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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 black people and to discourage or prevent them from voting.
Camilla is a city in Mitchell County,Georgia,United States,and is its county seat. As of the 2020 census,the city had a population of 5,187,down from 5,360 in 2010.
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 November 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.
In the history of the United States,carpetbagger is a largely historical pejorative used by Southerners to describe allegedly opportunistic or disruptive Northerners who came to the Southern states after the American Civil War and were perceived to be exploiting the local populace for their own financial,political,or social gain. The term broadly included both individuals who sought to promote Republican politics and individuals who saw business and political opportunities because of the chaotic state of the local economies following the war. In practice,the term carpetbagger often was applied to any Northerners who were present in the South during the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877). The word is closely associated with scalawag,a similarly pejorative word used to describe native white Southerners who supported the Republican Party-led Reconstruction.
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 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.
The Coushatta massacre (1874) was an attack by members of the White League,a white supremacist paramilitary organization composed of white Southern Democrats,on Republican officeholders and freedmen in Coushatta,the parish seat of Red River Parish,Louisiana. They assassinated six white Republicans and five to 20 freedmen who were witnesses.
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.
James M. Hinds was the first U.S. Congressman assassinated in office. He served as member of the United States House of Representatives for Arkansas from June 24,1868 until his assassination by the Ku Klux Klan. Hinds,who was white,was an advocate of civil rights for black former slaves during the Reconstruction era following the American Civil War.
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.
At the end of the American Civil War,the devastation and disruption in the state of Georgia were dramatic. Wartime damage,the inability to maintain a labor force without slavery,and miserable weather had a disastrous effect on agricultural production. The state's chief cash crop,cotton,fell from a high of more than 700,000 bales in 1860 to less than 50,000 in 1865,while harvests of corn and wheat were also meager. The state government subsidized construction of numerous new railroad lines. White farmers turned to cotton as a cash crop,often using commercial fertilizers to make up for the poor soils they owned. The coastal rice plantations never recovered from the war.
The Memphis massacre of 1866 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. 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.
The Camilla massacre took place in Camilla,Georgia,on Saturday,September 19,1868. African Americans had been given the right to vote in Georgia's 1868 state constitution,which had passed in April,and in the months that followed,whites across the state used violence to combat their newfound political strength,often through the newly founded Ku Klux Klan. Georgia agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau recorded 336 cases of murder or assault with intent to kill against freedmen from January 1 through November 15.
The Meridian race riot of 1871 was a race riot in Meridian,Mississippi in March 1871. It followed the arrest of freedmen accused of inciting riot in a downtown fire,and blacks' organizing for self-defense. Although the local Ku Klux Klan (KKK) chapter had attacked freedmen since the end of the Civil War,generally without punishment,the first local arrest under the 1870 act to suppress the Klan was of a freedman. This angered the black community. During the trial of black leaders,the presiding judge was shot in the courtroom,and a gunfight erupted that killed several people. In the ensuing mob violence,whites killed as many as 30 blacks over the next few days. Democrats drove the Republican mayor from office,and no person was charged or tried in the freedmen's deaths.
The Opelousas massacre,which began on September 28,1868,was one of the bloodiest massacres of the Reconstruction era in the United States. In the aftermath of the ratification of Louisiana's Constitution of 1868 and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,tensions between white Democrats and Black Republicans in St. Landry Parish,Louisiana escalated throughout the summer of 1868. On September 28,white schoolteacher and Republican newspaper editor Emerson Bentley was attacked and beaten by three,Democratic white supremacists while teaching a classroom of Black children in Opelousas,Louisiana. Rumors of Bentley's death,while unfounded,led both Black Republicans and white supremacist Democrats,including the St. Landry Parish chapter of the Knights of the White Camelia,to threaten violent retribution. In the days following Bentley's subsequent covert flight to New Orleans,the massacre began. Heavily outnumbered,Black citizens were chased,captured,shot,murdered,and lynched during the following weeks. While estimates of casualties vary widely,several sources number the deaths between 150 and 300 black people and several dozen whites. Following the massacre,the Republican Party in St. Landry Parish was eliminated for several years.
Alexander Boyd was notable as the Republican County Solicitor and Register in Chancery of Greene County,Alabama in 1870 during Reconstruction who was murdered by a lynching party of Ku Klux Klan members. He was fatally shot on March 31,1870 in Eutaw,the county seat. The Klan members apparently intended to hang him in the square in a public lynching,to demonstrate their power during this period and their threat to Republicans.
The "Original 33" were the first 33 African-American members of the Georgia General Assembly. They were elected to office in 1868,during the Reconstruction era. They were among the first African-American state legislators in the United States. Twenty-four of the members were ministers. Upon taking office,white Democrats,then a minority in the Assembly,conspired with enough white Republicans to expel the African-American legislators from the Assembly in September 1868. The next year,the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that African Americans had the right to hold office in Georgia. The expelled legislators were reinstated and took office in January 1870.
The Ellenton riot or Ellenton massacre occurred in September 1876 and took place in South Carolina in the United States. The massacre was preceded by a series of civil disturbances earlier that year following tensions between the Democratic Party and the Republicans. Author Mark M. Smith concluded that there was one white and up to 100 blacks killed,with several white people wounded. While John S. Reynolds and Alfred B. Williams cite much lower numbers.
African Americans have played an essential role in the history of Arkansas,but their role has often been marginalized as they confronted a society and polity controlled by white supremacists. As slaves in the United States,they were considered property and were subjected to the harsh conditions of forced labor. After the Civil War and the passage of the 13th,14th,and 15th Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution,African Americans gained their freedom and the right to vote. However,the rise of Jim Crow laws in the 1890s and early 1900s led to a period of segregation and discrimination that lasted into the 1960s. Most were farmers,working their own property or poor sharecroppers on white-owned land,or very poor day laborers. By World War I,there was steady emigration from farms to nearby cities such as Little Rock and Memphis,as well as to St. Louis and Chicago.
Henry Eppes was a seven-term Republican senator in the North Carolina General Assembly between 1868 and 1900. He was one of about 111 African Americans to serve in North Carolina's state legislature between 1868 and 1900 and one of the few who served during and after reconstruction. Because of Jim Crow Laws,no African American followed Eppes in the North Carolina legislature until 1968 when civil rights were restored. Eppes also served as a delegate for Halifax County to North Carolina's 1868 Constitutional Convention.
References
- ↑ Spritzer, Lorraine Nelson; Bergmark, Jean B. (1 February 2009). Grace Towns Hamilton and the Politics of Southern Change. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 9780820333878 – via Google Books.
- ↑ Affidavit of Philip Joiner: Albany, Georgia, 1868 September 23
- ↑ "The Camilla Massacre".