumed on the morning of May 2 and continued for a full day. [38] Police and firefighters made up one-third of the mob (24% and 10%, respectively, of the total group); they were joined by small business owners (28%), clerks (10%), artisans (10%) and city officials (4.5%). [44] John Pendergast and his sons Michael and Patrick, reportedly played a key role in organizing the violence and used their grocery store at South St. & Causey St. as a base of operations. One black woman reported that Pendergast told her, "I am the man that fetched this mob out here, and they will do just what I tell them." [45]
After the first day, as General Stoneman later said, the black people did not act aggressively in the riot and struggled to survive. [46] At the site of the initial incident, City Recorder John Creighton incited a white crowd to arm and go to kill the black people and drive them from the city. [23] Rumors of an armed rebellion of Memphis' black residents [36] were spread by local white officials and rabble-rousers. Memphis Mayor John Park was suspiciously absent (said to be intoxicated); [23] General Runkle, head of the Freedmen's Bureau, had insufficient forces to help. [23]
General George Stoneman, the commander of federal occupation troops in Memphis, was indecisive in trying to suppress the early stages of the rioting. His inaction resulted in an increase in the scale of damages. He declared martial law on the afternoon of May 3 and restored order by force. [42]
Tennessee Attorney General William Wallace, deputized to lead a posse of 40 men, allegedly encouraged them to kill and burn. [47] [48]
In total, 46 black and 2 white people were killed (one wounded himself and the other was apparently killed by other white people), 75 persons injured (mostly black), over 100 robbed, 5 black women reported being raped and testified to the subsequent congressional hearing committee, and 91 homes burned (89 held by black people, one held by a white and one by an interracial couple). Four black churches and 12 black schools were burned. Modern estimates place property losses at over $100,000, including pay taken from black veterans by the police in the first encounters. [49]
Confederate veteran Ben Dennis was killed on May 3 for conversing with a black friend in a bar. [50]
The results showed that the mob focused its violence against the homes (and wives) of black soldiers. Arson was the most common crime committed. [51] The mob singled out certain households while sparing others, due to the perceived subservience of the occupants. [52]
The Daily Avalanche praised Stoneman for his actions during the events, commenting in an editorial: "He has acted upon the idea that if troops are necessary here to protect the rights of the black people ever, white troops can do this with less offense to our people than black ones. He knows the wants of this country and sees that the negro can do the country more good in the cotton field than in the camp." [53] The Avalanche also professed its faith that the violence would restore the old social order: "The chief source of all our trouble being removed, we may confidently expect a restoration of the old order of things. The negro population will now do their duty ... Negro men and negro women are suddenly looking for work on country farms ... Thank heaven, the white race are once more rulers in Memphis." [54]
No criminal proceedings took place against the instigators or perpetrators of the Memphis riots. The United States Attorney General, James Speed, ruled that judicial actions associated with the riots fell under state jurisdiction. But, state and local officials refused to take action, and no grand jury was ever invoked.
Although criticized at the time for his inaction, General Stoneman was investigated and ultimately exonerated by a congressional committee. He said that he was reluctant initially to intervene, as the people of Memphis had said they could police themselves. He needed direct communication and a request from the mayor and council. On May 3, when they asked for his support in putting together a posse, he told them he would not permit that. He imposed martial law, refused to allow groups to assemble, and suppressed the riot. Stoneman moved to California, where he was later elected as governor, serving 1883–87.
The Memphis riot was investigated by the Freedmen's Bureau, aided by the Army and the Tennessee Inspectors General, who gathered affidavits from those involved. [23] In addition, there was an investigation and report by a Congressional committee, which reached Memphis on May 22 and interviewed 170 witnesses including Frances Thompson, gathering extensive oral histories from both black and white people. [24]
The outcome of the Memphis riot and a similar incident (the New Orleans massacre in July 1866) was to increase support for Radical Reconstruction. Reports of the riot discredited President Andrew Johnson, who was from Tennessee and had been military governor of Tennessee under Lincoln. Johnson's program of Presidential Reconstruction was blocked, and the Congress moved toward Radical Reconstruction. [2] The Radical Republicans swept the congressional elections of 1866, obtaining a veto-proof majority in Washington. Subsequently, they passed key pieces of legislation, such as the Reconstruction Acts, Enforcement Acts, and the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution which guaranteed citizenship, equal protection of the laws, and due process to former slaves. The change in the political climate, catalyzed by the response to the race riots, ultimately enabled former slaves to obtain the full rights of citizenship. [43] [55]
For the Tennessee Assembly, the riot highlighted the lack of state laws defining the status of freedmen. [56]
Many black people left the city permanently because of the hostile environment. The Freedmen's Bureau continued to struggle to protect the remaining residents. By 1870, the black population had declined by one-quarter from 1865, to about 15,000, [57] out of a total city population of more than 40,000. [8]
The black community continued to resist; on May 22, 1866, dock workers at the river held a strike and marched for higher wages. (All strikers were arrested.) Over the summer, the black Sons of Ham fraternal organization held demonstrations for black suffrage. [58] They gained it in the 19th century, but at the turn of the 20th century, Tennessee joined other Southern states in creating barriers to voter registration and voting, effectively excluding most black people from the political system for more than six decades.
The state legislature took over control of the city's police force. [21] [59] It passed a law that also overhauled the Memphis criminal punishment system, which went into effect on July 1, 1886. [60]
In the broader context of racism in the United States, mass racial violence in the United States consists of ethnic conflicts and race riots, along with such events as:
The Reconstruction era was a period in United States history and Southern United States history that followed the American Civil War and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the abolition of slavery and the reintegration of the eleven former Confederate States of America into the United States. During this period, three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant citizenship and equal civil rights to the newly freed slaves. To circumvent these legal achievements, the former Confederate states imposed poll taxes and literacy tests and engaged in terrorism to intimidate and control people of color and to discourage or prevent them from voting.
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. government agency of early post American Civil War Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865, and operated briefly as a federal agency after the War, from 1865 to 1872, to direct "provisions, clothing, and fuel... for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children".
The Colfax massacre, sometimes referred to as the Colfax riot, occurred on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, the parish seat of Grant Parish. An estimated 62–153 Black militia men were murdered while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the Ku Klux Klan. Three White men also died during the confrontation.
Forty acres and a mule was part of Special Field Orders No. 15, a wartime order proclaimed by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman on January 16, 1865, during the American Civil War, to allot land to some freed families, in plots of land no larger than 40 acres (16 ha). Sherman later ordered the army to lend mules for the agrarian reform effort. The field orders followed a series of conversations between Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Radical Republican abolitionists Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens following disruptions to the institution of slavery provoked by the American Civil War. Many freed people believed, after being told by various political figures, that they had a right to own the land they had been forced to work as slaves and were eager to control their own property. Freed people widely expected to legally claim 40 acres of land. However, Abraham Lincoln's successor as president, Andrew Johnson, tried to reverse the intent of Sherman's wartime Order No. 15 and similar provisions included in the second Freedmen's Bureau bills.
George Stoneman Jr. was a United States Army cavalry officer and politician who served as the fifteenth Governor of California from 1883 to 1887.
The Black Codes, sometimes called the Black Laws, were laws which governed the conduct of African Americans. In 1832, James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in respect to political privileges, between free white persons and free colored persons of African blood; and in no part of the country do the latter, in point of fact, participate equally with the whites, in the exercise of civil and political rights." Although Black Codes existed before the Civil War and although many Northern states had them, the Southern U.S. states codified such laws in everyday practice. The best known of these laws were passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War, in order to restrict African Americans' freedom, and in order to compel them to work for either low or no wages.
The New Orleans Massacre of 1866 occurred on July 30, when a peaceful demonstration of mostly Black Freedmen was set upon by a mob of white rioters, many of whom had been soldiers of the recently defeated Confederate States of America, leading to a full-scale massacre. The violence erupted outside the Mechanics Institute, site of a reconvened Louisiana Constitutional Convention. According to the official report, a total of 38 were killed and 146 wounded, of whom 34 dead and 119 wounded were Black Freedmen. Unofficial estimates were higher. Gilles Vandal estimated 40 to 50 Black Americans were killed and more than 150 Black Americans wounded. Others have claimed nearly 200 were killed. In addition, three white convention attendees were killed, as was one white protester.
The Pulaski riot was a race riot that occurred in Pulaski, Tennessee, on January 7, 1868. While the riot appeared to be based in a trade dispute of the previous summer between Calvin Lamberth, a white man, and Calvin Carter, an African American, it was provoked when Lamberth shot a friend of Carter's over rumored comments about the former's black mistress.
The American Missionary Association (AMA) was a Protestant-based abolitionist group founded on September 3, 1846 in Albany, New York. The main purpose of the organization was abolition of slavery, education of African Americans, promotion of racial equality, and spreading Christian values. Its members and leaders were of both races; The Association was chiefly sponsored by the Congregationalist churches in New England. The main goals were to abolish slavery, provide education to African Americans, and promote racial equality for free Blacks. The AMA played a significant role in several key historical events and movements, including the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement.
The 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre, also known as the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, was an episode of mass racial violence against African Americans in the United States in September 1906. Violent attacks by armed mobs of White Americans against African Americans in Atlanta, Georgia, began after newspapers, on the evening of September 22, 1906, published several unsubstantiated and luridly detailed reports of the alleged rapes of 4 local women by black men. The violence lasted through September 24, 1906. The events were reported by newspapers around the world, including the French Le Petit Journal which described the "lynchings in the USA" and the "massacre of Negroes in Atlanta," the Scottish Aberdeen Press & Journal under the headline "Race Riots in Georgia," and the London Evening Standard under the headlines "Anti-Negro Riots" and "Outrages in Georgia." The final death toll of the conflict is unknown and disputed, but officially at least 25 African Americans and two whites died. Unofficial reports ranged from 10–100 black Americans killed during the massacre. According to the Atlanta History Center, some black Americans were hanged from lampposts; others were shot, beaten or stabbed to death. They were pulled from street cars and attacked on the street; white mobs invaded black neighborhoods, destroying homes and businesses.
This is a selected bibliography of the main scholarly books and articles of Reconstruction, the period after the American Civil War, 1863–1877.
The presidency of Andrew Johnson began on April 15, 1865, when Andrew Johnson became President of the United States upon the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and ended on March 4, 1869. He had been Vice President of the United States for only six weeks when he succeeded to the presidency. The 17th United States president, Johnson was a member of the Democratic Party before the Civil War and had been Lincoln's 1864 running mate on the National Union ticket, which was supported by Republicans and War Democrats. Johnson took office as the Civil War came to a close, and his presidency was dominated by the aftermath of the war. As president, Johnson attempted to build his own party of Southerners and conservative Northerners, but he was unable to unite his supporters into a new party. Republican Ulysses S. Grant succeeded Johnson as president.
The history of Memphis, Tennessee and its area began many thousands of years ago with succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples. In the first millennium, it was settled by the Mississippian culture. The Chickasaw Indian tribe emerged about the 17th century, or migrated into the area. The earliest European exploration may have encountered remnants of the Mississippian culture by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. Later French explorers led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle likely encountered the Chickasaw. The city of Memphis was not founded until 1819. The city was named after the ancient capital of Egypt on the Nile River in North Africa.
Robert Reed Church Sr. was an American entrepreneur, businessman and landowner in Memphis, Tennessee, who began his rise during the American Civil War. He was the first African-American "millionaire" in the South. Church built a reputation for great wealth and influence in the business community. He founded Solvent Savings Bank, the first black-owned bank in the city, which extended credit to blacks so they could buy homes and develop businesses. As a philanthropist, Church used his wealth to develop a park, playground, auditorium and other facilities for the black community, who were excluded by state-enacted racial segregation from most such amenities in the city.
The civil rights movement (1865–1896) aimed to eliminate racial discrimination against African Americans, improve their educational and employment opportunities, and establish their electoral power, just after the abolition of slavery in the United States. The period from 1865 to 1895 saw a tremendous change in the fortunes of the Black community following the elimination of slavery in the South.
The Bisbee Riot, or the Battle of Brewery Gulch, occurred on July 3, 1919, between the black Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry and members of local police forces in Bisbee, Arizona.
African Americans are the second largest census "race" category in the state of Tennessee after whites, making up 17% of the state's population in 2010. African Americans arrived in the region prior to statehood. They lived both as slaves and as free citizens with restricted rights up to the Civil War.
Frances Thompson was a formerly enslaved black transgender woman and anti-rape activist who was one of the five black women to testify before a congressional committee that investigated the Memphis Riots of 1866. She is believed to be the first transgender woman to testify before the United States Congress. Thompson and a housemate, Lucy Smith, were attacked by a white mob and were among many freedwomen who were raped during the riots. In 1876, Thompson was arrested for "being a man dressed in women's clothing".
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: others (link)