RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA

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RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA Racial Violence after the Civil War, 1865-1876

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The Memorial at the EJI Legacy Pavilion in Montgomery, Alabama. (Mickey Welsh/Montgomery Advertiser) 5 CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 6 THE DANGER OF FREEDOM 56

Political Violence 58 Economic Intimidation 63 JOURNEY TO FREEDOM 8 Enforcing the Racial Social Order 68 Emancipation and Citizenship Organized Terror and Community Massacres 73 Inequality After Enslavement 11 Accusations of Crime 76 Emancipation by Proclamation—Then by Law 14 Arbitrary and Random Violence 78

FREEDOM TO FEAR 22 RECONSTRUCTION’S END 82 A Terrifying and Deadly Backlash Reconstruction vs. Southern Redemption 84 Black Political Mobilization and White Backlash 28 Judicial and Political Abandonment 86 Fighting for Education 32 Redemption Wins 89 Resisting Economic Exploitation 34 A Vanishing Hope 93

DOCUMENTING RECONSTRUCTION 42 A TRUTH THAT NEEDS TELLING 96 VIOLENCE Known and Unknown Horrors Notes 106 Acknowledgments 119 34 Documented Mass Lynchings During the Reconstruction Era 48 Racial Terror and Reconstruction: A State Snapshot 52 7 INTRODUCTION Thousands more were assaulted, raped, or in- jured in racial terror attacks between 1865 and 1876. The rate of documented racial terror lynchings during Reconstruction is nearly three In 1865, after two and a half centuries of brutal white mobs and individuals who were shielded It was during Reconstruction that a times greater than during the era we reported enslavement, Black Americans had great hope from arrest and prosecution. White perpetra- century-long era of racial hierarchy, on in 2015. Dozens of mass lynchings took that emancipation would finally mean real free- tors of lawless, random violence against for- lynching, white supremacy, and big- place during Reconstruction in communities dom and opportunity. Most formerly enslaved merly enslaved people were almost never held across the country in which hundreds of Black people in the United States were remarkably accountable—instead, they frequently were cel- otry was established—an era from people were killed. willing to live peacefully with those who had ebrated. Emboldened Confederate veterans which this nation has yet to recover. held them in bondage despite the violence they and former enslavers organized a reign of terror Tragically, the rate of unknown lynchings of had suffered and the degradation they had en- that effectively nullified constitutional amend- Most Americans know very little about the Re- Black people during Reconstruction is also al- dured. ments designed to provide Black people equal construction era and its legacy. Historians have most certainly dramatically higher than the protection and the right to vote. frequently overlooked this critical 12-year pe- thousands of unknown lynchings that took Emancipated Black people put aside their en- riod that has had profound impact on life in the place between 1877 and 1950 for which no slavement and embraced education, hard work, In a series of devastating decisions, the United United States. Our collective ignorance of what documentation can be found. The retaliatory faith, and citizenship with extraordinary enthu- States Supreme Court blocked Congressional happened immediately after the Civil War has killings of Black people by white Southerners siasm and devotion. By 1868, over 80 percent efforts to protect formerly enslaved people. In contributed to misinformed stereotypes and immediately following the Civil War alone likely of Black men who were eligible to vote had reg- decision after decision, the Court ceded control misguided false narratives about who is honor- number in the thousands. istered, schools for Black children became a to the same white Southerners who used terror able and who is not and has allowed bigotry priority, and courageous Black leaders over- and violence to stop Black political participa- and a legacy of racial injustice to persist. EJI presents this report to provide context and came enormous obstacles to win elections to tion, upheld laws and practices codifying racial analysis of what happened during this tragic public office. hierarchy, and embraced a new constitutional In 2015, the Equal Justice Initiative issued a period of American history and to descibe its order defined by “states’ rights.” new report that detailed over 4,400 docu- implications for the issues we face today. We The new era of Reconstruction offered great mented racial terror lynchings of Black people believe our nation has failed to adequately ad- promise and could have radically changed the Within a decade after the Civil War, Congress in America between 1877 and 1950. dress or acknowledge our history of racial in- history of this country. However, it quickly be- began to abandon the promise of assistance to justice and that we must commit to a new era came clear that emancipation in the United millions of formerly enslaved Black people. Vio- of truth-telling followed by meaningful efforts States did not mean equality for Black people. lence, mass lynchings, and lawlessness en- to repair and remedy the continuing legacy of The commitment to abolish chattel slavery was abled white Southerners to create a regime of racial oppression. We hope this report sparks not accompanied by a commitment to equal white supremacy and Black disenfranchise- much needed conversation and encourages rights or equal protection for African Ameri- ment alongside a new economic order that communities to join us in the important task of cans and the hope of Reconstruction quickly continued to exploit Black labor. White officials We now report that during the 12- advancing truth and justice. became a nightmare of unparalleled violence in the North and West similarly rejected racial year period of Reconstruction at and oppression. equality, codified racial discrimination, and oc- casionally embraced the same tactics of violent least 2,000 Black women, men, and Bryan Stevenson, Director Between 1865 and 1876, thousands of Black racial control seen in the South. children were victims of racial ter- women, men, and children were killed, at- ror lynchings. tacked, sexually assaulted, and terrorized by 9

I don’t believe in the colored race being slaves ‘cause of their color, but the war didn’t make time much better for a long ” time. Some of them had a worse time.

—Ms. Liney Chambers, formerly enslaved in Tennessee2

uring the Transatlantic Slave Trade, an estimated 10.7 million African men, JOURNEY TO women, and children were kidnapped and sold into captivity in North America, D 3 South America, or Central America. An estimated two million more people died during the brutal voy- FREEDOM 4 age across the Atlantic Ocean. Though enslave- ment existed in other parts of the world, the unique Emancipation and Citizenship system that developed in the United States be- came a racialized caste system rooted in a false but violent and persistent idea of racial difference.5 Chattel slavery in this country permanently de- prived the enslaved of any legal rights or autonomy Just before the war, a white preacher, he and permitted their violent economic exploitation. “ come to us slaves and says: “Do you want to keep your homes where you get all to eat, Enslavement in the English colonies persisted after and raise your children, or do you want to be the Revolutionary War and the creation of the free to roam around without a home, like the United States. Indeed, as the United States laid the wild animals? If you want to keep your foundation for its experiment in freedom and homes you better pray for the South to win. democracy, it also oversaw and benefitted from the All that wants to pray for the South to win, kidnapping, human trafficking, lifelong bondage, raise your hand.” We all raised our hands and complete dehumanization of African people—a ‘cause we was scared not to, but we sho’ system of enslavement repeatedly enforced by the didn’t want the South to win. nation’s courts, political institutions, core docu- ments, and most revered founders. —Mr. William M. Adams, formerly enslaved in Texas1 10 11 In 1808, Congress banned the international

slave trade and halted the trafficking of African Union and Confederate States, 1861-1865 JOURNEY TO FREEDOM people to the country6 but did nothing to end enslavement within the nation’s borders. This I resulted in a large unmet demand for enslaved n 1860, just a year before the start Black people, especially in territories like Mis- of the Civil War, enslavement was sissippi and Alabama that were gaining state- an entrenched and growing system, hood and attracting white settlers with far from dying out or fading on its agricultural ambition. own. The Domestic Slave Trade emerged to fill the RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION void. The potential profit to be made from sell- ing Black people already enslaved in the coun- Over four million Black people were enslaved in try skyrocketed. Though less well known than the United States—more than at any point in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the domestic the nation’s history9—and unprecedented num- sale of enslaved Black people from the Upper bers of Black people in this country were and Eastern South resulted in the trafficking of trapped in brutal, inhumane conditions.10 Even millions—including many free Black people as growing political support for the abolition of kidnapped and sold into enslavement7— and fu- slavery pushed the country closer to war, few eled a massive increase in the Deep South’s en- white people who supported a legal end to the slaved population over the next 50 years.8 institution expressed a commitment to eradi- cating the harmful ideas of racial difference created to defend it.11 Inequality After

Enslavement Beginning in 1861, 11 Southern states determined to maintain en- slavement seceded from the Union On the question of racial equality, there was often little distinction between slavery’s white to form the Confederate States of supporters and detractors. “God has made the America. negro an inferior being not in most cases, but in all cases,” leading pro-slavery New Yorker John H. Van Evrie wrote in the 1850s.12 Even In South Carolina, the first state to secede, leg- New England abolitionist Dr. Samuel Gridley islators declared that “[a]n increasing hostility Howe openly expressed the view that Black on the part of the non-slaveholding States to people were naturally inferior to white people. the institution of slavery” was a primary cata- He tried to drum up support for abolition by as- lyst for their action.14 As Mississippi, Florida, suring white people that Black people would Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, “dwindle and gradually disappear from the peo- North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee fol- ples of this continent” if freed.13 Clearly an end lowed, the Confederacy developed a platform to enslavement alone would not emancipate of “states’ rights” and “home rule” that aimed to Black people from racism. But first things preserve white supremacy and enslavement. Nkyinkyim Installation by Ghanaian artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. would have to come first. (Human Pictures) 12 Even before the war’s end, Confederate hatred federal investigation concluded: “It is the in- By the time the war ended with Confederate Not a single Southern legislature for Black autonomy and power led to brutal at- tention of the rebel authorities not to recognize surrender to the Union on April 9, 1865, Presi- believed free Negro labor was possi- tacks. Black soldiers in the Union Army sym- the officers and men of our colored regiments dent Abraham Lincoln had issued an Emanci- ble without a system of restrictions ” bolized the height of Black “disobedience” and as entitled to the treatment accorded by all civ- pation Proclamation abolishing slavery in the that took all its freedom away; there became immediate targets for violence that ex- ilized nations to prisoners of war.” rebel territories and Congress had advanced a was scarcely a white man in the ceeded even the bounds of war.15 constitutional amendment that aimed to abol- South who did not honestly regard On March 10, 1865, Confederate soldiers in ish slavery nationwide. “Slavery is dead,” read When an outnumbered “colored” unit of the Darlington, South Carolina, hanged a young an editorial in The Cincinnati Enquirer pub- Emancipation as a crime, and its 20 Union Army surrendered Fort Pillow, Ten- Black woman named Amy Spain from a lished days after the surrender. “The negro is practical nullification as a duty. nessee, to Confederate forces on April 12, 1864, sycamore tree on the courthouse lawn. Ac- not; there is our misfortune.”17 the rules of war required the Confederates to cused of “treason and conduct unbecoming a RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION take the 262 Black soldiers as prisoners. In- slave” for aiding Union forces who had briefly If the end of the war led the United States gov- After the Confederacy’s defeat, the United stead, the Confederates massacred the Black occupied the town, Ms. Spain was killed just ernment to abandon the millions of Black peo- States was preserved but devastated, and men, along with nearby Black civilians. A later weeks before the end of the Civil War.16 ple still living in the war-torn South amidst a faced an uncertain future. Many of the day’s beaten Confederacy, those emancipated peo- most pressing questions asked: what would ple’s futures in freedom would be bleak and happen to the entrenched institution of slav- short-lived. In a November 1865 letter to Major ery? And what fate would befall the millions of General Steadman of the Union Army, 125 Black people who had been enslaved at the freedmen in Columbus, Georgia, begged fed- war’s start? eral troops to stay in the city: The 1863 Emancipation Proclamation left these questions unanswered. How the nation would We wish to inform you that if the travel from war to peace depended on how it Federal Soldiers are withdrawn from would chart Black Americans’ path from slav- “ us, we will be left in a most gloomy ery to freedom. Reconstruction became that path, but its initially hopeful promise proved to and helpless condition. A number of be short-lived, dangerous, and deadly. Freedmen have already been killed in this section of country; and . . . we have every reason to fear that others 18 will share a similar fate. Five generations of an enslaved family in South Carolina, 1862. (Li- brary of Congress)

Formerly enslaved Black people understood that federal intervention was necessary to re- quire white Southerners to honor their rights as Americans. Their letter ended by pleading for federal troops “not to leave us to the tender mercy of our enemies—unprotected.”19

Decades later, in his 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois described the reality Black people faced. “Not a single Southern leg- islature stood ready to admit a Negro, under any conditions, to the polls,” he explained. The hanging of Amy Spain. (Harper's Weekly, 1865) 14 15 [The Confederate] Congress is re- was ‘Every white laboring man in the North solved into a dozen committees, each who does not want to be swapped off for a free JOURNEY JOURNEY TO FREEDOM “ trying to devise some new form of re- nigger should vote the [anti-Lincoln] Demo- taliation to be inflicted upon United cratic ticket.’”26 Indeed, many Northern states States citizens and soldiers, if we already had laws restricting emigration of free Black people, and had little more commitment dare to carry the proclamation into to racial equality than their counterparts in the effect, and tamper—to use the words South. By the time election results were tallied, of the Richmond Enquirer—with the anti-Emancipation message had won in Illi- “four thousand millions” worth of nois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylva- property!24 nia and vaulted Horatio Seymour—the fiercely

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION pro-slavery “white man’s candidate’—to the governor’s office in New York.27 The Confederate Congress responded to the preliminary proclamation with a resolution de- nouncing Lincoln’s act as “a violation of the us- President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, a limited war-time measure, took effect in 1863. (AP) ages of civilized warfare, an attack on private property, and an invitation to servile insurrec- tion” and vowing to resist enforcement.25 But For all the opposition it inspired, the the proclamation did not enjoy uniform or “Can [white people] without indignation and widespread support in the North, either. Emancipation Proclamation—more Emancipation by horror contemplate the triumph of negro equal- war measure than humanitarian ity, and see his own sons and daughters in the In the 1862 midterm elections, candidates chal- act—stopped far short of ending not distant future associating with free negroes lenging Lincoln’s political allies warned that Proclamation— slavery in the United States when it upon terms of political and social equality?” Al- Emancipation would bring an influx of free abama official Stephen F. Hale asked in a 1860 Black people into Northern states. “The general took effect on January 1, 1863. Then by Law letter to the governor of Kentucky.21 If slavery theme in the campaign, from New York to Iowa, was abolished, Hale warned, “the two races Black people recently freed from slavery in the 1860s. (Library of Congress) would be continually pressing together,” and an In September 1862, President Abraham Lincoln “amalgamation or the extermination of the one issued a preliminary proclamation announcing or the other would be inevitable.”22 that, by executive order, he would declare the freedom of millions of Black people enslaved That fear and anxiety largely fueled the Con- within the Confederacy—effective the following federate states’ secession movement. After Al- January. Enslavement was the core catalyst and abama seceded from the Union a year later, conflict of the Civil War and the Emancipation Hale represented the state in the Confederate Proclamation brought that conflict to a head. Congress as one of many voices in a pro-slav- ery chorus. Hale died from battle wounds in For years before the Civil War, white people in 1862,23 months before Lincoln’s preliminary the South had grown increasingly worried that proclamation, but the Confederate reaction federal authorities would try to force abolition largely mirrored his views. upon the South, and increasingly certain that the resulting social and economic upheaval “They call Mr. Lincoln an ‘ape,’ a ‘fiend,’ a would destroy them all. ‘beast,’ a ‘savage,’ a ‘highwayman,’” read an Oc- tober 1862 issue of Harper’s Weekly, reporting on Southern reaction to Lincoln’s preliminary proclamation. 16 17 On its face, the order declared the freedom of It is my Desire to be free. To go to see Perhaps more importantly, ratification of the

only those enslaved people held in states in re- my people on the Eastern Shore. My Thirteenth Amendment did not reflect or re- JOURNEY TO FREEDOM bellion against the United States, namely mistress wont let me. You will please ” quire a commitment to racial equality or an South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, let me know if we are free and what I agreement that enslavement should end. Georgia, Texas, Arkansas, and North Carolina. can do. I write to you for advice. The proclamation exempted Tennessee, as well Please send me word this week. or as as Union-occupied portions of Virginia and soon as possible and oblidge [sic].33 Louisiana, and left slavery wholly intact in the border states of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri.28 Ms. Davis’s letter survives at the National The Thirteenth Amendment’s adop- RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION Many Southern planters attempted to hide the Archives among correspondence received by tion meant that the Constitution news from enslaved people, using threats and the Colored Troops Division. There is no evi- banned racialized chattel slavery—it dence she ever received a reply. Cudjoe Lewis, a man formerly enslaved in Alabama, with great-grand- violence to force silence and attacking those did not mean that white Southern- daughters circa 1927. (McCall Library, University of South Alabama) who dared attempt to flee.29 Where federal If abolition was to become permanent and ers recognized Black people as fully troops were present, however, many enslaved President Andrew Johnson, who took office fol- widespread, what began with the limited people courageously fled bondage and sought human or that Southern officials lowing Lincoln’s death, was a Tennessee native 30 Emancipation Proclamation would have to be- protection and freedom in Union camps. For sympathetic to Southern sentiments. He ve- come broader, national law. In December 1863, would enforce their new legal pro- the many more enslaved people living where toed the bill and vocally questioned “whether, as the war continued and the Confederate tections absent federal oversight. federal forces were absent or unreachable, Lin- where eleven of the thirty-six states are unrep- states remained in rebellion, Congress pro- coln’s declaration did nothing, and the hold of resented in Congress at the time, it is sound 31 posed a constitutional amendment to abolish enslavement lasted well beyond 1863. Up policy to make our entire colored population, slavery. It passed the Senate in April 1864 and, George King, a Black man in Oklahoma, re- until the war’s end in 1865, local newspapers in and all other excepted classes, citizens of the after extended debate and initial defeat, passed called in 1937 how freedom was explained to Montgomery, Alabama, continued to advertise United States.”39 But Johnson also objected to the House in January 1865. Ratification re- him when he was emancipated in South Car- auction sales of enslaved people and publish the act’s substance: ads seeking the return of “runaways.”32 quired approval by 27 of the 36 states, includ- olina decades earlier: “The Master he says we ing in the South where states were still fighting are all free,” Mr. King said, “but it don’t mean a war to secede. 37 In an August 1864 letter, a Black woman we is white. And it don’t mean we is equal.” The bill, in effect proposes a discrim- named Annie Davis living in Maryland asked ination against large numbers of in- Within months, the Confederacy had surren- Following the war, Black autonomy expanded Lincoln himself to clarify whether she remained telligent, worthy and patriotic dered, President Lincoln had been assassi- but the white American identity remained ” in bondage. “Mr. President,” she began, nated, and new federal laws required the rebel deeply rooted in white supremacy. Southern foreigners and in favor of the negro, states to ratify the abolition amendment to be white communities rejected the notion that to whom, after long years of bondage, (Library of Congress) readmitted to the Union. The former Confeder- federal law recognized their former property as the avenues to freedom and intelli- ate states reluctantly complied. In early De- people, and they resented the Union troops still gence have just now been suddenly cember 1865, Georgia became the 27th state to stationed in the region to enforce this new real- opened. He must of necessity, from ratify, and the Thirteenth Amendment was ity. This Southern white resistance to Black his previous unfortunate condition of adopted soon afterward. Several states legal rights required the law to go further in servitude, be less informed as to the nonetheless continued to resist ratification in order to make Black freedom truly meaningful. nature and character of our institu- symbolic defiance, even after legal abolition tions than he who, coming from had been achieved—Delaware,34 Kentucky,35 The year after the war’s end, a U.S. Congress and Mississippi36 did not officially ratify the still operating without representation from abroad, has to some extent, at least, Thirteenth Amendment until the 20th century. most Confederate states passed the Civil familiarized himself with the princi- Rights Act of 1866, declaring Black Americans ples of a Government to which he full citizens entitled to equal civil rights.38 voluntarily entrusts life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.40 18 19 JOURNEY JOURNEY TO FREEDOM Military Reconstruction

In February 1867, Congress approved the ments.43 In March 1867, Congress overrode To earn full restoration to the Union, these political speech in Abbeville, South Car- First Reconstruction Act, which outlined a President Johnson’s veto and the First Re- states had to write new constitutions, have olina. “Future generations will look back

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION process for restoring the Confederate construction Act became law. the constitutions ratified by a majority of with horror,” read a resolution by the South states to the Union, and sent it to President voters, elect new officials under the new Carolina legislature following Mr. Ran- Andrew Johnson for review and signature. The act implemented “Reconstruction” as a constitutional guidelines, ratify the Four- dolph’s murder, “upon the parties who, in Remembered by some as “a champion of longer period of post-war transition that teenth Amendment to the United States open daylight, made an attack on him from the white South,”41 Johnson denounced and empowered African American men as an Constitution, and secure reinstatement behind.”50 vetoed the bill, calling it an attempt to “co- electorate and excluded former government from Congress. erce the [Southern] people into the adop- officials who had aided the Confederacy.44 As Reconstruction continued, violent white tion of principles and measures to which it It divided 10 former Confederate states into The 10 former Confederate states held their resistance to Black political power, citizen- is known that they are opposed and upon five Reconstruction districts held under required constitutional conventions be- ship rights, and freedom spread terror which they have an undeniable right to ex- federal military control and led by com- tween November 5, 1867, and February 8, throughout the South, diminishing Black ercise their own judgment.”42 manding generals. Tennessee was ex- 1869. Of the 1,027 total delegates who par- electoral influence and restoring to office cepted, since it had been readmitted to the ticipated, 258—nearly 1 in 4—were African many former Confederate officials who still Johnson preferred a more lenient policy Union in 1866. Each state had to complete American men. In some states their num- promoted white supremacist policies. that would cancel Confederate debt, par- a series of requirements to earn full federal bers were much greater. Black men made don former Confederates in exchange for restoration; the first was to hold a state up the majority of delegates at the South their pledged loyalty to the Union, and re- convention of elected delegates and draft a Carolina convention, nearly half in store former Confederate states to the new constitution establishing voting rights Louisiana, and more than a third in Union once they denounced secession and for men of all races. Florida.48 wrote new constitutions that abolished slavery. Johnson instituted this policy of Over the next two years, three additional Even with the protection of federal troops Terror campaigns enabled “Presidential Reconstruction”—which did laws were passed to form the collective Re- and the force of federal law, Black people white people opposed to not require Southern states to guarantee construction Acts. Together, they author- empowered to participate in the remaking voting rights for Black men or involve Black ized the commanding military generals to of the South faced violence at the hands of racial equality to gain con- people in the writing of new state constitu- register voters and hold elections for dele- resentful white mobs. At least 26 African trol of most Southern state tions—when he took office following Presi- gates;45 declared that “the governments American delegates to constitutional con- dent Lincoln’s 1865 assassination. then existing in the rebel States . . . were ventions were victims of Ku Klux Klan at- legislatures. By 1876, pro-Re- not legal state governments;”46 and author- tacks.49 Newberry, South Carolina, delegate construction officials con- By 1867, Congress had grown frustrated ized the election of state officials and rep- Lee A. Nance was shot and killed outside of that former Confederate leaders were con- resentatives to Congress while the new his home in October 1868. That same trolled state governments in trolling Southern state governments and state constitution was up for ratification.47 month, a Black man named Benjamin Ran- only three of the former Con- actively working to undermine Emancipa- dolph was shot in the head while riding a tion and the Reconstruction Amend- train, one day after giving a controversial federate states. 20 21 Before the Fourteenth Amendment under the law.55 Two years later, in

could become an enforceable part 1870, the United States ratified the JOURNEY TO FREEDOM of the Constitution, 28 of the 37 Fifteenth Amendment, explicitly states had to ratify it. Likely em- prohibiting racial discrimination in boldened by Johnson’s defiant mes- voting56—but leaving women of all sage of opposition, Southern races disenfranchised for another legislatures refused—10 of the 11 50 years.57 Together, these legal de- former Confederate states rejected velopments established the mean- the amendment with overwhelming ing of citizenship for Black people majorities and Louisiana did so who, just a few years earlier, had unanimously.53 The amendment fell been denied that status by the na- RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION short of the required state ratifica- tion’s highest court. tions and could not yet be adopted. In Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, the Supreme Court declared Black people born in the United States ineligible for national citizenship and unable to claim the rights and immunities guaranteed by the Con- In response, and again over stitution. President Johnson’s veto, Congress passed the Re- Now, little more than a decade later construction Acts of 1867, and following the national upheaval of civil war and political recon- imposing military rule on struction, the nation for the first the South and requiring time beheld a new legal creation: states seeking readmission the Black American. Throughout (Randolph Linsly Simpson African-American Collection, Yale Collection the country, Black men, women, of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library) to the Union to ratify the and children—some of whom had Fourteenth Amendment.54 been free for generations and oth- In April 1866, Congress—still celebrating the tioned the legitimacy of the process and made ers who were enslaved until very Union’s Civil War victory and persuaded by clear his administration’s disapproval. recently—were for the first time passionate rhetoric insisting rights legislation The Reconstruction Acts also es- legally protected from racialized was needed to make that bloodshed meaning- tablished voting rights for African enslavement, recognized as United ful—overrode a presidential veto for the first I deem it proper to observe that the American men, dramatically alter- States citizens, and legally guaran- time in United States history to enact the Civil steps taken by Secretary of State, as ing the South’s political landscape. teed the rights of that status. Rights Act.51 detailed in the accompanying re- ” By July 1868, enough states had port, are to be considered as purely ratified the Fourteenth Amendment Political participation, education, Lawmakers next successfully passed the Four- and economic advancement soon ministerial, and in no sense what- and it was adopted. The United teenth Amendment, which declared Black peo- States Constitution now declared emerged as the immediate goals ever committing the Executive to an ple’s citizenship and established the civil rights all persons born in the country and most powerful symbols of free- approval or a recommendation of of all citizens. This proposal also found a foe in were citizens, regardless of race, dom. Those also proved to be the President Johnson. In his message to Congress the amendment to the State legisla- and thus entitled to the “privileges earliest targets of overwhelming 52 announcing that the amendment had been sent tures or to the people. and immunities” of citizenship, due post-Emancipation racial violence. to the states for consideration, Johnson ques- process, and equal protection 23

uring Reconstruction—the period of legal, political, and social re- creation that followed the Civil FREEDOM TO FEAR DWar—federal officials and troops remained in the South to enforce Black peo- ple’s new rights of freedom and citizenship A Terrifying and Deadly Backlash and to administer educational and other programs for the formerly enslaved. For the first time, Black people in the region com- prised a community of voters, public offi- cials, landowners, wage earners, and free American citizens. But continued support for racial hierarchy meant that American slavery and the ideas underlying it could not So determined were most white Southern- be changed solely through elections and “ ers to maintain their own way of life that laws. As white people attacked Black peo- they resorted to fraud, intimidation and ple for asserting their rights, the Recon- murder in order to re-establish their own struction era’s initial hope and progress control of the state governments. . . . The gave way to devastating, deadly violence. new civil war within the Southern states stemmed from an adamant determination to Most white people refused to accept Eman- restore white supremacy. cipation and Black citizenship. They instead responded to Reconstruction’s progress by —Historian Henry Louis Gates58 using force and terror to disenfranchise, marginalize, and traumatize Black commu- nities while killing countless Black people. 24 25 zations, including the Knights of the White In Chattanooga, Tennessee, when a Black man

Camelia and the Pale Faces, were largely inde- named Andrew Flowers defeated a white can- TOFREEDOM FEAR pendent and decentralized but shared aims didate in the 1870 race for justice of the peace, and tactics to form a vast network of terrorist Klansmen whipped him and told him that “they cells. By the 1868 presidential election, those did not intend any nigger to hold office in the cells were poised to act as a unified military United States.”66 force supporting the cause of white supremacy throughout the South.63 On the night of March 6, 1871, a mob of armed white men hanged a Black man named James In Georgia on October 29, 1869, Klansmen at- Williams in York County, South Carolina, and tacked and brutally whipped 52-year-old terrorized the local African American commu- RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION Abram Colby, a formerly enslaved Black man nity, assaulting residents and burning homes.67 who had been elected to Congress by enfran- Mr. Williams, enslaved before the Civil War, had chised freedmen. Shortly before the attack, a recently organized a coalition to protect the 68 The 1866 New Orleans Massacre. (Harper's Weekly) group of Klansmen comprised of white doctors freedom of Black people in York County. and lawyers tried to bribe Mr. Colby to change White residents circulated rumors claiming parties or resign from office.64 When he re- that he posed a threat,69 and as his former en- fused, the men brutally attacked him. Mr. Colby slaver later testified, his presence “caused a ued the butchery in the hall and on the street, later testified before a Congressional commit- great deal of uneasiness.”70 Details of the until nearly two hundred people were killed tee: lynching were sparsely documented but federal and wounded,” a Congressional committee officials arrested and prosecuted several al- formed to investigate the massacre concluded leged members of the mob. One testified dur- Shortly after passage of the Thir- in 1867. “How many were killed will never be [The mob] took me to the woods ing trial that, after hanging Mr. Williams, the teenth Amendment, white mobs known. But we cannot doubt there were many and whipped me three hours or mob stopped to get “some crackers and more than set down in the official list in evi- began to target Black people simply 65 whiskey.”71 Despite the admission, all charges 60 “ more and left me for dead. for claiming their freedom. dence.” were later dismissed or discontinued and no one was ever held accountable for Mr. As Reconstruction continued, the terror attacks Williams’s death.72 that white mobs committed grew more struc- On July 30, 1866, at what is today the Roosevelt tured and group-based. “A lawlessness which, The Memorial at the EJI Legacy Pavilion in Montgomery, Alabama, is Hotel, New Orleans was hosting a convention inscribed with the names of 500 Black people lynched during Re- in 1865-1868, was still spasmodic and episodic, construction. (Jose Vazquez) of white men working to make sure Louisiana’s now became organized,” W.E.B. Du Bois later new constitution would guarantee Black voting observed. “Using a technique of mass and mid- rights. In the weeks leading up to the conven- night murder, the South began widely organ- tion, local press denounced the attendees as ized aggression upon the Negroes.”61 traitors and invaders. “Within a short time,” warned the Louisiana Democrat, “we may ex- Organized and violent white resistance to Re- pect to see the State of Louisiana a member of construction was born in Pulaski, Tennessee, the Union, with nigger suffrage, nigger Sena- on December 24, 1865, when six Confederate tors, and nigger representatives.”59 veterans formed the first chapter of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).62 Functioning from its inception as When local Black men staged a march to sup- a political paramilitary arm of white suprema- port the convention, the seething opposition cist interests, the Klan engaged in a campaign erupted in violence as white police and mob of terror, violence, and murder targeting African members indiscriminately killed Black people Americans and white people who supported in the area. “For several hours, the police and Black civil rights. The Klan and similar organi- mob, in mutual and bloody emulation, contin- 26

York County, South Carolina RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION In 1871, federal investigators found evidence of 11 murders and more than 600 whippings and other assaults in York County, South Car- olina, where nearly the entire white male population had joined the Klan.73 When local grand juries failed to take action, federal authori- ties urged President Ulysses S. Grant to intervene, describing the state as “under the domination of systematic and organized deprav- ity” that created a “carnival of crime not paralleled in the history of any civilized community.”74 More than 60 years later, W.E.B. Du Bois described Klan violence as “armed guerilla warfare” and estimated that, between 1866 and mid-1867, the Klan committed 197 murders and 548 aggravated assaults in North and South Carolina alone.75

Indiana to Missouri

A similar white terrorist campaign started in Indiana and spread

throughout the country. Calling themselves “whitecaps,” mobs of The Memorial at the EJI Legacy Pavilion features the locations and poor, white farmers targeted Black people they viewed as economic estimated death tolls of 34 Reconstruction-era massacres that tar- geted Black communities. (Jose Vazquez) competition and threatened them with death if they refused to abandon their land or give up their jobs. In most cases, local law en- forcement’s indifference or inability to protect Black residents al- St. Helena Parish, Louisiana lowed the whitecaps to commit violence and murder without fear of legal repercussions.76 In Missouri, one newspaper reported that the Less than two months later, on October 29, 1868, a white mob in St. whitecaps had “become almost as formidable and mysterious as the Helena Parish, Louisiana, seized and shot to death John Kemp, a lit- famous Ku-Klux.”77 erate Black coroner and active political organizer.79

Warren, Kentucky Columbia, Florida In Warren, Kentucky, on September 5, 1868, a white mob affiliated Later that fall, Prince Weaver, a prominent African American in Co- with the Ku Klux Klan surrounded the house of William Glasgow, a lumbia, Florida, hosted a social gathering at his home. Five or six Black man and former Union soldier who had pledged to vote in disguised men fired on the gathering, killing 13-year-old Samson favor of Black rights in the upcoming election. The mob demanded Weaver and severely wounding three others. Prince Weaver report- that he come outside. When Mr. Glasgow refused, the mob broke edly had “been warned against” holding political meetings at his into his house and killed him in front of his wife, then went to an- house. After the attack he learned that the shots were intended to other cabin and hanged an “inoffensive negro” who had also served kill him and fled his community in search of safety.80 in the Union Army.78 28 29 politician who had helped lead the legislative

Black Political civil rights efforts that followed the Confeder- TOFREEDOM FEAR ate defeat—exclaimed: “All men are created Mobilization and equal says the great Declaration, and now a These acts were not committed only As a result of this activism, in 10 of great act attests this verity. Today, we make the by marginalized extremists. Count- the 11 former Confederate states, ap- Declaration a reality.”84 less white people participated in at- White Backlash proximately 80 percent of eligible tacking and killing Black people to Black male voters were registered Sen. Revels was a Mississippi-born preacher and veteran of the United States Colored 83 defend white supremacy. The Black community mobilized after passage by the summer of 1867. Troops who personified African American of the Reconstruction Amendments, organizing Emancipation and enfranchisement. In 1869, RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION meetings, parades, and petitions calling for the Black voters elected him to a seat in the Mis- As historian Eric Foner explains, the “wave of implementation of their legal and political As new local, state, and federal governments sissippi state senate. The next year, he was counter-revolutionary terror that swept over rights, including the right to vote. During the formed, scores of newly-emancipated Black elected to fill a United States Senate seat pre- large parts of the South between 1868 and 1871 first two years of Reconstruction, Black people men exercised their right to vote and organized viously occupied by a white enslaver.85 lacks a counterpart either in the American ex- formed Equal Rights Leagues throughout the campaigns to run for elected office. perience or in that of the other Western Hemi- South. These groups held state and local con- Sen. Revels toured the country after taking of- sphere societies that abolished slavery in the ventions protesting discriminatory treatment When Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi, the fice and was introduced to audiences as the 81 nineteenth century.” and demanding the right to vote and equality first African American elected to serve in Con- “Fifteenth Amendment in flesh and blood.”86 In before the law.82 gress, took office on February 25, 1870, Senator an 1871 speech advocating for the end of The growing wave of terror and racial violence Charles Sumner—a white Massachusetts school segregation, he declared, “I am true to persisted throughout Reconstruction. As white my own race. I wish to see all done that can be communities grew increasingly bold and confi- done for their encouragement, to assist them in dent in their ability to kill Black people with im- acquiring property, in becoming intelligent, en- punity, the violence expanded beyond lightened, useful, valuable citizens. I wish to organized groups like the Klan. see this much done for them, and I believe God makes it the duty of this nation to do this much In the first years after Emancipation, Black for them.”87 Although he served only a year in people who bravely seized new opportunities to office, Sen. Revels broke new ground for exercise political power, pursue education, and African Americans in Congress—and others resist economic exploitation risked their own followed. lives to chart a new path. Racial violence killed many and terrorized many more with the In 1874, Robert Smalls was elected to Congress knowledge that their long-sought and hard- from Beaufort County, South Carolina. Twelve won freedom now placed them in danger. years earlier, while working as an enslaved crewman aboard the Planter, a Confederate ammunition transport ship, Mr. Smalls piloted the ship out of Charleston harbor and delivered it to the Union Navy. Recognized for his bravery and skill, he became one of the first African American pilots in the United States Navy. In the House of Representatives, Rep. Smalls fought tirelessly against racial segregation in the military, railroads, and restaurants.88

Hiram Revels, the nation's first Black senator. (National Archives) Robert Smalls, Civil War hero and Reconstruction-era Congressman. (Library of Congress) 30 31 At the same time that African Americans were attempted to enter the town of Camilla, Geor-

participating in government in unprecedented gia, to speak at a public event. An armed mob TOFREEDOM FEAR numbers, many white elected leaders worked of white men met them outside town and to undermine and substantially diminish Black warned them that white residents were pre- political power. pared to respond with violence if they honored their speaking engagement. When the men re- In his 1867 annual message to Congress, Presi- fused to be intimidated by the mob, the sheriff dent Johnson declared that Black Americans informed them that “the people would not had “less capacity for government than any allow Radical[s] to speak at Camilla.” Instead of other race of people,” that they would “relapse offering the Black men protection, the sheriff into barbarism” if left to their own devices, and threatened them against exercising their con- RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION that giving them voting rights would result in “a stitutional right to assemble. At the courthouse, tyranny such as this continent has never yet a white mob violently attacked Colonel Pearce, witnessed.”92 This rhetoric from the nation’s Captain Murphy, and several other Black peo- highest office encouraged white people, espe- ple attending the event. In the end, newspapers cially in the South, who stood determined to reported that seven African Americans, includ- destroy a politically-empowered Black voting ing a woman and a baby, had been killed and at bloc. least 30 other people were wounded.94

In August 1870, a Black legislator named Less than two months later, on election day in Richard Burke was attempting to organize a Savannah, Georgia, a group of Black men meeting of African Americans in Sumter standing in line at a polling station were ac- County, Alabama, when he was shot and killed cused of blocking the door and an altercation near his home. Mr. Burke was accused of en- between Black and white voters ensued. Re- couraging armed Black people to stage a sponding police officers fired into the crowd, (Library of Congress) protest in Livingston, Alabama, but the South- injuring at least 20 people and killing three ern Republican newspaper reported that the Black people: Sam Parsons, Peter Hopkins, charges against Mr. Burke were most likely and a third unidentified victim.95 Massacres in During Reconstruction, an estimated 2,000 In all, 16 African Americans served in Congress made up as an excuse to kill him for his politi- New Orleans in 1868 and in Eufaula, Alabama, 93 Black men served in elected office from local during Reconstruction, more than 600 were cal leadership. and Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1874, are among and state positions all the way up to Con- elected to state legislatures, and hundreds the many more examples. gress.89 Almost half of elected Black officehold- more held local offices across the South.90 The ers served in South Carolina and Louisiana, newly elected and racially integrated Recon- where Black people had the longest history of struction governments took bold action at the political organization. In most other states, state level, repealing discriminatory laws, African Americans were under-represented rewriting apprenticeship and vagrancy statutes Across the United States, white compared to their population. Some Black that had widely led to Black people’s re-en- leaders had gained their freedom before the slavement and arrest after Emancipation, out- mobs waged bloody massacres to Civil War, while others had worked as skilled lawing corporal punishment, and sharply prevent Black communities from ex- artisans during enslavement or served in the reducing the number of capital offenses. ercising their voting rights. Union Army. A large number of Black political African Americans also served on juries and leaders came from the church, having worked won election to law enforcement positions like as ministers during enslavement and in the sheriff and chief of police.91 early years of Reconstruction. In September 1868, two Black politicians known as Colonel Pearce and Captain Murphy Headline reporting election violence in Savannah, Georgia. (Atlanta Constitution, Nov. 7, 1868) 32 33 tucky. “We took advantage of every opportunity

Fighting for to educate ourselves. The greater part of the TOFREEDOM FEAR plantation owners were very harsh if we were Education caught trying to learn or write. . . Our ignorance was the greatest hold the South had on us.”96

By the outbreak of the Civil War, nearly every During enslavement, white people restricted or Southern state prohibited the education of en- denied Black people’s access to education. The slaved people and barred them from possess- myth of racial difference was rooted in the ing reading material or writing instruments. “fact” of Black inferiority and intellectual inca- Some of these laws authorized death as pun- RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION pacity and their resulting dependence on ishment.97 On two different occasions in 1854, benevolent white “masters.” Yet white hostility white “slave patrollers” in Mt. Meigs, Alabama, to Black literacy and education was actually ev- burned alive enslaved Black people suspected idence that enslaved people wanted to learn, of possessing anti-slavery pamphlets.98 and that the development of Black knowl- edge—particularly knowledge of their own claim to rights and freedom—was a threat to white racial dominance. African American students on the lawn of Howard University, 1867. (Library of “In most of us colored folks was the great de- Congress) sire to [be] able to read and write,” John W. At the end of the Civil War, the ability Fields, 89, recalled in 1936, decades after he to read and write became a symbol of was emancipated from enslavement in Ken- freedom in the Black community. Schools for African Americans were places With the aid of the Freedmen’s Bureau, philan- “where the children of a once enslaved people thropy from Northern aid societies, and funding Black students in class at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, 1902. (Library of Congress) may realize the blessing of liberty and educa- from state Reconstruction governments, Black tion,”99 Frederick Douglass stated in one of his schools quickly opened across the South. Gov- final speeches. “Education . . . means emanci- ernment agencies and charities provided most pation. It means light and liberty. It means the of the funding, but African Americans emerg- uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious ing from enslavement actively pursued educa- light of truth, the light only by which men can tional opportunities for themselves and their be free.”100 children. Despite their minimal resources, Black communities purchased land, con- Although Black schools were illegal in most structed buildings, and raised money to hire Southern states, free African Americans had teachers. built, funded, and maintained small schools across the South for more than 3,000 Black Rural Black families moved nearer to towns children by 1860.101 By 1863, 5 percent of en- and cities to give their children access to slaved people had secretly learned to read and schools. And children, in turn, shared knowl- write.102 In the immediate aftermath of the Civil edge with older people who had to work rather War, newly emancipated African Americans es- than attend class, reviewing the day’s lessons tablished additional schools in churches and with their parents and grandparents after other gathering places. school hours. 35 [A Black person] riding on a loaded pation would bring that opportunity, but for

wagon, or sitting on a hack waiting most it never materialized.109 TOFREEDOM FEAR “ for a train, or by the cabin door, is often seen, book in hand delving News circulated after the war that the federal after the rudiments of knowledge. A government was committed to land distribu- tion. Whatever may have been planned, Presi- group on the platform of a depot, dent Lincoln’s April 1865 assassination by a after carefully conning an old Confederate sympathizer killed the prospect of spelling book, resolves itself into a meaningful Black economic advancement. Vice 103 class. President and Tennessean Andrew Johnson rose to the presidency initially promising to —Freedmen’s Bureau official punish Southern “traitors,” but by 1866 he had issued 7,000 pardons to secessionists.110

The first years after Emancipation also wit- Johnson also rescinded orders granting Black nessed the creation of the nation’s first Black farmers tracts of land that the Union had colleges, including Howard University in Wash- seized from Southern white rebels during the ington, D.C., and Fisk University in Tennessee. war and instead returned the property to for- mer Confederates.111 This left Black people vul- nerable to white Southerners who still held the vast majority of land and resources and re- mained determined to exploit Black labor— “free” or not.

Black education was a target of vio- “There is really no difference, in my opinion lence as white communities clung to whether we hold them as absolute slaves or ideas of Black inferiority and sought obtain their labor by some other method,”112 a to trap Black people in a “freedom” white Alabamian remarked in 1866. Another white Alabama resident similarly described the Emancipated Black Americans sought education and work to realize limited to subservience. the promise of freedom. (Illustration by Jamiel Law) white South’s idea of post-war restoration: Resisting Economic In fall 1870, white mobs burned “nearly every At the end of the Civil War, most Black people There is a kind of innate feeling, a colored church and school-house” in Tuskegee, lived in the South, where agriculture remained lingering hope among many in the 104 Exploitation Alabama. In Calhoun County, Alabama, that the dominant industry and land ownership had South that slavery will be regalva- ” year, a white mob outraged at the growth of a long been the clearest path to economic inde- nized in some shape or other. They local Black school lynched four Black men pendence and self-sufficiency. For the many tried by their laws to make a worse named Tony Cliff, Berry Harris, Caeser Freder- The slave expected to get 40 acres of Black people thrust into freedom with years of slavery than there was before, for ick, and William Hall, and also killed William land and a mule but nobody got it as experience working the land for white profit, the freedman has not now the pro- Luke, a white man who had moved to Alabama far as I know. We never got nothing. scholar Edward Royce explains the prospect of 105 ” from the North to teach freedmen. A Georgia finally holding their own land “gave them the tection which the master from inter- newspaper reported merely that “several ne- opportunity to reap the fruit of their own labor est gave him before.113 —Ellis Ken Kannon, a Black man en- groes and one white man have been buried to and to take care of themselves” and held the slaved in Tennessee as a youth107 their long home through the false teachings of potential to “make them truly free.”108 Many for- that white man.”106 merly enslaved people dreamed that Emanci- 36 37 Left to navigate the “free market” from a posi- Under the sharecropping system, Black labor-

tion of generations-long disadvantage, in a sys- ers cleared, planted, and harvested land they TOFREEDOM FEAR tem dominated by white people determined to did not own in exchange for a share of the crop, maintain racial inequality, Black people found minus costs for food, supplies, and lodging that freedom often meant poverty and despera- (often in the same quarters they had inhabited tion. Because most formerly enslaved people while enslaved). Because the Johnson adminis- lacked the cash to buy land outright, and white tration required landowners to pay off their landowners routinely refused to provide them debts to banks first, white people frequently credit, the government’s refusal to provide tar- shirked their duty to pay Black sharecroppers, geted assistance meant that most freedmen who had no recourse.115 Even when they were could not build their own farms. paid, Black sharecroppers were typically disad- RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION vantaged by the contracts they’d signed under duress, and they were often told that their debt to the landowner was higher than their wages. This trapped many Black families in a cycle of debt for generations, preventing them from ac- cumulating capital to build wealth or buy their Instead of facilitating Black land own property. ownership, President Johnson’s poli- cies ushered in sharecropping—a Many Black farmers had to take high-interest new practice that soon replaced loans as their only means of purchasing exorbi- tantly-priced necessities, deepening the debt slavery as a primary source of agri- trap. When they tried to enforce contracts at the end of the season or negotiate better ones, cultural labor and Black exploita- In freedom, Black men, women, and children worked together to gain tion in the South.114 they were met with violence from landowners knowledge and share it with one another. (Illustration by Jamiel Law) or organized “regulators” who used terror to force agreement.116 Despite these overwhelming obstacles, some In Washington, D.C., the availability of some African Americans did manage to acquire land, government jobs and establishment of Howard A white manager weighs cotton picked by African American share- croppers circa 1870. (CORBIS) build businesses, and achieve social mobility University created a magnet for Black intellec- during Reconstruction. In a few cases, Black tuals and civic leaders. African Americans who people in the South obtained assistance from moved to the nation’s capital purchased prop- the Freedmen’s Bureau and combined personal erty, built successful businesses, and pursued resources to buy shared farms or small plots of education for themselves and their children. In land.117 Shortly after the war’s end, some Black the years following the war, “the District of Co- people—particularly those in or near larger lumbia witnessed more than a doubling in the cities—also began to open small businesses number of Black [people] who owned busi- and establish themselves as blacksmiths, bar- nesses (156 to approximately 318) and a signifi- bers, shoemakers, builders, and grocers.118 cant increase in their average real and personal property holdings.”120 In Nashville, Tennessee, in 1871, a formerly en- slaved Black man named Henry Harding owned More than 90 percent of Black Americans and managed one of the city’s most popular resided in the South by 1870, and only 1 per- hotels and built a net worth of $35,000. He cent (30,000) of the more than three million later became one of the two largest Black tax- African Americans in the region owned land.121 payers in Davidson County.119 38 39 In Mississippi, convict leasing began in 1868. landowners’ intent “to terrify the negros into

Colonel Edmund Richardson, a white man and leaving without their share of the crop.”130 This TOFREEDOM FEAR antebellum millionaire who used convict labor kind of violence was widespread. 123 Many Black people became ensnared to rebuild his fortune, signed a contract with the state allowing him to keep all profits from In a January 1866 letter to the Freedmen’s Bu- by a new form of slavery through the After creating discriminatory “Black Codes” to criminalize newly freed Black people as va- the labor of imprisoned men—nearly all of reau, Brevet Major General Clinton B. Fisk, sta- 124 criminal law—convict leasing. grants and loiterers, states passed laws author- whom were Black and formerly enslaved. Ac- tioned in Centreville, Tennessee, reported that izing public officials to lease prisoners to cording to an 1871 state report reviewing the white residents were using rampant violence to private industries. While states profited, pris- leasing system, Richardson doled out labor as- maintain economic control over Black people. As the Southern labor market faced a void left oners earned no pay and faced inhumane, haz- signments by race, sending only Black convicts “Since April 15, 1865,” he wrote, referencing the ardous, and often deadly working conditions. to clear and build levees on swampland he date of President Lincoln’s death, “there have

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION by Emancipation, Southern legislators used a loophole in the Thirteenth Amendment—which Under these laws, thousands of Black people owned in the Delta. The few white prisoners been numerous outrages committed against banned involuntary servitude except as punish- were forced into a brutal system that historians and old and sick Black prisoners remained at freedmen in this district.” 125 ment for crime—to establish convict leasing. have called “worse than slavery.”122 the state penitentiary in Jackson. Though largely uncritical, the report reviewing Richard- son’s operation between 1868 and 1871 docu- The violence committed was gener- The convict leasing system worked to re-enslave Black people using mented dozens of prisoners killed by violence ally death. The Rebels adopted this the criminal justice system. (Illustration by Jamiel Law) or disease.126 course to keep them in bondage up til ” June last when a federal garrison was The widespread economic exploitation of Black stationed at this place. During the re- people continued for generations after slavery’s bellion the freedman was kept under end. Those who challenged this system of the control of their rebel masters by domination faced threats, violence, and even murder. violence for if any left their former master they sent the young bands of Late in the summer of 1865, a white mob bru- Bushwhackers after him and when tally killed six Black men in Duplin County, was found he was deliberately shot North Carolina: Charles Winters, John Hirst, down. This deterred many from leav- John Middleton, Thomas Bradley, and two men ing and this today keeps them from whose names were not recorded.127 According getting remuneration for their work to the testimony of a Union soldier, the six men which they perform under dread of had entered into a sharecropping agreement maltreatment . . . I know of some 5 or with their former slaveowner and continued to 6 having been killed in that manner work on the plantation where they had been 131 enslaved.128 When the white man later tried to all for the above purpose. evict the men without compensation for the work they had done, they insisted on their right to be paid. In response, the white man gathered his armed white neighbors, including law en- forcement officers, and killed all six Black men.129 While some newspapers attempted to justify the violence by reporting that one of the Black men tried “to run away while his house was being searched for stolen property,” other reports made no attempt to conceal the white 40 41

The Freedmen’s Bureau TOFREEDOM FEAR

In March 1865, Congress established the Bureau offices were poorly staffed and Freedmen’s Bureau to provide formerly en- under-resourced, unable to cope with the slaved people with basic necessities and to numerous needs of formerly enslaved peo- oversee their condition and treatment in ple still facing widespread violence and dis- the former Confederate states. In practice, crimination alongside the trauma and the Bureau often fell short at this vast and poverty borne of generations in bondage. RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION historic undertaking, as white mobs and in- The Bureau Commissioner’s office was re- stitutions throughout the South continued sponsible for overseeing operations in the to oppress, attack, and exploit African entire former Confederacy with a staff of Americans during Reconstruction. Local just 10 clerks. As of 1868, the Bureau had Bureau offices served as central commu- only 900 officials to serve millions of for- nity locations to document reports of vio- merly enslaved people across the South.136 lence committed against freed people, register Black people to vote, verify labor Local Bureau offices quickly became tar- contracts between formerly enslaved peo- gets for racist violence. Many white people Students and teachers outside the Freedmen's Bureau school on St. ple and employers, provide food and med- in the South saw the Bureau as a symbol of Helena’s Island, South Carolina, 1866. ical care, establish schools, and perform unjust federal occupation and resented that marriages.132 The offices often faced both federal officials were working to assist for- internal and external impediments to carry- merly enslaved people while Southern ing out these functions. white communities remained devastated flag to celebrate the recent presidential in- supply some of the most detailed descrip- by the failed Confederate rebellion. White auguration of former Union General tions of the Reconstruction era, while also Many of the Bureau’s difficulties began Southerners greatly hindered the Bureau’s Ulysses S. Grant.138 Bureau records docu- documenting the agency’s own shortcom- when it was established as a division of the ability to enforce federal law by denying its ment many attacks on schools, including in ings and failures. War Department and authorized to operate authority. When two freedwomen brought a Travis County, Texas;139 Queen Anne’s for only one year after the war’s end. Con- case against a white man named Maynard County, Maryland;140 and Rockbridge “The passing of a great human institution gress appropriated no budget for the Bu- Dyson in Virginia in 1866, he ignored the County, Virginia.141 In 1868, the white owner before its work is done leaves a legacy of reau and instead left its staffing and Freedmen’s Court’s summons and refused of a Clarksville, Tennessee, building that striving for other men,” W.E.B. Du Bois 133 funding to the military —an institution ill- to comply with the court’s order that he freed people wanted to use for a school de- wrote in 1901.143 While the Freedmen’s Bu- suited for the task of overseeing the com- compensate the women. Dyson’s attitude clared that he would rather “burn it to the reau was launched as a federal effort to plex social restructuring required to was common, and strained resources ren- ground than rent it for a ‘nigger school.’”142 provide support and protection to formerly counter the effects of centuries of enslave- dered the Bureau largely powerless to force enslaved people as they struggled to exer- 137 ment and entrenched racial hierarchies. compliance. In the face of waning political will to pro- cise new freedoms, the inadequate and in- Some lawmakers proposed making the Bu- tect Black people’s lives and rights and complete commitment to that purpose reau a permanent, independent agency or In many instances, white Southerners’ dis- under growing political pressure from the enabled fierce white resistance to under- making it part of the Interior Department regard for the Bureau escalated to violence South, Congress unceremoniously disman- mine the Bureau’s effectiveness, and en- but those ideas met bipartisan opposi- against schools and teachers that educated tled the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1872—seven sured that the work of protecting Black 134 tion. In 1866, President Johnson vetoed Black children. In 1869, a white mob years after the war’s end, five years before freedom would remain an unfulfilled task Congress’s first attempt to extend the Bu- burned down a freedmen’s school in Clin- the end of Reconstruction, and at the for years to come. reau’s operations beyond one year. The ton, Tennessee. A teacher later explained in height of deadly violence targeting African measure was rewritten and passed over a a letter to the Bureau that, days before the Americans. Today the Bureau’s records second veto.135 fire, the school had raised the American 43

DOCUMENTING RECONSTRUCTION VIOLENCE

he historical record is filled with Known and Unknown Horrors scattered but consistent and dev- astating descriptions of the terror Tand brutality that thwarted what The freedmen here have been kept in per- should have been a time of hope and prom- fect terror of their lives by the desperate ise. Despite the plentiful reports from ob- “ servers describing the frequent and largely men of the County who are hostile and ac- tive in abusive assailing and murdering this unchecked murders and assaults Black peo- inoffensive people all over the County for ple suffered during the Reconstruction pe- any and every pretext that human ingenuity riod of 1865 to 1876, there is no established can devise and often without any plea what- casualty count or reliable total number of ever. victims killed. Quantitative documentation of the violence of this era remains imprecise —Freedmen’s Bureau official in Sherman, Texas, Oc- and incomplete. tober 1866144 44 45 In his foundational book, Been In The Storm So Today, newspaper articles, summary records The incomplete data now available should not Even as we examine the information we can

Long: The Aftermath of Slavery, historian Leon gathered and preserved by the federally-orga- be used to derive trends or comparative rank- glean from aggregate data, the limitations of DOCUMENTING RECONSTRUCTION VIOLENCE F. Litwack acknowledges several reasons for nized Freedmen’s Bureau, and testimony taken ings. But aggregating these known numbers this approach cannot be overstated. “How the sparse record. For one, Southern newspa- during Congressional hearings account for can make the terror of this period more tangi- many Black men and women were beaten, pers often suppressed reports of white violence most surviving narratives of white violence tar- ble by painting a picture of the widespread na- flogged, mutilated, and murdered in the first targeting Black people, alleging that the stories geting Black people within the first years after ture of the violence and the ways attacks were years of Emancipation will never be known,” unfairly cast the South in a bad light.145 In addi- the Civil War. Those records provide only a par- often concentrated in time and space. Litwack has observed. tion, the boldness and impunity with which tial list of the total Black victims killed and as- these attacks were committed meant that saulted in acts of racial violence during this Figure 1 identifies the counties in which EJI’s many victims simply disappeared, leaving no period. But review of these records paints a current records document acts of racial vio- Nor could any accurate body count obvious trace of their fate. The trauma of racial haunting and devastating picture of a period of lence during Reconstruction that were reported or statistical breakdown reveal the RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION violence also left many Black victims and wit- deadly attacks that yielded thousands of docu- to the Freedmen’s Bureau or documented in barbarity and depravity that so fre- ” nesses afraid to report attacks or provide testi- mented victims and terrorized Black communi- news coverage from the era. The map clearly il- quently characterized the assaults mony against the white mobs responsible.146 ties across the South with near-daily acts of lustrates that violence was concentrated in the made on freedmen in the [pur- lynching and assault. South and touched most counties in the region ported] name of restraining their And finally, the indifference and even complic- but also stretched to the Midwest and North. ity of local legal systems left few authorities to The Freedmen’s Bureau’s records are the most savagery and depravity – the sev- whom attacks could be reported, even if people comprehensive and reliable official accounting The map represents a minimum rather than a ered ears and entrails, the mutilated were brave enough to do so. of Reconstruction violence against Black peo- maximum. Because records are scattered and sex organs, the burnings at the ple, but they are not without limitations. incomplete, the lack of documentation of vio- stake, the forced drownings, the Records of murders and outrages digitized and lence in a particular county does not mean that open display of skulls and limbs as Whether dealing with slaves or transcribed online span only 1865 to 1868, Black people in those counties were not tar- trophies.149 freedmen, southern courts and jurists while those covering later years remain in geted for whippings, shootings, rapes, lynch- seldom wavered from the urgent archives awaiting consolidation and process- ings, and other acts of racial violence. “ 148 need to solidify white supremacy, en- ing. Through review of those 1865-1868 To acknowledge and understand the human records, Congressional testimony, and newspa- Figure 2 shows 34 documented massacres sure proper discipline in blacks, and toll and devastating terror wrought by the at- per reports from the era, the Equal Justice Ini- during the Reconstruction era in which white punish severely those who violated tacks that targeted Black people during this tiative has documented more than 2,000 Black mobs attacked Black communities and killed hopeful and fearful era, we must go beyond the the racial code . . . After their initial victims killed during the Reconstruction era, three or more people in one act of racial vio- incomplete numbers to learn about the stories experiences with the judicial system, from 1865 to 1876. This is a staggering figure lence. In some cases, the estimated death tolls that have survived—and to contemplate the many freedmen found little reason to compared to the more than 4,400 victims doc- reached 100 or more victims. These massacres many that have not. place any confidence in it. The laws umented for the 74-year era of racial terror all took place in the South and were frequently discriminated against them, the lynching that spans 1877 to 1950. It is an even waged by mobs seeking to brutally suppress courts upheld a double standard of more horrific figure considering the thousands the Black vote or to instill fear and terror in the justice, and the police acted as the en- of additional victims who may be documented entire Black community by killing alleged "sus- forcers.147 in other records, or who are undocumented and pects" accused of unproven offenses. forever lost to history. Figure 1 47 Racial Violence During Reconstruction, 1865—1876 49

34 Documented Mass Lynchings McDuffie County, Georgia, November 1868 Bryan, Texas, March 1874 DOCUMENTING RECONSTRUCTION VIOLENCE A Black man named Perry Jeffreys, his wife, White mob lynches six Black men without trial. During the Reconstruction Era and four of their sons are attacked and lynched by white mobs targeting Mr. Jeffreys for voting. Trenton, Tennessee, August 1874 White mob abducts 16 Black men from jail and It is certain that many more mass lynching Millican, Texas, July 1868 Moore County, North Carolina, February lynches them without trial. events than those listed here took place during An estimated 150 Black people are killed by 1869 Reconstruction, and it is likely that hundreds or armed white mobs. After a Black man named Daniel Blue testifies New Orleans, Louisiana, September 1874 thousands more people were killed in mass vio- against white men accused of racial violence, a Three days of violence leaves 11 dead after lence during this period than can be docu- Camilla, Georgia, September 1868 white mob attacks his home and lynches his White League terrorist organization attempts mented today. White mobs attack Black residents gathered to wife and five children. to overthrow Louisiana’s Reconstruction gov- protest political disenfranchisement, killing at ernment in so-called Battle of Liberty Place. least seven Black people. Henderson, Texas, April 1869 Mobile County, Alabama, 1865 A white mob hangs five Black men—including Eufaula, Alabama, November 1874 White mobs kill an estimated 138 Black people Opelousas, Louisiana, September 1868 two preachers—on the public square outside Armed white men attack Black voters at the over the course of several months. An estimated 200 Black people are killed over the courthouse without trial. polls on election day, killing at least six Black several days after attempting to participate in people. Duplin County, North Carolina, 1865 the political process. Tiptonville, Tennessee, November 1869 Six Black men lynched after demanding that a White mob seizes five Black men from jail and Vicksburg, Mississippi, December 1874 white landowner pay them for their work. Caddo Parish, Louisiana, October 1868 lynches them without trial. When Black residents organize to protest the At least 53 Black people are killed by white removal of an elected Black sheriff, white mobs Memphis, Tennessee, 1865 mobs wielding racial violence to suppress the Eutaw, Alabama, November 1870 attack and kill an estimated 50 Black people. Approximately 20 Black Union soldiers at- Black vote. White mobs attack a political meeting of Black tacked and killed. residents and white allies, killing four Black Clinton, Mississippi, September 1875 New Orleans, Louisiana, October 1868 people. Armed white mobs attack the Black commu- Bell County, Texas, 1866 White mob attacks and kills 14 Black men on nity after a political meeting, killing an esti- Violent attacks by the Ku Klux Klan leave ap- Canal Street. Harrodsburg, Kentucky, August 1870 mated 50 Black people. proximately seven Black people dead. White mobs violently suppress the Black vote, St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, October 1868 lynching four Black people. West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, May 1876 Pine Bluff, Arkansas, March 1866 White mobs attack Black community to dis- White mobs lynch at least 17 Black people in Twenty-four emancipated Black men, women, courage voting, killing at least 35 Black people. Union County, South Carolina, 1871 violent effort to suppress the Black vote. and children living in a refugee camp are found White mobs lynch up to 12 Black men during dead, hanging from trees. Algiers, New Orleans, Louisiana, rampant Klan terrorism. Edgefield County, South Carolina, May 1876 October 1868 White mob lynches six Black men without trial. Memphis, Tennessee, May 1866 White mobs use violence to suppress the Black Colfax, Louisiana, April 1873 White mobs attack the Black community, vote, killing at least seven Black people. White mobs kill at least 150 Black people in vi- Hamburg, South Carolina, July 1876 killing at least 46 people and destroying olence intended to disenfranchise Black voters In violence leading up to election day, a white homes, schools, churches, and businesses. Bossier Parish, Louisiana, October 1868 and restore white supremacy. mob attacks Black men stationed at the Na- White mobs terrorize the Black community in tional Guard Armory, killing at least six. New Orleans, Louisiana, July 1866 widespread attacks leading up to election day, Grant Parish, Louisiana, November 1873 White mobs attack advocates marching for killing at least 162 Black people. White mob lynches six Black men without trial. East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, 1875-1876 Black voting rights, killing an estimated 33 White mobs lynch at least 30 Black people in Black people. racialized attacks over several months. Figure 2 51 Racial Terror Massacres During Reconstruction 53 Indiana Louisiana

Racial Terror and Reconstruction DOCUMENTING RECONSTRUCTION VIOLENCE In 1871, George Johnston, Squire Taylor, and a During Reconstruction, Louisiana was the site A State Snapshot man identified only by the surname Davis were of repeated massacres in places like Colfax, lynched in Clark County. A mob of about 70 Opelousas, New Orleans, St. Bernard Parish, white men hanged the three Black men from Orleans Parish, and West Feliciana Parish that Alabama Florida the same tree after they were accused of killing killed hundreds of Black people and trauma- a white family. Soon after the men were tized countless more in order to suppress Black EJI has documented nearly 200 Reconstruc- Many Black men killed in Reconstruction vio- lynched without trial, the press reported evi- voting rights.161 EJI has documented more than tion-era victims of Alabama racial violence, in- lence in Florida were targeted for exercising dence that they were innocent.157 1,000 lynchings and other incidents of racial vi- cluding those lynched, assaulted, raped, or their political rights. In Columbia County in olence in Louisiana during the 12-year Recon- killed throughout the state and including vic- 1869, a politically active Black man named struction period; this exceeds the number of tims killed in massacres in Mobile, Barbour, Lisher Johnson was abducted by a white mob Iowa racial terror lynchings documented in the state and Greene counties. Perpetrators and sup- and never seen again, though his hat, shoes, during the 80-year period that followed Recon- porters of this violence were never prosecuted. and clothes were found in the woods. The next In 1850, just four years after Iowa became a struction. Some went on to hold elected office, including year in the same county, another Black man state, its legislature passed a law banning set- Governor George Houston, for whom Houston named Robert Jones was shot and killed in his tlement by free Black people, mirrored after an County is named, and Governor Braxton Bragg home after a white man threatened him for vot- act the territorial legislature had passed in Maryland Comer.150 ing for pro-Reconstruction candidates.154 1839. Radical state legislators managed to re- peal the law in 1864, but that same year Iowa’s The "border state" of Maryland did not join the legislative majority rejected a proposed bill to Confederacy, but it legally permitted slavery Arkansas Georgia extend voting rights to Black men.158 until November 1, 1864, when its new state constitution went into effect. Although the After the Civil War’s end, many Black people In Georgia, the site of extensive racial violence state constitution marked the legal end of slav- who had fled slavery during the war were during Reconstruction, EJI has documented Kansas ery, the last enslaved people were likely not homeless, living in abandoned Union soldier more than 300 acts of murder and other at- freed until the Thirteenth Amendment was rat- camps or other makeshift settlements. In tacks, including the November 1868 massacre Luke Barnes, James Ponder, and Lee Watkins— ified in 1865. During Reconstruction, Maryland March 1866, after a disagreement between for- of Perry Jeffreys, his wife, and four sons in Mc- three Black men—were arrested and accused was the site of violent and sometimes deadly mer Confederate soldiers and emancipated Duffie County. After learning that Mr. Jeffreys of killing a white man in Ellis County in 1869. racial terror. In Harford County alone, a Black Black people living in a refugee camp near Pine (or Jeffers) planned to vote for presidential can- Before they could be tried or defended, a white man named Isaac Moore was lynched in 1868 Bluff, the camp was burned down and 24 didate Ulysses S Grant, white mobs attacked mob seized the men from jail and hanged them and a Black man named Jim Quinn was Black men, women, and children were found the family, hanged Mrs. Jeffreys and shot and from the trestle of the nearby railroad, where lynched in 1869.162 dead, hanging from trees.151 burned one son; days later, they seized Mr. Jef- they were found dead the next morning.159 freys and three sons from a train as they tried to flee and shot them to death in the woods.155 Michigan Delaware Kentucky In March 1863, just two months after President In 1865, Delaware legislators refused to ratify Illinois EJI has documented racial violence in at least Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery 37 Kentucky counties. On election day in 1870, effect, white mobs in Detroit angered by grow- and Governor Gove Saulsbury declared that In February 1874, after a white woman was violence broke out in Harrodsburg, Mercer ing migration of freedmen to the city and out- 152 Black people were a “subordinate race.” In robbed and killed in Carbondale, a Black man County, as white men angered by the presence raged by the trial of a mixed-race man accused 1867, Black Union Army veteran William “Obie” named Charles Wyatt deemed “suspicious” for of Black voters supporting pro-Reconstruction of assault waged violent attacks on the city’s Evans was lynched in Leipsic in Kent County spending a $20 bill was arrested for the crime. candidates clashed with Black crowds. One Black community, killing at least one Black after being accused of burning down a white As a lynch mob of over 400 white men gath- white man and four Black people were killed, man and leaving hundreds of Black people man’s barn. Later reports acknowledged his ered, authorities moved Mr. Wyatt to Murphys- and 15 to 20 Black people were wounded.160 homeless.163 Anti-Black violence continued in 153 likely innocence. boro, but the mob followed, seized Mr. Wyatt the state during Reconstruction, including the 156 from jail, and hanged him without trial. 1866 lynching of John Taylor near Lansing.164 54 55 Mississippi Ohio South Carolina threat of Klan violence, Klansmen fired on a group of Black people investigating a rumored DOCUMENTING RECONSTRUCTION VIOLENCE During Reconstruction, Black people in Missis- In 1865, Ohio voters elected Governor Jacob In 1860, South Carolina was one of only two lynching. Over the next two days, hundreds of sippi were the targets of repeated massacres, Dolson Cox, a Union Army General who sup- states in the nation with more enslaved resi- white men from neighboring towns terrorized including in Vicksburg in December 1874, ported President Andrew Johnson’s limited dents than free. It was also the first state to se- the local Black community and dozens more where white mobs attacked and killed at least view of Reconstruction and opposed enforcing cede from the Union in 1861 and like much of Black victims were killed. Scholars today esti- 50 Black citizens who had organized to protest voting rights for Black people in the South.171 In the South, ended the war “grimly determined mate 150 Black people were killed but the the removal of their elected Black sheriff, Mr. 1876, a mob of 50 white men lynched a Black that freedom would not substantially alter the exact death toll remains unknown.180 Peter Crosby.165 man identified only by the name “Ulrey” in Ur- condition of the former slaves.”177 Racial vio- bana, Champaign County.172 lence by the Klan and other white mobs grew so widespread and deadly during Reconstruc- Virginia RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION Missouri tion that it attracted federal investigation, led Oregon to passage of the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, and In 1869, a mob of white men abducted two Many Black people were lynched in Missouri caused President Grant to declare martial law Black men named Jacob Berryman and Charles during the Reconstruction era, including Oregon’s 1857 constitution banned Black peo- later that year.178 In Abbeville County alone, Brown from jail and hanged them without George Bryan in Livingston County in 1873; Ed- ple from living in the state and aimed to pre- Freedmen’s Bureau records document 77 acts trial.181 EJI has documented more than 120 inci- mund Moore in Charleston County in 1875; and vent the mass migration of freedmen if and of racial violence against Black people within dents of Reconstruction-era racial violence in Raphael Williams in Platte County in 1876.166 when slavery was abolished in the South. The seven months in 1868—that amounts to a 40 Virginia counties—even more than the num- Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, invali- whipping, rape, shooting, or lynching once ber of racial terror lynchings documented in dated this ban but the state did not officially every three days. the state between 1877 and 1950. New York repeal it until 1926.173 In 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, New York Tennessee West Virginia voters elected Governor Horatio Seymour, the Pennsylvania “white man’s candidate” and a strong supporter EJI has documented more than 200 incidents In 1874, a mob of 20 white men abducted and of Southern slavery.167 A year later, a mob of up Though Pennsylvania began legally abolishing of racial violence in Tennessee during Recon- lynched a Black man named John Taliaferro to 3,000 people lynched a Black man named slavery in 1780, the 1860 census was the first to struction, including the 1866 Memphis Mas- from jail in Martinsburg, Berkeley County. Robert Mulliner in Newburgh.168 Weeks later, document no enslaved Black people residing sacre and the 1874 lynching of 16 Black men in News of his death was reported under the white mobs resentful of the Union draft at- within the state and the issue of racial equality Trenton, Gibson County. Just weeks after the headline, “A Sample of Southern Justice.”182 tacked and killed dozens of Black people in the remained controversial during and after the war’s end, white men attacked and killed 20 New York City Draft Riots.169 Civil War.174 In 1871, white mobs in Philadelphia Black Union soldiers in Memphis on May 1, terrorized Black communities on election day 1865, based on doubtful rumors that the Black Wisconsin to discourage voting and killed at least three men were planning to attack white Confeder- 175 In 1861, a young Black man named George North Carolina Black men. In 1874, a Black man named Al- ate veterans who had massacred Black soldiers 176 Marshall Clark was lynched in Milwaukee after bert Brown was lynched in Bradford County. at Fort Pillow during the war.179 The Ku Klux Klan and other white mobs ex- he and another Black man were accused of acted assaults and murder at the slightest alle- getting into a drunken fight with three white gation during this era. In 1869 in Orange men who were also intoxicated. After one of County, after a young Black man named Wright Texas the white men died from his injuries, a mob of Woods was accused of expressing interest in a Lynchings and other violence documented in up to 50 white men seized Mr. Clark from jail young white woman, four white men abducted Texas during the Reconstruction era span more and hanged him.183 Mr. Clark’s companion was Mr. Woods from work. He was missing for than 45 counties and include a deadly mas- later tried, acquitted, and smuggled out of the nearly a week before a neighbor found vultures sacre in the Brazos County community of Milli- city to avoid the same fate.184 surrounding his hanging corpse. A note at- can in 1868. That July, after a local Black tached to his foot reportedly read: “If the law preacher began organizing Millican’s Black will not protect virtue, the rope will.”170 community to defend itself against the growing 57

All told, Reconstruction was the darkest page in the saga of American history. ” —Eric Foner, historian186

ust by daring to venture into the light of freedom and opportunity, Black men, women, and children who exer- Jcised the rights gained through fed- eral legislation and the Reconstruction Amendments became targets of deadly racial violence wielded by white people de- THE DANGER OF termined to ensure freedom would be any- thing but a joyful story.

FREEDOM Individually and in mobs, white people at- tacked and killed Black people throughout the South for leaving plantations, participat- ing in politics, and asserting economic inde- pendence. Others were maimed or killed for small social infractions or merely for being associated with someone accused of an of- fense. Reconstruction violence targeting The reign of terror is set up in this county. I Black people also occurred in the North— “ will not undertake to give a minute descrip- less frequently but often with the same mo- tion of it; time and space is not sufficient. tivations. Some violence had no trigger at Suffice it to say that the history of the dark- all, and those seemingly random and arbi- est ages of the world does not, in my estima- trary attacks were an especially terrifying tion, afford a parallel. tool of control and intimidation.

—Joe Easley, freedman living in Sulphur Springs, For all that we can never know about the 185 Texas, July 17, 1868 countless undocumented acts of violence and unknown victims, the narratives we do know illustrate the suffering and survival of a people who had already endured so much. 58 59

Political Violence THE DANGER OF FREEDOM Guilford Coleman white men seized Mr. Cody from his home, whipped him, and pulled out his hair.189 In 1870, Guilford Coleman, a Black delegate The Fifteenth Amendment and federal laws re- to the Alabama state convention, was ab- Lewisburg, Tennessee quiring states to respect the voting rights of ducted from his home and killed the week Black men enabled unprecedented numbers of he returned from nominating a Reconstruc- In January 1868, according to a report to African Americans to cast votes and hold To suppress political reform and tion governor in Demopolis. Investigation Tennessee Freedmen’s Bureau officials, a elected office in the South. Black voters over- hinder Black political development, into Mr. Coleman’s murder was minimal but mob of 25 white men terrorized the Black whelmingly supported candidates allied with reports indicated he was beaten and community in Lewisburg to intimidate white mobs targeted African Ameri- RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION the vision of President Lincoln and other lead- dumped into a well solely for his political Black voters. ers who advocated for Black civil rights. White can leaders and political officials, as involvement. Reports warned that pro-Re- Southerners bitterly resented Black voters’ well as Black community members construction politicians “dare not canvass growing political influence, which they saw as the district, lest they lose their lives.”187 [T]hey told us to put up our right an obstacle to restoring former Confederates’ who worked to encourage Black po- hand and swear that we would self-governance, and blamed Black voters for litical engagement. Jack Dupree never again give a Radical vote, ” white supremacist candidates’ repeated losses. In 1871, 60 members of the Ku Klux Klan that if any of us did they would brutally lynched Jack Dupree, the well-re- kill us and furthermore if any col- spected Black president of a local political ored men knew of an other col. club in Monroe County, Mississippi. The man voting the Radical ticket he mob dragged Mr. Dupree from his home also would be killed unless he in- within sight of his three young children and formed of the col. man who so his wife, who had recently given birth to voted. Then they told us to go twins. The mob stripped Mr. Dupree of his home and never leave it unless we clothes and beat him until he was nearly got a pass from our employers the dead, then slit his throat, cut out his heart same as we used to get from our and intestines, and threw his corpse into a 190 nearby creek. Mr. Dupree’s remains were Master before the War. never found, but a witness who was forced to hold the mob’s horses described the at- tack and recalled hearing his screams.188 The mob also severely beat and threatened to lynch a Black man named Wesley Givens Joe Cody before removing the rope from around his neck and ordering him to leave the area Attacks on political leaders and organizers within eight days.191 were meant to intimidate Black people and keep them from leading their community to Abbeville, South Carolina political empowerment, but Black people were also targeted simply for voting. In In Abbeville, South Carolina, white mobs 1868, a Black man named Joe Cody refused injured many African Americans in attacks white residents’ commands that he vote for before the 1868 election and declared that the pro-white supremacy ticket in Warren anyone who voted for the civil rights ticket This 1874 illustration depicts the discrimina- County, Georgia. In response, a group of would be killed.192 tion and violent intimidation that Black Americans faced when voting in the South during Reconstruction. (Library of Congress) 60 61

Opelousas, Louisiana THE DANGER OF FREEDOM

In states throughout the South, elections Soon after the Civil War’s end, a local city Mount Pleasant Baptist triggered mass violence that indiscrimi- ordinance announced: “No Negro or freed- Church in Opelousas, nately terrorized Black communities, killing man shall be allowed to come within the lim- Louisiana, was burned in a suspected arson in April dozens or hundreds and sending a clear its of the town of Opelousas without special 2019—the third Black message to many more that political activity permission from his employer, specifying the church burned in St. Landry RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION would result in death. object of his visit and the time necessary for Parish in 10 days. (William Widmer/ The New York 196 the accomplishment of the same.” Times/Redux) In the fall of 1868, the town of Opelousas was the site of Louisiana’s deadliest Recon- White residents of Opelousas grew increas- struction-era massacre.193 Over the course of ingly resentful of Black voting rights as the Press accounts of the violence were skewed parish . . . a fight was inevitable. It about two weeks, white citizens terrorized 1868 election approached. On September 28, because white mobs destroyed the printing was the last and only effectual argu- African Americans to suppress Black voter a group of local white men threatened and presses used by progressive publications and ment that could be used with the turnout in the upcoming election, killing an then severely beat Emerson Bently, a white killed a white man who worked as an editor negro . . . A carpet-bag editor and his estimated 200 people and devastating the man who’d written an article that exposed of the pro-Reconstruction St. Landry miserable, incendiary sheet caused local community. local voter intimidation. Mr. Bently had Progress newspaper. White supremacist the riot. The editor escaped, and a moved to Louisiana from Ohio to teach with newspapers dominated post-massacre re- hundred dead negroes, and perhaps a Louisiana’s Reconstruction government had the local Freedmen’s Bureau. Also a voting porting and flooded the press with inaccu- hundred more wounded and crippled adopted a new state constitution that April. rights advocate and newspaper editor, he rate tales of a “race riot.” It would be eight . . . are the upshot of the business.201 In compliance with the Fifteenth Amend- was a rare white ally of Black voters in St. years before another progressive newspaper ment, it declared that Black men were enti- Landry Parish and had been threatened re- was launched in the parish.199 tled to vote and guaranteed Black children peatedly before the attack.197 The brutal attacks in Opelousas terrorized access to education.194 Former Confederates Weeks after the massacre, a Franklin, Black voters into silence. Former Union seeking to regain power and restore white After hearing about the attack on Mr. Louisiana, newspaper victoriously declared, General Ulysses S. Grant won the 1868 pres- supremacy in the state opposed these provi- Bently, Black men in the community armed “The negroes in St. Landry are, for the first idential election without a single vote from sions. They also resented the federal officials themselves for protection and 27 were soon time since the war, polite and well disposed, St. Landry Parish. Recounting this “remark- and white Northerners present in Louisiana arrested or killed by white mobs. Over the and work well.”200 able case,” W.E.B. Du Bois later observed: to enforce Black civil rights. The desire to next two weeks, armed white men patrolled “Here occurred one of the bloodiest riots on keep Black people oppressed after Emanci- Opelousas and surrounding communities, record, in which the Ku Klux killed and pation was especially strong in Opelousas, terrorizing and killing Black residents indis- Our white people deeply regret the wounded over 200 Republicans, hunting the seat of St. Landry Parish. Though the criminately. By some estimates, the violence necessity which compelled the citi- and chasing them for two days and nights parish was home to just 14,000 people, an es- killed at least 30 white people—including “ zens of St. Landry to kill and cripple through fields and swamps . . . [P]rior to the timated 3,000 white male residents were some who were targeted by mobs for being so many negroes in the late Presidential election in November, 1868, members of the Seymour Knights—a branch sympathetic to Black rights—and left an esti- Opelousas riot, but the negroes for half the state was overrun by violence, and of the white supremacist Knights of the mated 200 Black people dead.198 more than a year have laughed at the midnight raids, secret murders, and open White Camelia, which was similar to the Ku warnings and advice given them by riot kept the people in constant terror.”202 Klux Klan.195 the planters and citizens of that 62 63 The hostility and anger directed at the in-

creased status and rights of Black people also Economic Intimidation THE DANGER OF FREEDOM sparked attacks against Black people asserting their political rights in the North. On October 10, 1871, African American activist and Union Army veteran Octavius Catto left the Philadel- In the years following the Civil War, many Black Also in 1865, Union General and future Senator phia school where he served as a teacher and people were violently attacked or killed for try- Carl Schurz reported to Congress on condi- administrator and headed to the polls to cast ing to leave the plantations of their former tions facing Black people in the South. He his ballot in the city’s mayoral election. The white “masters.” For every Black person injured warned that white people’s determination to re- election was only the second in Philadelphia to or killed in one of these attacks, many more tain control over Black people was sparking allow African American men to vote, and local RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION were terrorized by the message that “acting widespread violence. white voters threatened by the emergence of a free” could get them killed. new African American voting bloc tried to sup- press the Black vote with violence. Beginning days before the election, white policemen and [There exists] a desire to preserve mobs terrorized the Black community. slavery in its original form as much and as long as possible... ” On the morning of the election, several African American men were shot and some were killed, White resistance to Emancipation The [white] people . . . still indulged simply for being on the streets on election day. sought to preserve the racial hierar- in a lingering hope slavery might yet Despite these dangers, 31-year-old Mr. Catto be preserved—or to introduce into was determined to exercise his vote. A North- chy and economic exploitation of the new system that element of physi- ern man with Southern roots, Mr. Catto’s family enslavement by depriving emanci- cal compulsion which would make had moved North from South Carolina after his pated men and women of the most father’s emancipation from slavery, and he had the negro work. . . . [T]he main grown into an active advocate for equal rights. basic rights: to choose where to live, agency employed for that purpose In 1863, he helped to organize Black infantry and when and where to work. was force and intimidation. In many units and aggressively lobbied for their inclu- instances negroes who walked away sion in the Union military effort. Three years from the plantations, or were found later, he staged a one-man protest against In 1865, the Freedmen’s Bureau documented upon the roads, were shot or other- Philadelphia’s segregated street cars. multiple examples of such attacks in Texas wise severely punished, which was alone. Near Mill Creek, a white man shot and calculated to produce the impression Mr. Catto successfully cast his vote in the may- killed a Black man named King Davis for at- among those remaining with their oral election on October 10, 1871, but on his tempting to leave the land where he had been masters that an attempt to escape way home from the polls, he was shot and enslaved.204 In Liberty County, a white farmer from slavery would result in certain killed by Frank Kelly, a white man with ties to handcuffed and brutally beat Stephen Bryant white supremacist party leaders. Though Kelly and his wife after their two sons left the planta- destruction. A large proportion of was arrested and tried for murder, he was ac- tion without the farmer’s permission.205 And the many acts of violence committed quitted by an all-white jury.203 when a Black woman named Selina Parker is undoubtedly attributable to this made plans to move to Houston, the white man motive.207 who had once been her “owner” beat her se- verely, stole her money and clothes, and kid- 206 Octavius Catto, a Black activist and educator, was shot and killed napped her child. after voting in Philadelphia in 1871. He is buried at Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Pennsylvania. (Top: The Urban Archives: Temple Univer- sity; Bottom: L. Blanchard) 64 65 THE DANGER OF FREEDOM

Violence in response to Black economic inde- pendence continued throughout the South for years after the abolition of slavery. Though free by law, most formerly In September 1867, a white man in Wilming- ton, North Carolina, assaulted a Black man enslaved people were not safe to exer- named John Henry Hill because he insisted on cise even the most basic expression of being paid for his work.209 That year in Wash- that freedom by leaving the sites of

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION ington, Louisiana, the local constable shot a Black man named John Keller five times, tied their former bondage and making in- him to a horse, and beat him to death. The con- dependent economic choices. stable was Mr. Keller’s employer and killed him for traveling to visit his sick wife after he was denied permission to go.210 Aside from limited arrests and prosecutions undertaken by federal officials, the vast major- In 1872, Congress heard testimony about a vio- ity of white individuals and mobs that commit- lent raid in Noxubee County, Mississippi. Ac- ted violence against Black people faced no cording to witnesses, a band of about 20 white consequence and had no fear of punishment. men in disguise took over several plantations to “straighten out the niggers” and “make the ne- groes subservient” by instilling fear. The mob whipped 25 or 30 people in the area and shot and killed a Black man named Dick Malone who had “encouraged Black men to arm them- selves and, if [the white men] came around, to give them a fight.”211

One of the testifying witnesses was a white man named John Taliaferro who had partici- pated in the violence before turning informant. This raid and others, he explained, aimed to ter- (Illustration by Matt Rota) rify Black people into fleeing the land they were renting so they’d be forced to work for the white planters. After such an attack, he went on, Black people who heard about the violence would leave their homes and sleep in the In Walker County, Texas, a white mob woods to evade roaming night raids.212 Talia- with a pack of hunting dogs tracked ferro also testified many of the county’s most prominent citizens and landowners were mem- down a Black man named Isaac and bers of the Ku Klux Klan.213 shot him for leaving the plantation where he had been enslaved.208 66 67 THE DANGER OF FREEDOM Reconstruction Violence Beyond the South

and resentment in every aspect of their The next year, in Georgetown, Colorado, Reconstruction violence was not limited to people in the North feared that Emancipa- lives.215 In July 1863, several days of “draft Edward Bainbridge was accused of fighting the South. Deep racial hostility and the ter- tion in the South would bring a wave of 222 RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION riots” broke out in lower Manhattan in New with a white man in a local bar. A white rifying threat of violence permeated life for Black migrants to their states. Anti-Black York City. White mobs angered by the lynch mob kidnapped him from jail and left Black people across the country, even in the sentiment grew more explicit in the North threat of being drafted to serve in the Union his body “dangling in the air.”223 16 “free states” where slavery had been and states like Iowa, Illinois, and Oregon Army and resentful of fighting a Civil War mostly abolished before the Civil War. took steps to ban Black migration.214 to end slavery randomly attacked Black Black people in the North were also tar- people on sight. The violence was quelled geted for exercising their citizenship rights. As disagreements over the continuation of By 1860, Black people in the North—who by state militia and federal troops, but not In 1871, on election day in Philadelphia, slavery escalated into a more prominent comprised less than 2 percent of the popu- before more than 100 people were killed, three Black men named Octavius Catto, political dispute in the 1840s and 1850s, lation—were subjected to discrimination most of them Black men.216 Isaac Chase, and Jacob Gordon were killed by white mobs wielding violence to sup- In the years after the Civil War, Black peo- press the Black vote.224 ple in the North faced prejudice and pre- sumptions of guilt whenever a crime was In summer 1875, a large crowd gathered at discovered and suffered brutal violence at the local fairgrounds in Hancock County, the hands of white mobs without any trial Indiana, to watch the lynching of a Black or process. man named William Kemmer. Mr. Kemmer, whose last name was also reported as In 1866, a Black teenager named John Tay- “Keimer,” had been accused of assaulting a lor was lynched by a mob of 200 white white woman. He died in a public spectacle people in Mason, Michigan.217 John was en- lynching before he could prove his inno- slaved at birth in Nelson County, Ken- cence. Thousands reportedly gathered to tucky.218 He joined the Union Army at age view his corpse and read a note the lynch 14, and later enlisted in the Michigan Col- mob had pinned to his coat: “It is the ver- ored Infantry.219 After he was accused of dict of one hundred and sixty men at Han- killing a white girl near Lansing, the 17- cock, Rush and Shelby, that his life is year-old was denied a trial. A white mob inadequate to meet the demands of jus- convinced that a legal execution was “too tice.”225 good for such a wretch” seized him from jail.220 Press accounts described his tortur- While Reconstruction-era violence was ous murder at the hands of a mob yelling most frequent in the South, Black people messages of anti-Black racial hatred.221 living in the North and West also faced lynchings, racially motivated violence, and Destruction of an orphanage for Black children during the 1863 New York City Draft Riots. bigotry that continued for decades. 68 69 cials several days later, Mrs. Scott said she had

Enforcing the not seen her husband since.226 THE DANGER OF FREEDOM

Racial Social Order In Georgia in 1867, a white man stabbed a Despite the Emancipation Proclamation, Mr. Black man named Andrew Price for not bring- Joiner—a literate and skilled Black carpenter— ing him a cup of coffee fast enough.227 Another was still enslaved by a white “master.” The master found a note Mr. Joiner had written to a white man shot a Black man named Hilliard Saxe Joiner was lynched in Beyond economic and political control, white Thrasher in the back for contradicting him.228 white girl staying in the home offering her “pro- Southerners used violence to punish perceived In 1865, a Black man named Plans Stanley was Unionville, South Carolina, in tection from the Yankees,” and interpreted it as transgressions of racial social boundaries. Dur- standing outside after church services in East March 1865—just weeks before the a sexual advance. The white man had Mr. ing Reconstruction, many African Americans Liberty, Texas, when a white man stabbed him, Joiner arrested. Soon after, local white men ab-

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION end of the Civil War. were beaten or killed for minor social trans- cursing, “God Damn your Black soul I will learn ducted Mr. Joiner from jail and hanged him gressions against white people, such as speak- you to stand in the way of white ladies.”229 from a tree.234 ing disrespectfully, refusing to step off the sidewalk, arguing, bumping into, or insulting a In 1866, a white man in Grayson County, Texas, (Illustration by Matt Rota) white person, or any other grievance a white shot and killed a Black man named Jack Stone man, woman, or child claimed. for failing to tip his hat.230 In the same county the previous year, a white man shot and killed a Black man named Thomas Daniels when he re- fused to change how he was doing his work.231 For being rude to his white employer, Roland Carswell was beaten, attacked with a knife, and Black people knew that they could fired at with a shotgun in Dougherty County, Georgia, in 1868.232 Throughout the former be attacked and killed for violating Confederacy, white people were determined to any social rule, intentionally or acci- maintain the total dominance of white su- dentally, as defined by any white premacy and they were willing to kill to do it.

person at any time. One of the racial boundaries white men pro- tected most fiercely was the prohibition on sex- ual, romantic, or any intimate contact between One summer evening in 1865, married couple Black men and white women. For decades be- Ed and Jinny Scott were walking down Main fore Emancipation, the strongest and most fer- Street in Richmond, Virginia, with two friends. vent arguments against abolishing slavery The four Black people parted to allow two claimed that freeing Black people would leave white men in Confederate uniforms to pass, white women vulnerable to Black men’s alleged but the men were outraged that they had not sexual aggression and result in rampant race- stepped off the sidewalk. One of them hit Jinny mixing and a collapse of civilization.233 When Scott in anger and she fled for safety. Her hus- freedom did come, any white person’s percep- band came to her defense, warning the white tion that a Black man was seeking intimacy man, “If you strike her again I will strike you.” In with a white woman could result in deadly mob response, a white mob seized Mr. Scott and violence. beat him severely, tortured him for hours, and took him away in a partially-sealed coffin. Re- porting the attack to Freedmen’s Bureau offi- 70 71 THE DANGER OF FREEDOM Sexual Violence Targeting freedman had committed the greater crime by killing the dogs, than the Black Women man who shot him.240

Black women seeking to assert the rights of slavery, and white men refused to relinquish Scholar Estelle Freedman writes that white citizenship and freedom after Emancipation their freedom to violate Black women with people “deepened the association of rape as faced dangers based on their race and sex impunity. Even before the Civil War’s end, an act committed by a Black man against a just as they had for generations while en- Southern state legislatures implemented white woman” during Reconstruction and “presumed that Black women either wel- RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION slaved. Black women were killed in the same laws providing different sexual protections lynchings and massacres that took the lives to white women and Black women. The comed [forced sexual relations with white 241 of Black men, but they were also more likely Georgia Code of 1861 specified a mandatory men] or had no moral purity to defend.” to suffer the trauma of sexual violence. sentencing range for raping a white woman The same white men who professed a fanat- ical concern for white women’s purity and but let courts decide whether and how to Black women students at the State Normal School in South In May 1870, 15 white men raped a Black punish rapes of Black women.238 safety held tightly to the social and legal Carolina, 1874. (University of South Carolina Archives) woman while other members of the mob view of Black women as promiscuous, lack- lynched her husband. Days later in the same Indifferent and complicit law enforcement ing virtue, and without the right to refuse the lust of any white man. North Carolina community, another white officers undermined federal attempts to pro- mind to pull the trigger,” and several of the mob raped a Black woman and “afterwards tect Black women. In October 1866, a Freed- men restrained her while one “applied the This particular narrative of racial difference stuck their knives in various parts of her men’s Bureau agent delivered arrest strap to my private parts until fatigued into 235 shielded white men from shame and conse- body.” News of incidents like these spread warrants for two white men accused of stopping, and I was more dead than alive.” quence when they employed sexual assault through the entire African American com- beating a Black woman named Silvey After another of the men—a former Confed- as yet another means of terrorizing Black munity, devastating Black women with the Soilean and killing her son, but the local erate soldier—raped Mrs. Childs, the mob 239 communities during Reconstruction. In terror of their dual vulnerability. Louisiana sheriff refused to arrest them. robbed her home and beat her daughters.244 That summer in Louisiana, Bureau records 1868, after a white Virginia judge was ac- cused of assaulting a Black woman, he tried Enslaved Black women had no legal means reveal an even more devastating story: In 1871, Harriet Simril testified before a Joint the case himself, jailed the woman to resist or protect themselves from sexual Congressional Committee that three white overnight, and forced her husband to pay assault by white slaveowners. As early as Capt. N. B. Blanton, Sparta, reports men had raped her in Columbia, South Car- court fees.242 In June 1866, also in Virginia, a the 1830s, Black abolitionist Maria Stewart Cuff Canara, freedman, and Dan olina, after her husband refused to vote for Black woman named Peggy Rich reported called for the law to recognize Black women Docking, white, had a quarrel be- the white supremacist ticket. In a coura- ” that a white man named James Smith had as full humans with rights to control their cause Docking had twice committed geous statement to federal lawmakers, Ms. assaulted her. He attacked Ms. Rich again bodies and to grant or withhold consent, but a rape on the freedman’s wife. Canara Simril named her attackers and described 236 after he was released on bail and was later reality lagged far behind. In Missouri in their brutality: “spitting in my face and started to Agent of Bureau, was 243 1855, a young enslaved Black woman named acquitted of both charges. tracked by hounds for ten miles and throwing dirt in my eyes . . . and after that Celia was convicted of murder and hanged they dragged me out into the big road, and fired on by Dan Docking, Norman In September 1866, a Black woman named for killing a white man who had enslaved they ravished me out there.”245 The details of Docking, and John Palmer. Shot in Rhoda Ann Childs reported to the Freed- and repeatedly raped her. The court rejected the attack were deemed too obscene for in- men’s Bureau that eight white planters had her self-defense claim, concluding that en- left side of back & (illegible) finally clusion in the committee’s published vol- come to her Georgia home demanding to slaved Black women had no right to resist reached agent, having killed 3 out of umes but the defiant courage Ms. Simril and 237 see her husband. When they learned Mrs. white slaveowners’ sexual advances. 4 of the dogs. Warrants issued for ar- so many other Black women exhibited in re- Childs was alone, the men kidnapped, beat, rest of parties but they have not been porting such attacks stands as enduring evi- and sexually assaulted her. Mrs. Childs’s affi- White Southerners were determined to found, and from statement of people dence of the sexualized terror Black women davit describes that one of the men “ran his maintain the economic exploitation and po- does not think they will be arrested, suffered during Reconstruction and their de- pistol into me, and said he had a hell of a litical dominance they had enjoyed during the people appearing to think the termination to survive. 72 73

In May 1866, Tom Conyers, a Black man, was Purportedly committed to protect white Organized Terror THE DANGER OF FREEDOM accused of offering a white girl a dime to have women and prevent interracial sex, this vio- sex with him and repeating the proposition lence was steeped in hypocrisy. Before and when she refused. As Mr. Conyers was being and Community after Emancipation, the same communities escorted from the courthouse to the jail in that lynched Black men for mere allegations of Daviess County, Kentucky, a mob including a Massacres former Confederate soldier and the white girl’s impoliteness or insults toward white women ig- father seized and hanged him from a tree.246 nored and excused white men’s blatant sexual attacks against Black women and girls. Slave In Orange County, North Carolina, in 1869, traders regularly raped the women they pur- As terror groups like the Ku Klux Klan gained after a mixed race man named Cyrus Guy al- chased248—one freedman told of a trader who prominence and boldness in the years follow- RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION legedly made a snide remark to a white sexually assaulted a Black woman in a group of ing the Confederacy’s defeat, they regularly woman, a white mob hanged him from a tree at enslaved people he was preparing to sell and waged raids on entire communities, targeting a busy intersection and left him for days be- then allowed his companions to do the same Black leaders and sending a message of intimi- neath a message written in blood to warn other for several days before she went to auction.249 dation and fear to all Black people. “mullatos” to know their place. It read: “For in- These attacks persisted during Reconstruction, sulting white ladies.”247 unchecked and unpunished. In January 1869, Daniel Blue testified against Klan members accused of burning the home of another Black person in North Carolina. A mob The white press often labeled these events as of Klansmen retaliated by breaking into Mr. Nkyinkyim Installation by Ghanaian artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo at “riots” even though they rarely featured mutual the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala- Blue’s home one night and murdering his preg- combat or white casualties. More accurately bama. (Human Pictures) nant wife before setting upon the couple’s chil- described as “massacres,” these lawless blood- dren, killing all five. One Klansman reportedly baths left many Black people dead and injured murdered the last child by “kicking its brains and saddled Black communities with trauma 250 out with the heel of his boot.” that endured for generations.

Though it is difficult to accurately quantify the total number of Black people killed in these mass attacks during Reconstruction, the era is full of documented massacres with staggering Community-wide massacres grew death tolls in communities including Memphis, terrifying in their frequency, as indi- Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1866; Opelousas, Louisiana, and Millican, vidual incidents of violence esca- Texas, in 1868; Union County, South Carolina, lated into large-scale attacks. White in 1871; Colfax, Louisiana, in 1873; and Vicks- mobs destroyed property and killed burg, Mississippi, in 1874. These attacks re- flected the ease with which white resentment dozens or even hundreds of African erupted into death and destruction for Black Americans just for being Black and communities and the relative impunity with within reach. which that violence spread. The frequency of mass murders ensured that no Black person could escape the constant threat of terror. 74 75 had been discharged when four white police persons and property as is their duty,” the

Memphis, Tennessee officers ordered them to disperse.254 The Freedmen’s Bureau’s investigation later con- THE DANGER OF FREEDOM frustrated soldiers refused to leave255 and the cluded, “[local police] were chiefly con- In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, white Irish immigrants—who comprised ensuing argument escalated into a cerned as murderers, incendiaries, and Memphis and other large Southern cities be- most of the city’s police force—and Black shootout.256 No one was injured except a robbers. At times they even protected the came popular destinations for newly eman- residents—who were regularly subjected to white officer who accidentally shot himself rest of the mob in their acts of violence.”265 cipated Black people in search of safety, police harassment and brutality for appear- in the hand, but word of the conflict spread Union troops stationed in the city provided 257 resources, and opportunity. As the site of a ing “suspicious.”252 White newspapers wors- rapidly. Angry white mobs formed and little help, claiming their forces were too Freedmen’s Bureau office and a base for fed- ened this situation by encouraging white proceeded to inflict terror on South Mem- small to take on the deadly white mobs.266 eral troops, Memphis was a particularly Memphis residents to view Black people as phis, where the majority of Black people

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION sought-after location and it experienced a dangerous and lawless.253 lived. City recorder John C. Creighton en- Even after the massacre’s toll of death and Black population surge.251 couraged the deadly attack by telling the destruction was revealed, Memphis’s white In May 1866, a group of Black Union sol- mob: “Boys, I want you to go ahead and kill community refused to take responsibility. A Within a year of the war’s end, tensions in diers in uniform were socializing on the every damned one of the nigger race and Freedmen’s Bureau investigation reported Memphis were high, particularly between streets of South Memphis days after they burn up the cradle.”258 that most white people only regretted the fi- nancial costs of the violence.267 An editorial From May 1 to 3, white mobs indiscrimi- in The Memphis Argus, a white-owned nately beat, robbed, tortured, shot, raped, newspaper, declared, “The whole blame of and killed Black men, women, and children. this most tragical and bloody riot lies, as They also destroyed property and looted usual, with the poor, ignorant, deluded anything of value.259 At least 90 Black homes Blacks.” The paper attributed the massacre were destroyed by fire, many with residents to Black gun ownership: still inside, and the mobs burned down all of the city’s Black churches and schools.260 [W]e cannot suffer the occasion to pass without again calling the atten- African American survivors later recounted tion of the authorities to the indis- ” the brutal violence to a Congressional com- pensable necessity of disarming these mittee formed to investigate the massacre. poor creatures, who have so often One woman testified that when her 16-year- shown themselves utterly unfit to be old daughter, Rachel Hatcher, tried to save a trusted with firearms. On this occa- neighbor from his burning home, a white sion the facts all go to show that but mob surrounded the building and shot the for this much-abused privilege ac- young girl to death.261 Another witness re- corded to them by misguided and ported that a white mob shot guns into the misjudging friends, there would have Freedmen’s Hospital and injured patients, been no riot. . . . The universal ques- including a small, paralyzed child.262 tions asked on all corners of the streets is, “Why are not the negroes African Americans received little protection disarmed?”268 from local authorities during the attacks, as the city’s mayor was reportedly drunk throughout the massacre263 and many law No white people were ever held legally ac- enforcement officials joined the roving countable for their participation in the mobs.264 “Instead of protecting the rights of Memphis Massacre.269

The Memphis Massacre. (Harper's Weekly, May 26, 1866) 76 77

Accusations of THE DANGER OF FREEDOM Crime It is impossible to give the number of negroes that have been killed. ” Many Black people killed during the Recon-

struction era were lynched after being accused (New York Times, Aug. 30, 1874) of a crime and before receiving any trial or fair There is a great many missing that have not investigation. Though functioning courts and RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION jails existed in most Southern communities, been heard from. . . . The freed people have many Black “suspects” were deprived of the river.271 The dead were reported as Bob Baten, due process rights their citizenship now guar- Stephen Bryant, Jarrett Burrows, George had all their arms taken away from them, anteed, especially when they were accused of Green, Bill Ivey, Nick Ivey, Dug Jamison, Bob an offense against a white person. Love, William McGhee, Hays Peebles, John and they are in the most deplorable Reagan, Dick Shaw, Tom Shelton, Albert condition of any people on earth. Indeed, white mobs and their defenders regu- Williams, Alfred Williams, and Dan Williams.272 larly justified deadly attacks as necessary to curb and punish Black criminality that would Soon after this mass lynching, a local newspa- otherwise run rampant now that Black people per published a letter from a white resident All that were living in the county by had been freed. A review of the 1919 book, The that excused the mob’s murderous actions as Truth About Lynching and the Negro in the “self-defense” and insisting that the Black men themselves, have been robbed of every South, summarized the author’s argument that —“these incarnate devils”—had received the thing of the least value—even taking the “the lynching of Black men prevents their be- punishment they “richly deserve[d].”273 The let- coming over-dangerous to the white South.” ter declared, without evidence, that if allowed under dressing of freed women, their bed Allegations of Black men raping white women, to live, the dead Black men “might [have] vio- the book’s author concluded, needed to be pun- late[d] the persons of a dozen ladies, burn[ed] a clothes; in a word every thing of the ished by periodic lynching—preferably by burn- hundred houses and kill[ed] as many men.”274 ing.270 Published at the early 20th century peak smallest value, and then driven from their of racial terror lynching, such assertions were homes into the woods. rooted in the bloodshed that emerged during Reconstruction.

In August 1874, an armed mob of several hun- It is the most sickening sight I ever Forged after Emancipation and used dred white men abducted 16 African American men from jail in Trenton, Tennessee, after they to fuel the growth of prisons, convict witnessed to see . . . . were accused of shooting at two white men. leasing, and racial terror lynching, Six of the men were afterward found lying the stereotype of innate Black crimi- along a nearby road: four were dead, their bod- ies “riddled with bullets,” while the other two nality produced a presumption of were severely wounded and later died before guilt that burdened Black men, Freedmen's Bureau Correspondence receiving medical attention. The other 10 Black women, and children in the U.S. for Hopkins County, Texas, July 17, 1868275 men abducted from the jail were eventually years to come. discovered drowned at the bottom of a nearby 78 79 In 1866, Jane Bugg reported to Freedmen’s Bu- On August 29, 1873, a Black man named Dan

Arbitrary and reau officials that a group of white men had Calhoun was sleeping near Brighton Station on THE DANGER OF FREEDOM come to her home in Gallatin, Tennessee, and the Paducah Railroad in Tennessee when three Random Violence demanded $200 from her husband, Stephen. white men poured turpentine on his clothes Individual Black people and fami- When he told the men he didn’t have that and set him on fire. Mr. Calhoun ran shrieking lies were robbed, harassed, beaten, much money, they beat Mrs. Bugg and her hus- for help but suffered severe burns before the or killed simply for existing and band, then shot and killed him.276 fire was extinguished. He died the following Though Black people could become targets of crossing paths with the wrong white day. One of the white men later admitted that violence for asserting their independence and A group of white men came to the home of he committed this fatal crime “just for the fun rights or for being accused of crime or social person at the wrong time. Lewis Powell in Hickman, Tennessee, in 1868, of seeing [the Black man] jump.”281 transgression, some of the most terrifying acts and demanded feed for their horses and food RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION of Reconstruction violence were those that for themselves. When Mr. Powell left the home During Reconstruction, African Americans ex- seemed random and arbitrary. to try to avoid conflict, the white men shot and perienced freedom and citizenship rights for killed his wife in front of their three daugh- the first time in national history. But this was a ters.277 In Prince Edward County, Virginia, in dangerous period during which Black people 1868, four Black women were at home singing were targeted by white people intent on when a white man ordered them to stop. They thwarting progress toward racial equality. refused and the man entered the house, beat the women severely, and cut one of them with a Historian Eric Foner describes Reconstruction knife. Despite the brutal attack, the man was as “the darkest page in the saga of American fined just $15 and issued a judicial warning.278 history.”282 In a letter to the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1868, a Black man living in Texas described Some attacks came without the slightest pre- the hopeless and unprotected status under cipitating conflict. In Fannin County, Texas, in which many African Americans suffered. “I am 1866, a group of Black people were on their this morning situated like a mariner whose ves- way to see a show when a group of white sel is sinking,” the letter began, “and he is drip- men—to “thin the niggers out a little and drive ping out slips of paper, hoping they may fall them back to their holes”—shot and killed three into some friendly hands, that the world may Black people and wounded many more.279 know what became of him.”

[T]here is generally some pretext got up by the rebels for every murder. The would-be social class of rebels ” In September 1869, a group of about stand ever ready to fabricate false hoods and make excuses for all mur- 26 African American men, women, ders committed by their friends.283 and children were picnicking in Robinson Spring, Florida, when two armed white men shot at the group 15 times, instantly killing a Black man named Wyatt Young fishing in a nearby creek, and a 2-year-old boy named Stewart Livingston.280 (Illustration by Matt Rota) 80 81 THE DANGER OF FREEDOM The Impeachment of

Andrew Johnson Confederate states would undermine aboli- was clearly a strong motivation for Con- tion and Black citizenship.290 “If we leave gress’s action. “[T]he bloody and untilled [freed Black people] to the legislation of fields of the ten unreconstructed states, the Vice President Andrew Johnson was ele- their late masters,” Rep. Stevens remarked, unsheeted ghosts of the two thousand vated to the presidency in April 1865 after a “we had better left them in bondage.”291 In- murdered negroes in Texas, cry, if the dead Confederate sympathizer assassinated deed, Southern states quickly sought to re- ever evoke vengeance, for the punishment President Abraham Lincoln soon after the establish enslavement by constitutional of Andrew Johnson,” declared Rep. William RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION end of the Civil War. Progressive federal of- means, including convict leasing and D. Kelley of Pennsylvania.297 ficials were initially optimistic that Presi- sharecropping. dent Johnson would prioritize protecting The House of Representatives quickly ap- the rights of emancipated Black people and The Johnson Administration’s disregard for proved the impeachment resolution by a hold Southern states accountable for se- Black civil rights also may have embold- vote of 126 to 47.298 A week later it issued 11 cession,284 but that hope was short-lived. ened white mobs to wage increasingly vio- articles of impeachment.299 The Senate lent terror campaigns against Black people trial characterized the Congressional battle Within one month of taking office, Presi- throughout the South, including in cities with Johnson as “one of the last great bat- dent Johnson—a former slave holder from like Memphis292 and New Orleans.293 tles against slavery”300—but he was spared Tennessee—issued an amnesty proclama- Rather than condemn the violence, Johnson removal from office by one vote. Johnson tion granting full pardons “to all white per- pardoned thousands of secessionists and remained president for the few months re- sons who have, directly or indirectly, blamed the bloodshed on “the Radical Con- maining in the term, and Ulysses S. Grant participated in the existing rebellion.”285 gress”—federal representatives who favored won the 1868 election. That same day, he formally recognized laws enforcing Black rights.294 state governments in Tennessee, Virginia, To the end of his presidency, Johnson con- Arkansas, and Louisiana, even though they Northern outrage at Johnson’s rhetoric tinued to oppose Reconstruction and what remained largely controlled by former Con- helped progressive candidates win a super- he deemed “coercive” methods of protect- federate officials.286 majority in Congress, which overrode his ing Black civil rights. “The attempt to place vetoes of radical legislation like the Civil the white population under the domination In his first State of the Union Address later Rights Act of 1866, the Fourteenth Amend- of persons of color in the South,” he said in that year, Johnson announced that he ment, and the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. December 1868 in his last State of the would only require the former Confederate To prevent Johnson from removing key ex- Union address, “has impaired, if not de- states to accept the Thirteenth Amend- ecutive officials, Congress in 1867 passed stroyed, the friendly relations that had pre- ment abolishing slavery in order to “resume over presidential veto the Tenure of Office viously existed between them; and mutual their places in the two branches of the Na- Act, which required Congressional approval distrust has engendered a feeling of ani- tional Legislature” and “complete the work for any presidential removal of an executive mosity which, leading in some instances to 287 officeholder.295 Johnson violated the law collision and bloodshed, has prevented the of restoration.” Johnson explicitly refused Thomas Nast political cartoon depicting President Andrew Johnson's to require voting rights for Black people attempt to veto the Freedmen's Bureau. (Harper's Weekly, 1866) twice within a year, and in February 1868, cooperation between the two races so es- and instead left states to decide their own Reps. Stevens and John Bingham proposed sential to the success of industrial enter- electoral policies.288 He also ignored the an impeachment resolution.296 prise in the Southern States.”301 Progressive officials like Representative pleas of a delegation led by Frederick Dou- Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and glass, who “took exception” to Johnson’s Although the official charges hinged on Today, Johnson remains the first of only Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts “entirely unsound and prejudicial” views on Johnson’s removal of executive officers, his three American presidents ever impeached argued that lenient treatment of the former Black voting rights.289 opposition to meaningful Reconstruction while in office. 83

RECONSTRUCTION’S END

rganized white resistance to Black freedom and citizenship When Congress intervened by its recon- used violence and terror to ren- “ struction measures to defeat the reactionary Oder the promise of Reconstruc- program of the South, there swept over that tion a nightmare. section a crime-storm of devastating fury. Lawlessness and violence filled the land, Though Black communities and their sup- and terror stalked abroad by day, and it porters worked to fight that terror and en- burned and murdered by night.302 sure the success of Reconstruction, the era’s promise was ultimately destroyed and aban- doned through political and legal sabotage. 84 85

Reconstruction vs. I came home the 4th of July. I found RECONSTRUCTION’S END my little daughter at home. She had Southern run away from the place where she ” was abused; but I saw the rest of the Redemption children playing in the yard, and she was in the door sitting there, and I thought that was strange because she was a mighty playful chap, and I Congressional efforts to document and re- asked, “What are you sitting here spond to raging anti-Black violence in the for- RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION mer Confederacy culminated in an effort to for?” And she says, “Pap, Mr. Jones gather facts about the scope of the problem. has beat me nearly to death. [The From April 1871 to February 1872, 21 Congress- witness weeping.] . . . She pulled up men composing the Joint Select Committee to her coat here and showed me. “Look Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late here, papa, where he cut me,” and Insurrectionary States travelled through the there were great gashes on her South to investigate escalating racial violence thighs, as long as my finger. I buried Freedmen in Richmond, Virginia, 1865. (Library of Congress) in the region. These proceedings yielded 13 vol- her with them.”306 umes of first-hand testimony from Black and white witnesses, including state officials, for- The Union League, a Black-led organization, mer Confederate soldiers, formerly enslaved was founded in 1863 to support African Ameri- Federal efforts to address racial violence in- people, clergymen, teachers, and other commu- can participation in politics, education, and so- cluded this type of Congressional inquiry, fed- nity members.303 cial efforts. The League’s meetings had to eral military occupation of Southern states, and “Redemption” was the political happen covertly due to threats by the Ku Klux the operations of the Freedmen’s Bureau. At At the Alabama hearings, John Childers, a Klan and other white supremacist groups; by movement to restore white su- the same time, a growing group of African Black laborer living in Sumter County, reported 1868, League participation declined in the face premacy as a foundational institu- American leaders also worked to speak out that he had been confronted by a white mob, of growing Klan violence—but in its brief exis- against the racial violence of the era and agi- tion in the South. struck in the head with a gun, and threatened tence, the Union League successfully intro- tate for meaningful help. Many Black people, with additional harm if he voted for pro-civil duced thousands of Black citizens to the including the formerly enslaved, emerged as rights candidates. Mr. Childers tearfully re- American political process and demonstrated community leaders in the first years after Its advocates, called Redeemers, were white counted the brutal beating that his young Black people’s willingness to risk great harm to Emancipation when Black citizenship was es- businessmen and wealthy planters who had daughter received at the hands of her white work toward their own advancement.308 tablished and the fate of Black Americans was enslaved Black people just a few years earlier. employer after the man’s child misplaced a hat a national issue. Immediately following the Confederate defeat, while in her care.304 Just nine years old, Mr. While federal officials made weak attempts to the federal government imposed restrictions Childers’s daughter died of her injuries eight combat racial violence and Black communities Black political and social leaders were among that rendered these white men unable to vote, days later.305 tried to organize in their own defense, former those most often targeted for mob attack and hold office, or otherwise exercise control over Confederates worked to parlay violent terror murder. Those who chose to run for office or the lands and governments they had once into renewed political power. organize communities knowingly put their lives ruled. Meanwhile, free Black men were now at risk. Many Reconstruction-era leaders served voting and holding office as representatives of as ministers or teachers, and Black churches their states. Redeemers staunchly opposed the and schools were also targets of violence.307 progressive politicians who achieved adoption of the Reconstruction Amendments and pas- sage of the Civil Rights Act—but this was not merely a political dispute.309 86 87 Forced to rejoin the Union and accept the abo-

lition of slavery, Redeemers remained most RECONSTRUCTION’S END loyal to the doctrine of white supremacy and adamantly opposed to anything that threat- ened its continuation. This ideology, rooted in the philosophical foundations of slavery and anti-Black racism, was bitterly antagonized by Black political representation and suffrage. Re- deemers began an unrelenting campaign to in- timidate Black voters, disrupt pro-civil rights political gatherings, undermine elections, and RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION return power back to white leaders who sup- ported the former Confederacy’s ideals.310 Re- deemers also supported and legitimized the racial violence committed by paramilitary or- ganizations like the Ku Klux Klan.

The Supreme Court of the United States, 1868.

The Court’s intervention was orchestrated by The Supreme Court obliged. After consolidat- Judicial and Southern white leaders, echoing earlier argu- John Archibald Campbell, a white lawyer and ing Campbell’s and several other cases into The ments used to justify slavery, decried the Ku former Supreme Court Justice who had voted Slaughterhouse Cases, the Court in 1872 held Klux Klan Act as “the crowning act of central- with the majority in the 1857 Dred Scott deci- that the Fourteenth Amendment protected only Political ization and consolidation” that “brushe[d] away sion that held that Black people could not be the “privileges and immunities” conferred by at once and finally the all State machinery and American citizens.316 Campbell, himself a national citizenship—a narrow category of Abandonment local authority and substitute[d] in their place slaveowner, later left the bench to help lead the rights mostly irrelevant to the struggles facing the Federal bayonets.”312 In their view, federal Confederate States of America. He bitterly op- Southern Black people.320 The majority rea- action to punish racial violence was an unjusti- posed Reconstruction after the war’s end.317 soned that rights derived from a person’s state fied intrusion on state authority, even if state citizenship were enforceable only in state In response to growing racial terror in the governments were doing nothing to combat the When Louisiana’s Reconstruction legislature courts, which were increasingly dominated by South, Congress passed a series of Enforce- racial violence themselves. implemented regulations consolidating New Redeemers. The Slaughterhouse Cases marked ment Acts in 1870 and 1871, the broadest being Orleans slaughterhouses into one location out- the 13th time in seven years that the Supreme 311 the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. The United States Supreme Court ultimately side the city, Campbell saw an opportunity to Court struck down federal laws designed to agreed with the white Southerners’ argument, rob the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amend- protect freedmen and the decision greatly lim- issuing opinions that severely undermined the ments of their purpose.318 He filed suit on be- ited the Fourteenth Amendment’s reach. In a legal architecture of Reconstruction. While half of a group of white butchers and argued dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen J. Field African American voters faced murder and ter- that the Louisiana law forbidding slaughter- predicted that the amendment would be left “a ror, the Court was more concerned that this houses within city limits interfered with the vain and idle enactment.”321 These laws empowered the federal federal law might “fetter and degrade the State butchers’ livelihoods in violation of the Thir- governments.”313 From the nation’s founding to teenth Amendment’s ban on slavery and the At the same time, Congress and new President government to prosecute civil rights 1865, the Supreme Court had struck down just Fourteenth Amendment’s “privileges and im- Ulysses S. Grant began to retreat from other 314 violations as crimes and authorized two Congressional acts as unconstitutional. munities clause.” By bringing cases based in federal efforts to protect Black rights and lives. individuals to seek redress in fed- Between 1865 and 1872, the Court did so 12 facts unrelated to the Reconstruction Amend- times.315 eral court when their civil rights ments’ core purposes, Campbell hoped to use the laws as “weapons to bring about Recon- were violated. struction’s ultimate demise.”319 88 89 Southern racial violence became an increas-

ingly divisive issue and a politically weakened Redemption Wins RECONSTRUCTION’S END President Grant grew reluctant to intervene. Mississippi’s Reconstruction Governor Adelbert Ames, a Union military veteran and a trans- Empowered by the Amnesty Act, Confederate That same year, large numbers of white su- plant from the North, requested federal troops veterans regained political control by espous- premacist candidates were elected to office in to suppress intense white violence targeting ing white supremacist rhetoric and employing Alabama largely due to the use of violence, Black communities during state elections. terror tactics of intimidation. Confederate threats, terror, and fraud. In Eufaula, Alabama, President Grant refused and instead sent an Colonel James Milton Smith was elected Geor- a branch of the paramilitary White League exasperated letter encouraging Ames to broker gia’s governor in 1872 and returned the state to waged a bloody attack against Black voters to a “peace agreement” between the state militia

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION white supremacist rule, vowed to undo the in- ensure white supremacist victory at the ballot and the white mobs, explaining that “[t]he fluence of post-war Reconstruction “misrule,” box.328 The Alabama election of 1874 restored whole public are tired out with these annual and quickly partnered with the like-minded former Confederate leaders to legislative and 322 autumnal outbreaks in the South.” legislature to roll back gains that Black Geor- executive authority, ended Reconstruction in gians had accumulated under the Reconstruc- the state, and elected Governor George Hous- Congress and President Grant also took affir- tion administrations.326 ton. He led a political effort to reverse the aims mative steps to empower former members of of Reconstruction in Alabama and restore the the Confederate Army. In Virginia, a few months after his 1874 inaugu- dominance of “the great governing race—the ration as governor, former Confederate General white people of the land.”329 James L. Kemper delivered an address to the Jefferson Long (Library of Congress) General Assembly outlining the racial regime By 1875, the state legislature was dominated he planned to construct: by white supremacists who called a Constitu- tional Convention to amend Alabama’s “Recon- struction Constitution” ratified just seven years The Amnesty Act of 1872 ended of- Born into enslavement in 1836, Rep. Jefferson Henceforth, let it be understood of earlier. The 1868 convention’s 100 delegates fice-holding disqualifications for Long was elected Georgia’s first Black repre- all, that the political equality of the had included 18 Black men and 79 white sup- sentative to Congress in 1870. He became the most Confederate leaders and other races is settled, and the social equal- porters of Reconstruction’s aims.330 Delegates first Black person to speak on the House floor “ to the 1875 convention, by contrast, included civil and military officials who had when he urged rejection of the Amnesty Act: ity of the races is a settled impossibil- rebelled against the Union.323 ity. Let it be understood of all, that 80 Redeemers, seven Independents, and just 12 Reconstructionists—four of whom were any organized attempt on the part of Black.331 Among other provisions, the new Con- Mr. Speaker, I propose, as a man the weaker and relatively diminish- stitution—ratified with more than 70 percent of By the time of the 1872 amnesty, the vast ma- raised a slave, my mother a slave be- ing race to dominate the domestic the vote—mandated “[s]eparate schools . . . for jority of white former Confederates in the fore me, and my ancestry slaves as far ” governments, is the wildest chimera the children of citizens of African descent.”332 South were free to own land, vote, hold office, back as I can trace them . . . If this of political insanity. Let each race set- and make laws. Only a few hundred Confeder- House removes the disabilities of dis- tle down in final resignation to the lot With many Southern governments “redeemed,” ate leaders remained under restriction.324 The loyal men by modifying the test-oath, of which has inexorably consigned white violence against Black people intensified. very same people who had so recently fought I venture to prophesy you will again it.327 to maintain white supremacy and retain slavery have trouble from the very same men were now well positioned to seize control of 325 their state governments, create laws and poli- who gave you trouble before. cies to suppress the new civil rights of Black people, and enable continued racial terror. The Act passed and Rep. Long’s unheeded warning became reality. 90 91 On Easter Sunday in 1873, 300 white people Federal prosecutors in Louisiana brought crim-

attacked a courthouse in Colfax, Louisiana, inal charges against members of the Colfax RECONSTRUCTION’S END after Black protestors peacefully challenged mobs under the Enforcement Act. Despite fraudulent election results.333 Even after the overwhelming evidence, one defendant was ac- The Equal Justice Initiative has doc- outnumbered Black crowd waved white flags quitted and jurors failed to reach verdicts umented at least 12 large scale mas- of surrender, the assault continued and scores against any others. Before retrial, the defense sacres in Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, of unarmed Black men who sought shelter in challenged whether the federal court had juris- Tennessee, Mississippi, and South the courthouse or attempted to flee were shot diction to hear the case at all, arguing for the and killed. Approximately 50 African Ameri- first time that the Enforcement Act was uncon- Carolina between 1872 and 1876, cans who survived the afternoon of bloodshed stitutional as applied to private persons who many of which targeted politically were taken prisoner and later executed by the were not state actors. The court allowed the (Rutland Weekly Herald (Rutland, Vt.), May 1, 1873.) RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION active African Americans. white militia. As many as 150 African Ameri- trial to proceed, but when three defendants cans were killed in the massacre, described as were convicted of conspiracy, the judge ruled “the bloodiest single act of carnage in all of Re- the Enforcement Act unconstitutional and dis- Federal protection disappeared almost immedi- construction.”334 missed the indictments, initiating an appeal to ately after the Cruikshank decision. The Justice the Supreme Court.335 Department dropped 179 Enforcement Act prosecutions in Mississippi alone.337 Black peo- ple had few federal troops to turn to for protec- tion, as the government had already withdrawn troops from all Southern states except Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Violence grew In United States v. Cruikshank, more frequent and bolder—white mobs com- decided on March 27, 1876, the mitted attacks on African Americans undis- guised and in broad daylight.338 Black people Court upheld the lower court’s dis- dreaded the withdrawal of the few remaining missal and ruled that the Fourteenth federal troops. Amendment protected citizens only In 1876, when a politically beleaguered Presi- from state action and not from vio- dent Grant decided not to seek a third term, lent attacks committed by private Republican Rutherford B. Hayes ran against individuals.336 Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. Hayes, an aboli- tionist and Union army veteran injured in the Civil War, lost the popular vote to Tilden, a for- This ruling rendered the Enforcement Act a mer New York governor supported by the ma- dead letter and severely limited the Fourteenth jority of Southern states. But the Electoral Amendment. African Americans in the South College results were disputed, sparking a con- were now at the mercy of white terrorists and tentious Congressional debate and threatening 339 had no recourse in federal courts, as long as regional political conflict. the terrorists remained private actors.

(Charles Harvey Weigall/Harper's Weekly, May 10, 1873) 92 The decision to remove soldiers from A Vanishing Hope the South led to the restoration of white supremacy in voting through ” the systematic disenfranchisement of The presence of federal troops in the South Black people, virtually accomplish- during the Reconstruction era acted as a pene- ing over the next eight decades what trable dam holding back some of the violence, slavery had accomplished in the political suppression, and racist rhetoric of country’s first eight decades . . . Re- those intent on restoring white supremacist construction would not remove the rule. Just 12 years after Emancipation, that dam original stain of slavery so much as

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION vanished. smear it onto the other parts of the 345 The vast majority of Black people in America Constitution’s fabric . . . still lived in the South, where without federal protection they were at the mercy of the same white officials who had very recently waged a The legal and military abandonment that came war to keep them in bondage. In the words of with the fall of Reconstruction was devastating. Henry Adams, a Black man living in Louisiana, It threatened many of the social and political “The whole South—every state in the South— gains Black people had managed to make had got us into the hands of the very men that amidst the terror and violence that followed the held us as slaves.”343 Civil War.

On the defeat of Reconstruc- tion, The Nation offered a A formerly enslaved woman, photographed in Putnam County, Geor- gia, in 1941. (Irving Rusinow/National Archives) solemn assessment: “The Negro will disappear from the field of In January 1877, a bipartisan electoral commis- Within two months of taking office, President national politics. Henceforth, sion created to resolve the election controversy Hayes ended federal troops’ role in Southern the nation, as a nation, will have 344 voted to award the popular vote and the con- politics. Southern Redeemers rejoiced at Re- nothing more to do with him.” tested Electoral College votes to Hayes, giving construction’s demise. him a narrow victory over Tilden. In exchange, For millions of Black men, Hayes agreed to use his presidential authority “This is the Centennial crow that our old game women, and children, the aban- to withdraw all remaining federal troops from rooster, who has been cooped up for twelve donment foretold a grim future: the South.340 long years, now sings in clarion tones . . . We can now shout [and] join our anthems of joy and glory with the victory of our time honored old party. Hallelujah!”341 the white supremacist John W. Burgess exalted. “The white men of the South need now have no further fear that The “Compromise of 1877” ended the [federal powers] will ever again give them- selves over to the vain imagination of the politi- Reconstruction as part of a political cal equality of man.”342 deal, with no inquiry into whether its goals had been accomplished.

(Illustration by Dola Sun) 94 As a new era of white supremacy took hold in “I want to give you niggers a few words of plain the South, education remained a priority talk and advice,” Oates began, denouncing the among African Americans. But accessing edu- previous speaker. cation became more difficult in the face of growing hostility and dwindling resources. White employers fired Black workers for at- No such address as you have just lis- tending school and unchecked white suprema- tened to is going to do you any good; cist groups like the Ku Klux Klan burned down it’s going to spoil you. You might just ” school buildings and beat and murdered stu- as well understand that this is a white A schoolhouse for Black students 346 dents and teachers. Reconstruction efforts to man’s country as far as the South is (Library of Congress) educate freedmen had established the South’s

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION concerned, and we are going to make first system of universal public education. But you keep your place. Understand the continuation of that system now relied on Southern state governments quickly went to 348 the support of Southern white leaders, many of that. I have nothing more to say. work altering their constitutions to disenfran- whom remained convinced that Black educa- chise Black citizens and codify racial hierarchy. tion was wasteful and even dangerous.347 From 1885 to 1908, all 11 former Confederate Reconstruction’s end greatly impeded Black states rewrote their constitutions to restrict The premature withdrawal of fed- In many ways, the 1881 launch of the Tuskegee economic and political advancement. With fed- voting rights using poll taxes, literacy tests, and eral troops unleashed a bold wave of Institute represented a continuing Black com- eral lawmakers and courts disinterested in en- felon disenfranchisement.349 violence that overwhelmed the few forcing Black people’s constitutional rights to mitment to educational achievement. The re- remaining protective structures and marks Alabama governor and former equality and fair treatment, discriminatory laws After Louisiana’s post-Reconstruction constitu- Confederate Colonel William C. Oates gave at and lending practices barred Black people from tion imposed these restrictions on voting cemented Black people in an inferior a Tuskegee graduation ceremony in the 1890s land ownership for decades. By 1910, for exam- rights, the number of Black registered voters economic, social, and political posi- illustrates white officials’ hostility toward Black ple, more than 40 percent of white farmers in dropped from 130,000 during Reconstruction tion—an “era of second slavery.”352 education in the post-Reconstruction South. Georgia were landowners, compared to just 7 to just 5,000 by 1900 and just 1,000 by percent of the state’s Black farmers. 1904.350 In the words of John B. Knox, an Ala- bama lawyer and president of the state’s 1901 With the last meaningful layer of federal pro- Constitutional Convention, “If we would have tection removed and the Supreme Court’s tol- A woman once enslaved by President white supremacy, we must establish it by law— Andrew Jackson sits with her great erance of extrajudicial violence, legal not by force or fraud.”351 grandchildren, 1867. (Carl Giers) oppression and racial terror lynchings became defining features of Black life in America for Local and state laws combined to trap Black the next 80 years. people in a form of second-class citizenship by mandating segregation in schools, trains, Over the century that this racial caste system buses, motels, and restaurants; outlawing in- reigned, lynching became the weapon of choice terracial marriage; authorizing economic ex- and a technique of enforcing racial exploitation. ploitation through convict leasing and Between Reconstruction and World War II, mandatory labor contracts; and barring Black thousands of African Americans were lynched, people from holding public office, voting in often in public acts of torture that traumatized elections, or serving on juries. But perhaps the Black people across the country. Reconstruc- most devastating legacy of Reconstruction’s tion is the prologue to that story—the thou- failure was the deadly violence that continued sands of Black people killed between 1865 and to plague Black communities for decades. 1877 foreshadowed the bloodshed that would persist as the ideology of white supremacy continued to strangle the hope for equality. 97

In 1863 the Negro was granted And this is why Frederick Dou- freedom from physical slavery glass would say that emancipation through the Emancipation Procla- for the Negro was freedom to ” mation. But he was not given land hunger, freedom to the winds and to make that freedom meaningful. rains of heaven, freedom without At the same time, our government roofs to cover their heads. It was was giving away millions of acres freedom without bread to eat, of land in the Midwest and the without land to cultivate. It was West, which meant that the nation freedom and famine at the same was willing to undergird its white time. peasants from Europe with an economic floor, while refusing to And it is a miracle that the Negro do it for its Black peasants from has survived. A TRUTH THAT Africa who were held in slavery two hundred and forty four years. —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1967354 NEEDS TELLING f Reconstruction has been a largely under-studied period of American his- tory, the racial terror that Black people Isuffered during Reconstruction is nearly absent from public memory. The deadly at- tacks Black communities endured in the As the egalitarian spirit of post-Civil War first years of freedom—and the institutions America evaporated under the desire for that tolerated that violence—laid a founda- “ national reunification, Black Americans, tion for the era of racial terror lynching that simply by existing, served as a problematic followed and the segregation and inequality reminder of this nation’s failings. White that endure still. Even as we have fewer de- America dealt with this inconvenience by tails, retain less documentation, and know constructing a savagely enforced system of the names of fewer victims of Reconstruc- racial apartheid that excluded Black people tion-era violence than of later periods, we almost entirely from mainstream American cannot learn the lessons of Reconstruction’s life – a system so grotesque that Nazi Ger- failures or comprehend the legacies of that many would later take inspiration from it violent trauma until we confront the devas- for its own racist policies. tation it wrought and challenge the public narratives that deny the truth of that past. —Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project, 2019353 98 99 The Union prevailed as victors in the Civil War, Those installed around the turn of the 20th

but white Southerners and supporters of the century aimed to invent historical fact by ro- A TRUTH THAT NEEDS TELLING Confederacy won the narrative war by distort- manticizing and glorifying enslavement, val- ing memory of the conflict and the Reconstruc- orizing those who fought to preserve it, and tion period that followed. In the South, reframing Southern secession as an honorable Reconstruction was largely documented as a effort to defend local autonomy and states’ vengeful period in which Northern political in- rights. “The men were right who wore the gray, terests imposed illegitimate rule and Black and right can never die,” reads the inscription dominance on a beleaguered but determined on the Confederate Monument at the Colbert white South that ultimately regained its right- County Courthouse in Tuscumbia, Alabama. ful claim to self-rule. As early as 1866, Edward Erected by the UDC in 1911, the monument in- RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION Pollard’s book, The Lost Cause, praised the cludes the prayer, “God of our fathers, help us Confederate rebellion as a constitutional and to preserve for our children the priceless treas- noble cause. That view was soon a “civil reli- ure of the true story of the Confederate soldier.” gion” embraced throughout the white South by clergy, political leaders, and social organiza- In his 1935 book, Black Reconstruction in tions like the United Daughters of the Confed- America, W.E.B. Du Bois described white eracy (UDC), founded in 1895.355 Southerners’ Reconstruction narratives as “de- liberate and unbounded attempts to prove a case and win a dispute and preserve economic mastery and political domination by besmirch- ing the character, motives, and commonsense, of every single person who dared disagree with Today, thousands of Confederate the dominant philosophy of the white South.”356 He continued, “One cannot study Re- monuments across the United States construction without first frankly facing the serve a function more potent than facts of universal lying.”357 simply honoring the dead or re- Marchers gather to celebrate the legacy of the Confederacy Monuments to the Confederacy were installed in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, in 2011. (Stephen Chu) counting historical events. generations after the Civil War. That activity quickened in response to the increasingly suc- opposed the use of federal law to prosecute When Attorney General Robert Kennedy came cessful mid-20th century campaign for African lynching in the South. It read: “We do not want to Montgomery in April 1963 to urge Alabama American rights and equality—a period some a return of the shackles of Reconstruction days Governor George C. Wallace to end his opposi- have termed a “second Reconstruction.”358 To upon the backs of our people.”359 Like every tion to school desegregation, pro-segregation oppose that civil rights movement, Southern other federal anti-lynching measure proposed white protestors placed a Confederate Memo- states, elected officials, and organizations de- during the era of racial terror, the bill failed.360 rial Day wreath over the brass star marking fending white supremacy used public displays where the Confederacy’s president had taken of Confederate iconography and anti-Recon- In 1950, the Louisiana Department of Com- the oath of office 102 years earlier. A note left struction rhetoric to defiantly signal an ongoing merce and Industry erected a historical marker with the wreath explained its intention to “keep resistance to racial equality. in the vicinity of the 1873 Colfax Massacre. Its any enemy from standing on the star where inscription claims that the violent attack by Jefferson Davis was inaugurated.” It was signed During 1938 proceedings on a proposed federal white mobs that left 150 Black people dead “Unreconstructed.”362 anti-lynching bill, Senator Claude Pepper read “end[ed] carpetbag misrule” in the state—justi- into the Congressional Record a telegram mes- fying racial violence rather than memorializing sage from Florida Governor Fred P. Cone, who its victims.361 100 101 later recalled that, when the shooting stopped, premacy dominated the Southern Democratic

Eufaula, Alabama he heard the white crowd cheer, “Hurrah for the party. This division would continue until major A TRUTH THAT NEEDS TELLING white man’s party.”372 Later that day, a white mob party realignments during the 20th century civil attacked another county polling station in rights movement. Today, public memory of Re- During the Civil War, Eufaula, Alabama, was at several white men forced a Black man into an Spring Hill, Alabama, where Keils was the elec- construction violence in Barbour County is re- once a Confederate stronghold, the commercial alley and threatened to arrest him if he did not tion supervisor. The mob destroyed the ballot duced to one historical marker erected in 1979, center of Barbour County, and home to more vote against civil rights. Black witnesses box, burned the ballots inside, and killed Keils’s which describes the “Election Riot of 1874” as a Black people than white. After Emancipation, protested and a pistol was fired—white people teenage son.373 “bloody episode that marked the end of Republi- ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment guaran- claimed a Black man had fired a shot at them can domination in Barbour County.” In down- teed voting rights for Black men. This empow- while many Black people insisted a white man Newspapers described the violence as a “riot,” town Eufaula, the streets where Black voters ered Barbour County’s new Black electorate to had fired a shot into the air. Soon afterward, a but a Congressional representative later charac- were shot down for voting more than 140 years

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION end white supremacist officials’ control over the large mob of white men retrieved stockpiled terized the attack as a massacre.374 Sentiments ago now host a towering Confederate monument county. In 1870, Black voters helped elect Elias guns stored nearby, gathered in the street and in published in the local white press praised the at- erected by the United Daughters of the Confed- Keils, a white candidate who supported the aims the upstairs windows of surrounding buildings, tack: “Big riot today. Several killed and many eracy in 1904. S.H. Dent, a former Confederate of Reconstruction, to the position of City Court and fired “indiscriminately” into the crowd of other hurt—some badly—but none of our friends soldier who witnessed and possibly helped com- Judge.363 Four years later, when Keils ran for re- mostly unarmed Black voters.369 among them. The white man’s goose hangs high. mit the massacre, spoke at the monument’s un- election, local white residents determined to re- Three cheers from Eufaula.”375 Although the veiling.381 gain political dominance in the county used identities of many white perpetrators of the mas- terror and intimidation to suppress A historical marker in Barbour County, Alabama, erected in 1979, de- sacre were known, no white person was ever Black votes, ultimately waging a scribes the 1874 Eufaula Massacre as a "riot." (Jonathan Gibson) convicted. Instead, a Black man named Hilliard deadly massacre that left dozens of Miles was convicted and imprisoned for perjury In Eufaula today, a Confederate monument stands in the same area Black people dead.364 where Black voters were massacred in 1874. (Jonathan Gibson) after identifying members of the white mob.376 Decades later, Braxton Bragg Comer, whom Mr. As the 1874 election neared, white Miles had named as a perpetrator of the mas- employers openly fired any Black sacre, was elected governor of Alabama.377 workers who intended to vote for Keils.365 False rumors spread that The Eufaula Masssacre and its aftermath showed Black residents planned to vio- Black residents that exercising their new legal lently drive white voters from the rights—particularly by voting—made them tar- polls, and white residents began gets for deadly attacks and they could not de- stockpiling guns near Eufaula pend on authorities for protection.378 The result polling sites.366 Seeing the threat of was mass voter suppression. While 1,200 Black election day violence, Keils tried to Eufaula residents voted in the 1874 election, only notify state and federal officials of 10 cast ballots in 1876. That legacy remains.379 the danger, but Alabama’s Attor- Today, the population of Barbour County is ney General rebuffed the warning nearly 50 percent Black but white officials hold 8 and A.S. Daggett, captain of fed- of 12 elected county positions. In 2016, the eral troops stationed in Eufaula, county had the highest voter purge rate in the claimed it would violate his orders United States.380 to use federal soldiers to protect Black voters.367 During Reconstruction, Black voters lost their Within minutes, 400 shots had been fired, leav- lives in Eufaula and many more were disenfran- Despite the risk, hundreds of African Americans ing at least six Black people dead and injuring as chised because they supported pro-Reconstruc- marched to the downtown Eufaula polling site many as 80 people.370 Many survivors fled, in- tion Republican candidates who pushed for on November 3. Some were immediately arrested cluding an estimated 500 Black people who had Black citizenship rights at a time when white su- and jailed on fraud accusations.368 Around noon, not yet voted.371 One Black man who survived 102 103 trauma have long been overlooked in the domi-

nant public telling. Today, in the midst of the A TRUTH THAT NEEDS TELLING 150th anniversary of the Reconstruction period, organizations and institutions are working to This distortion of the past is made tell a fuller story. possible through the incomplete telling of history. “While the American Civil War is well repre- sented within the National Park System, has been commemorated for over a hundred years, A narrative that casts Southern white society and has received immense attention through numerous books,” National Parks Superinten-

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION as Reconstruction’s persecuted victim and the end of Reconstruction as a just and proper dent Tim Good wrote in 2016, “Reconstruction Southern triumph can only prevail through the is not represented at all within the National silencing of the Black experience. When we lis- Park System, its events have never been com- ten to the voices of the Black men and women memorated, and it has received far less atten- who witnessed the hope, promise, and terrify- tion from scholars than its immediate 382 ing danger of the era, and when we probe the predecessor.” haunting descriptions of the brutality that killed so many, we cannot deny the tragedy of The National Park Service (NPS) in 2015 an- the post-Civil War era’s missed opportunity to nounced an initiative to develop curricula, remake our nation’s racial order. Nor can we ig- launch sites, and dedicate resources to estab- (AP Photo/Adrian Sainz) nore the Black victims whose deaths and lish a national narrative of the Reconstruction period. In May 2016, that work yielded first fruit documented victims whose names were not when NPS partnered with a coalition of com- recorded, and the many, many more unknown A bust of Civil War general Nathan Bedford Forrest is erected in Old munity leaders in Memphis, Tennessee, to erect victims who can never be quantified. Live Oak Cemetery, Selma, Alabama, 2015. (Daniel Evans/Selma Times Journal) a historical marker documenting the 1866 Memphis Massacre. In a city with multiple Confederate monuments and a park named for Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, this effort marked the first publicly funded his- torical commemoration of the massacre. NPS Facing the horrific violence Black efforts have continued and expanded to other states and communities, including a national Americans suffered during Recon- monument in Beaufort, South Carolina.383 struction forces us to recognize the fierce legacy of white supremacy in Two years after opening a memorial to victims of racial terror lynching and a museum explor- this country, and the terrible means ing the narrative links between enslavement, used to defend it. lynching, segregation, and mass incarceration in 2018, the Equal Justice Initiative dedicated a memorial to Black men, women, and children This critical history challenges us to be unsat- murdered in racial attacks during the Recon- isfied with “solutions” to injustice that go no struction era. This memorial features the deeper than the surface and to remember that names of 500 documented victims and the lo- the fight for justice is a long and ongoing cations of 34 documented massacres, but it is struggle. also dedicated to the thousands of additional 104 105 By memorializing the victims killed and ac-

knowledging the white supremacist violence A TRUTH THAT NEEDS TELLING that devastated the entire Black community in the first years after Emancipation, organiza- tions, government agencies, and individual communities work to tell a story of Reconstruc- tion that centers the Black experience of terror and trauma and magnifies the remarkable sur- vival story African Americans have managed to build in a still imperfect freedom.

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION “According to my way of thinking, Abraham Lincoln done a good thing when he set us free,” Rachel Adams, a 78-year-old Black woman, said in the 1930s during an interview at her home in Athens, Georgia.

Jeff Davis, he was all right too, cause if him and Lincoln hadn’t got to “ fightin, we would have been slaves to this very day. It’s mighty good to do just as you please, and bread and water is heaps better than that ‘some- thing to eat’ we had to slave for.384

The Memorial at the EJI Legacy Pavilion in Montgomery, Alabama. (Bryan G. Stevenson) 106 107

Notes Type Books. 2016), 198. 29 Ibid. at 182-83. tion, 1863-1877 (New York: Harper Collins, 2014), 190. NOTES 1 “William M. Adams, Fort Worth, Texas.” Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 16, Texas, Part 1, 13 Ibid. at 228. 30 See Jim Downs, Sick from Freedom: African-American 42 Andrew Johnson, Veto for the first Reconstruction Act, Adams-Duhon. 1936. https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn161/. Illness And Suffering During The Civil War And Reconstruc- March 2, 1867. 14 Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and tion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 2 “Liney Chambers, Brinkley, Arkansas.” Federal Writer’s Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal 43 Foner, Reconstuction, 196. Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Part 2, Union (Dec. 24, 1860). 31 Litwack, Been In The Storm So Long, 172-74. Cannon-Evans, 1936. http://www.teachi\hich\af1\dbch\af1\loch\f1 44 Thirty-ninth Congress. Sess. II. Ch. CLIII. March 2, https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn022/. ngushistory.org/lessons/DecofImCauses.htm 32 “Slave trading in Montgomery thrived well into the mid- 1867. (14 Stat. 428-430, c.153) 1860s, even as the Civil War raged. As late as 1864, T.L. https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/39th-con- 3 David Eltis & Paul F. Lachance, Estimates of the Size and 15 Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The After- Frazer & Co. opened a new “slave market” in Montgomery gress/session-2/c39s2ch153.pdf Direction of Transatlantic Slave Trade (2010), math of Slavery (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 182, 194- on the south block of Market Street (present-day Dexter http://slavevoyages.org/ downloads/2010estimates- 96. Avenue) between Lawrence and McDonough streets. In 45 Fortieth Congress. Sess I. Ch VI. March 23, 1867. (15 method.pdf. April 1864, a new firm of slave dealers announced plans to Stat. 2-5, c.6) https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION 16 Harper’s Weekly, “The Hanging of Amy Spain,” Septem- establish an office in Montgomery and promised to ‘‘keep large/40th-congress/c40.pdf 4 Ibid. ber 30, 1865; The Woodstock Sentinel (Ill.), “Amy Spain,” constantly on hand a large and well selected stock such as October 11, 1865; Eugene Fallon, “A Day Darlington Would families, house servants, gentlemens’ body servants, seam- 46 Fortieth Congress. Sess I. Ch. XXX. July 19, 1867. (15 5 Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Like to Forget: Confederate Forces Hanged Amy Spain 94 stresses, boys and girls of all descriptions, blacksmiths, Stat. 14-16, c.30) https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes- Americas (New York: Vintage Books, 1947), 65. Years Ago,” The Augusta Chronicle-Herald (Ga.), May 10, field hands.” Tellingly, even after Robert E. Lee’s surrender, at-large/40th-congress/c40.pdf 1959. the Montgomery Daily Advertiser continued to run “reward” advertisements posted by slave owners seeking their run- 6 Adam Rothman, “The Domestication of the Slave Trade 47 Fortieth Congress. Sess II. Ch. XXV. (15 Stat. 41, c.25) away ‘property.’” Equal Justice Initiative, Slavery In America, in the United States,” in The Chattel Principle: Internal 17 Kendi, Stamped From the Beginning, 13, 214. https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/40th-con- 35. Slave Trades in the Americas (New Haven: Yale University gress/c40.pdf Press, 2004), 40; Frederic Bancroft, Slave Trading in the 18 “Request of the Freedmen of Columbus, Ga. to Maj. Old South (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, Gen. Steadman not to withdraw the Federal Troops and 33 “Annie Davis to Mr. President, 25 Aug. 1864,” D-304 48 Richard L. Hume, “Negro Delegates to the State Con- 1996), 67. leave them unprotected,” Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen 1864, Letters Received, series 360, Colored Troops Divi- stitutional Conventions of 1867-69” in Southern Black and Abandoned Lands, 1865 - 1869. M798 Roll 36. sion, Adjutant General’s Office, Record Group 94, National Leaders of the Reconstruction Era (Springfield: University Archives. 7 See Slavery in America: The Montgomery Slave Trade of Illinois Press, 1982), 129, 133-34. (Montgomery, Alabama: Equal Justice Initiative, 2018), 39. 19 Ibid. 34 Delaware ratified the Thirteenth Amendment in 1901. 49 Ibid., 146. See Samuel B. Hoff, “Delaware’s Long Road to Ratification 8 David L. Lightner, Slavery and the Commerce Power: How 20 W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Freedmen’s Bureau,” The Atlantic, of the 13th Amendment,” Delaware Online, December 7, the Struggle Against the Interstate Slave Trade Led to the March 1, 1901. 50 The Charleston Daily News, “The State Legislature: The 2015. Civil War (Chelsea, MI: Sheridan Books, 2006), 6; Steven Murder of B.F. Randolph - Action of the Senate - Speeches Deyle, “The Domestic Slave Trade in America: The 21 “Stephen F. Hale to Beriah Magoffin, December 27, by Republican Leaders,” December 2, 1868. Lifeblood of the Southern Slave System,” in The Chattel 1860,” reproduced in full in Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Dis- 35 Kentucky ratified the Thirteenth Amendment in 1976. See The Indianapolis News, “Kentucky Ratifies 13th Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas (New union: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Cause of 51 Foner, Reconstruction, 250-51. Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 93; James Benson the Civil War (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, Amendment,” March 24, 1976. Sellers, Slavery in Alabama (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of 2001), 91-103. 52 A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presi- 36 Mississippi did not officially ratify the Thirteenth Alabama Press, 1950), 147. dents, Vol. 5 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Litera- Amendment until 1995, and did not formally file the ratifi- 22 Ibid. ture, 1897), 3590 9 William C. Davis and William Marvel, National Park Civil cation paperwork until February 7, 2013. See AP News, “130 Years After Civil War, Mississippi Senate Votes to Ban War Series: A Concise History of the Civil War (Ft. Wash- 23 Encyclopedia of Alabama, “Stephen F. Hale.” Slavery,” February 16, 1995; NPR.org, “After Snafu, Missis- 53 Foner, Reconstruction, 269. ington, Pennsylvania: Eastern National, 2007). http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/m-3518 https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/civil_war_se sippi Ratifies Amendment Abolishing Slavery,” February 19, 2013. 54 Ibid. ries/1/sec1.htm. 24 Harper’s Weekly, “The President’s Proclamation in Se- cessia,” October 18, 1862. 55 U.S. Const. amend. XIV. 10 Both the Southern and Northern economies remained 37 “George King,” Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Narrative tied to and dependent upon the labor of enslaved Black Project, Vol. 13, Oklahoma, Adams-Young. 1936. 25 Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn130/. 56 U.S. Const. amend. XV. people, as Northern merchants traded in cotton and other America, Vol. II (Washington: Gov- Printing Office, 1904), agricultural products produced by enslaved people, and 375-375, 393. Northern banks accepted enslaved human “property” as 38 Act of April 9, 1866 (Civil Rights Act), Public Law 39- 57 The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified 26, 14 STAT 27, which protected all persons in the United and adopted on August 18, 1920, established the voting collateral for securitized loans. See Sven Beckert, “Slavery 26 Ibid. at 57. and Capitalism,” Chron. of Higher Educ., December 12, States in their civil rights and furnished the means of their rights of American women. In practice, the vast majority of 2014; see also Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been vindication. Black men and women remained disenfranchised well into 27 William Nester, The Age of Lincoln and the Art of Ameri- Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New the 20th century due to racially-discriminatory state laws can Power, 1848-1876 (Lincoln, Nebraska: Potomac Books, York: Basic Books, 2016). 39 Andrew Johnson, “Veto of the Civil Rights Bill,” March and policies in the South, and federal non-enforcement of 2014), 169; Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette, “Horatio Seymour,” 27, 1866. the 15th Amendment. Black voting rights did not become October 8, 1869. widespread reality in America until, nearly a century after 11 Davis and Marvel, A Concise History of the Civil War. 40 Ibid. the 15th Amendment’s passage, and in response to mass 28 Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team Of Rivals: The Political movements led by a new generation of Black civil rights ac- 12 Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped From The Beginning: The De- Genius Of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, tivists and organizers, Congress in 1965 passed the Voting 41 Eric Foner, Reconstuction: America’s Unfinished Revolu- finitive History of Racist Ideas in America (New York: Bold 2005), 464. Rights Act. See Henry Louis Gates Jr., Stony the Road: Re- 108 109

construction, White Supremacy and the Rise of Jim Crow 75 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 674. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997), 509. 102 Ibid. (New York: Penguin Press, 2019). NOTES 76 See E.W. Crozier, The White-Caps: A History of the Or- 88 See Cate Lineberry, Be Free Or Die: The Amazing Story 103 Foner, Reconstruction, 96. 58 Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “The ‘Lost Cause’ That Built Jim ganization in Sevier County (Knoxville, Tennessee: Bran, of Robert Smalls’ Escape From Slavery to Union Hero (New Crow,” quoting historian Rayford W. Logan, New York Warters & Graut, 1899); Michael Newton, White Robes and York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017). 104 Ibid., 428. Times, November 8, 2019. Burning Crosses: A History of the Ku Klux Klan from 1866 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2014). 89 Eric Foner, “Rooted in Reconstruction: The First Wave 105 Alabama State Journal (Montgomery, Ala.), “Reflections 59 The Louisiana Democrat (Alexandria, La.), “The Bogus of Black Congressmen,” The Nation, October 15, 2008. on the Patona Massacre,” July 22, 1870; Alabama State Convention,” July 18, 1866. 77 The St. Joseph Weekly Herald (St. Joseph, Mo,), May 17, Journal, “The Cross Plains Riot,” July 22, 1870, citing Rome 1888. 90 Senators Revels and Bruce were the only two Back Daily (Ga.), July 14, 1870; Green Bay Weekly Gazette (Wisc.), 60 “New Orleans Riots: Report of the Committee,” The Re- senators elected in the 19th century, and only two more February 25, 1871. ports of the Committees of the House of Representatives 78 The Vermont Daily Transcript (St. Albans, Vt.), Sept. 9, were elected during the entire 20th century. See Foner, Re- Made During the Second Session Thirty-Ninth Congress, 1868; Congressional Edition vol. 1467 doc. 49 p. 1. United construction, 352-55. 106 Alabama State Journal (Montgomery, Ala.), “The Cross 1866-67, Vol. II (Washington: Government Printing Office, States Congress serial set. 1467; 42nd Congress, 1st, Ses- Plains Riot,” July 22, 1870, citing Rome Daily (Ga.), July 14,

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION 1867), 11; see also Jennifer Rae Taylor. “Race, Voting, and a sion, Doc No. 49 pg. 2. 91 Ibid., 356, 362-63. 1870. Gaping Loophole: A Critical Look at the 14th Amendment.” EJI.org. August 13, 2018. https://eji.org/news/race-voting- 79 Trelease, White Terror, 131; Congressional Serial Set, 92 Andrew Johnson, Third Annual Message to Congress, 107 “Ellis Ken Kannon,” Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Nar- and-a-gaping-loophole-a-critical-look-at-the-14th-amend- 1877; Supplemental Report of Joint Committee; Samuel C. Dec. 3, 1867, available at rative Project, Vol. 15, Tennessee, Batson-Young. 1936. ment/. Hyde, “Political Violence During Reconstruction,” The So- http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29508. https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn150/. cial Fabric: American Life from the Civil War to Present, Vol, 61 W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860- II (London: Longman Publishing, 2005), 335; George C. 93 Pickens County Herald and West Alabamian (Carrollton, 108 Edward Royce, The Origins of Southern Sharecropping 1880 (Cleveland, Ohio: Meridian Books, 1962), 674. Rable, But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Ala.), “Negro Killed,” September 7, 1870; Southern Republi- (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 107. Politics of Reconstruction (Athens: University of Georgia can (Demopolis, Ala.), “The Murder of Burke and the En- 62 Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Con- Press, 2007), 75; Justin A. Nystrom, New Orleans after the forcement of the Fifteenth Amendment,” August 31, 1870; 109 Ibid., 86-118. spiracy And Southern Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Civil War: Race, Politics, and a New Birth of Freedom (Balti- United States Congress, Report of the Joint select commit- more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 75. Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 3, 5. tee appointed to inquire into the condition of affairs in the 110 Foner, Reconstruction, 190-91. late insurrectionary states, so far as regards the execution of 80 United States Congress, Testimony taken by the Joint 63 Ibid., 113-15; James G. Dauphine, “The Knights of the laws, and the safety of the lives and property of the citizens 111 Ibid.; Royce, The Origins of Southern Sharecropping, 75. White Camelia and the Election of 1868: Louisiana’s White Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in of the United States and Testimony taken (Washington: Terrorists; A Benighted Legacy,” 30 J. La. Hist. Assoc. 2, the Late Insurrectionary States (Misc. and FL), 1871. Govt. print. off, 1872), 334-35; Foner, Reconstruction, 426. 112 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 140. (Spring 1989), 173; see also Foner, Reconstruction, 425. 81 Foner, Reconstruction, 425. 94 New York Times, “The Recent Riot at Camilla - Further 113 Ibid. 64 Dorothy Sterling, The Trouble They Seen: The Story of Particulars - Statements by the Military and Civil Authori- Reconstruction in the Words of African Americans (New 82 Address and resolutions of the National Equal Rights ties,” Sept. 23, 1868; Chicago Tribune, “The Camilla Mas- York: Da Capo Press, 1994), 374-75. League convention of colored men, held in Washington, D. sacre,” Sept. 23, 1868; New York Tribune, “Riot and Murders 114 Royce, The Origins of Southern Sharecropping, 75. C., January 10th, 11th and 12th, 1867. at Camilla,” Sept. 22, 1868. 65 Ibid. https://www.loc.gov/item/rbpe.20501300/ 115 Foner, Reconstruction, 171-72. 95 Foner, Reconstruction, 426; Pickens County Herald 66 Foner, Reconstruction, 427. 83 Gates Jr., “The ‘Lost Cause’ That Built Jim Crow.” (Carrollton, Ala.), “Negro Killed,” Sept. 7, 1870. 116 Royce, The Origins of Southern Sharecropping, 68-71.

67 The Burlington Free Press (Vt.), December 16, 1871. 84 “The First Colored Senator. Speech in the Senate, on 96 “John W. Fields.” Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Narra- 117 W.E.B. Du Bois, Economic Cooperation Among Negro the Admission of Hon. Hiram R. Revels, A Colored Person, tive Project, Vol. 5, Indiana, Arnold-Woodson. 1936. Americans (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1907), 42. 68 The Yorkville Enquirer (S.C.), December 21, 1871. As Senator of Mississippi, February 25, 1870,” Charles https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn050/. Sumner: His Complete Works, Vol. 18 (Norwood, Massachu- 118 Loren Schweninger, “Black-Owned Businesses in the South, 1790-1880,” The Business History Review, 63:1 69 The Burlington Free Press (Vt.), December 16, 1871. setts: Norwood Press, 1900), 6-9. 97 Foner, Reconstruction, 96. (1989), 57. 70 The Yorkville Enquirer (S.C.), December 21, 1871. 85 Ibid. 98 Marshall Rachleff, “An Abolitionist Letter to Governor Henry W. Collier of Alabama: The Emergence of ‘The Crisis 119 Ibid., 53. 71 Ibid. 86 U.S. House of Representatives, Black Americans in Con- of Fear’ in Alabama,” J. Negro Hist., Vol. 66, No. 3, 246-253. gress, 1870—2007. 120 Ibid., 55. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CDOC- 72 Jerry L. West, The Reconstruction Ku Klux Klan in York 99 The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Con- 108hdoc224/pdf/GPO-CDOC-108hdoc224.pdf; U.S. Sen- 121 Dylan C. Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk: African County, South Carolina, 1865-1877 (Jefferson, North Car- gress, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi- ate, Hiram Revels: A Featured Biography. American Property and Community in the 19th Century olina: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2002), 87, 98-100. bin/ampage?collId=mfd&fileName=49/49002/49002page https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/ge .db&recNum=4&itemLink=/ammem/doughtml/doug- South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, neric/Featured_Bio_Revels.htm; U.S. House of Representa- Folder9.html&linkText=7 2003), 144. 73 Lou Falkner Williams, The Great South Carolina Ku Klux tives, Revels, Hiram Rhodes: 1827-1901. Klan Trials, 1871-1872 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/R/REVELS,- 122 See David M. Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman 1996), 38; Foner, Reconstruction, 431-33. 100 E. Thomas Finan, “Frederick Douglass, Defender of Hiram-Rhodes-(R000166)/ the Liberal Arts,” The Atlantic, April 7, 2015. Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997); Douglas Blackmon, Slavery By Another 74 Williams, The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials, 87 Eds. Philip Sheldon Foner, Robert J. Branham, Lift 101 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 638. Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the 44-45. Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787-1900 Civil War to World War II (New York: Anchor Books, 2009). 110 111

123 Edythe W. McCraw, “A Mississippian Was the World’s Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865 - 1869 155 “Reports Relating to Murders and Outrages, 1865- 166 Chicago Tribune, “Criminal Acts: A Negro Ravisher Greatest Cotton-Grower,” Mississippi News and Views (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Publica- 1868,” Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State Hung By A Mob at Keytesville, Mo.,” September 29, 1875; NOTES (Vicksburg, Miss.), September 1967. tion), M1055 Roll 21. of Georgia Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned The Leavenworth Times (Leavenworth, Kan.), “Swung to Lands 1865-1869 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Mi- Satan,” August 1, 1876; The Tennessean (Nashville, Tenn.), 124 Oshinsky, Worse than Slavery, 35. 141 “Records Relating to Murders and Outrages,” Records crofilm Publication), M798 Roll 32; Albion Tourgee, The In- “A Negro Lynched,” March 29, 1873. of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Virginia Bu- visible Empire (New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1880), 125 Ibid., 36. reau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865 - 460-65. 167 William Nester, The Age of Lincoln and the Art of 1869 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Publi- American Power, 1848-1876 (Lincoln, Nebraska: Potomac 126 Ibid. cation), M1048 Roll 59. 156 The Ottawa Free Trader (Ottawa, Ill.), “Lynched,” Feb- Books, 2014), 169; Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette, “Horatio ruary 7, 1874; The Daily State Journal, “Illinois: Lynching of a Seymour,” October 8, 1869. 127 The New Berne Times (New Bern, N.C.), August 16, 142 Phillips, “White Reaction to the Freedmen’s Bureau in Murderer,” February 6, 1874. 1865. Tennessee,” 56. 168 Mary McTamaney, “Shock and Shame in 1863 New- 157 The Stark County Democrat (Canton, Ohio), “Three Ne- burgh,” Mid-Hudson Times (Newburgh, N.Y.), June 19, 2019; 128 Ibid.; The Wilmington Herald (N.C.), September 23, 143 Du Bois, “The Freedmen’s Bureau.” groes Lynched,” November 23, 1871; The Indianapolis News, The Leeds Mercury (Leeds, West Yorkshire, England), RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION 1865; The Wilmington Herald (N.C.), September 29, 1865. “The Henryville Murder,” November 15, 1871; Star Tribune “Lynch Law,” July 9, 1863. 144 Letter from Office Sub. Asst. Comr. & c., Sherman, TX, (Minneapolis, Minn.), “The Park Murderers Lynched,” No- vember 18, 1871; New York Tribune, “Innocent Men 129 The New Berne Times (New Bern, N.C.), August 16, 6 Oct. 1866. “Registered Reports of Murders and Outrages, 169 See Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots: Lynched,” December 8, 1871. 1865. Sept. 1866 - July 1867.” Records of the Assistant Commis- Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the sioner for the State of Texas Bureau of Refugees, Freed- Age of Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); 158 Thomas R. Baker, The Sacred Cause of Union: Iowa in James M. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Re- 130 The Wilmington Herald (N.C.), September 23, 1865. men and Abandoned Lands, 1865 - 1869. National Archives Microfilm Publication M821, Roll 32. the Civil War (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2016), construction (New York: Knopf, 1982). 220-21; Robert R. Dykstra, “White Men, Black Laws,” The 131 Letter from Brevet. Maj. Gen. Clinton B. Fisk, Centre- Annals of Iowa (Vol. 46, Fall 1982); See also Robert R. Dyk- 170 The Semi-Weekly Raleigh Sentinel (Raleigh, N.C.), ville, TN, Jan. 15, 1866. “Reports of Outrages, Riots and Mur- 145 Litwack, Been In The Storm So Long, 280. stra, Bright Radical Star: Black Freedom and White Su- “Hung in the Woods,” September 29, 1869; The Tri-Weekly ders, Jan. 15, 1866 - Aug. 12, 1868.” Records of the premacy on the Hawkeye Frontier (Cambridge: Harvard Examiner (Salisbury, N.C.), “Hung in the Woods,” October 1, Assistant Commissioner for the State of Tennessee Bureau 146 Ibid., 277. University Press, 1993). 1869. of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865 - 1869. National Archives Microfilm Publication M999, Roll 147 Ibid., 283-84. 159 Leavenworth Daily Commercial (Leavenworth, Kan.), 34. 171 Eugene D. Schmiel, “Citizen-General: Jacob Dolson “Hays City Correspondence,” January 12, 1869. 148 See The Freedmen’s Bureau Online: Records of the Bu- Cox and the Civil War Era,” Civil War Hist. (Vol. 61, January 2015), 468-69. 132 “An Act to establsh a Bureau for the Relief of Freed- reau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 160 Chicago Tribune, “Riot at Harrodsburg, KY,” August 6, men and Refugees,” March 3, 1865. http://freedmensbureau.com. 1870. 172 Marilyn K. Howard, “Black Lynching in the Promised Land: Mob Violence in Ohio, 19877-1916,” Ohio Academy of 133 Foner, Reconstruction, 69. 149 Litwack, Been In The Storm So Long, 276-77. 161 See Thomas Howell, “The Colfax Massacre: An Essay History (April 2013), 49. Review,” 51 Louisiana Hist.: the J. of the Louisiana Hist. 150 New York Times, “The Alabama Democrats: Their Plat- 134 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 221. Ass’n (Vol. 69, Winter 2010); Lorraine Boissoneault, “The form as Adopted by the State Convention,” May 31, 1878; 173 R. Gregory Nokes, “Black History Month: Oregon’s Ex- Deadliest Massacre in Reconstruction-Era Louisiana Hap- Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Ori- clusion Laws Aimed to Prevent Blacks from Settling Here,” 135 Du Bois, “The Freedmen’s Bureau,” The Atlantic, pened 150 Years Ago,” Smithsonian Magazine, September gins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of The Oregonian, February 9, 2014. March 1901. 28, 2018; James K. Hogue, Uncivil War: Five New Orleans American Politics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Street Battles and the Rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruc- Press, 2000), 35-36. 174 Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of 136 Ibid. tion (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006). African-American Slaves (Cambridge: Harvard University 151 Foner, Reconstruction, 119; Jimmy Cunningham, Jr. & Press, 2003), 276-78. 137 “Narrative Reports of Criminal Cases Involving Freed- 162 Intelligencer Journal (Lancaster, Penn.), “The Lynch Donna Cunningham, African Americans of Pine Bluff and men, Mar. 1866 - Feb. 1867,” Records of the Assistant Com- Law Case in Hartford County, Maryland,” July 25, 1868; The Jefferson County (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Pub- 175 The Baltimore Sun, “Riots in Philadelphia,” October 11, missioner for the State of Virginia Bureau of Refugees, Baltimore Sun, “Outrage Upon an Elderly Lady in Harford lishing, 2013), 13. 1871; The Philadelphia Inquirer, “The Fifth Ward Murders,” Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865 - 1869 (Washington, County by a Negro– Lynch Law,” October 5, 1869; Intelli- October 14, 1871. D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Publication), M1048 Roll gencer Journal (Lancaster, Penn.), “The Fruits of Radical 59. 152 Patience Essah, A House Divided: Slavery and Emanci- Teaching,” October 7, 1869; The Aegis & Intelligencer (Bel pation in Delaware, 1638-1865 (Charlottesville: University 176 The Altoona Tribune (Altoona, Penn.), “Lynch Law,” Air, Md.), “Death of Miss Smith,” November 5, 1869; September 10, 1874. 138 Paul David Phillips, “White Reaction to the Freedmen’s Press of Virginia, 1996), 184. Bureau in Tennessee,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly (Vol. 163 Detroit Free Press, “A Bloody Riot,” March 7, 1863; 177 Williams, The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials, 25: No. 1, 1966), 55. 153 Yohuru Williams, “Revenged in the Most Terrible Man- Chicago Tribune, “The Detroit Riot,” March 10, 1863; The 1. ner: The Lynching of African American Civil War Veteran Cass County Republican (Dowgiac, Michigan), “A Bloody 139 “Miscellaneous Records Relating to Murders and William ‘Obie’ Evans,” Delaware History (Fall 2013/Winter Riot at Detroit,” March 12, 1863. 178 Ibid. Other Criminal Offenses Committed in Texas 1865 - 1868,” 2014, Vol. 34), 33; The Sunbury Gazette (Sunbury, Penn.), August 17, 1867; The Philadelphia Inquirer, “An Innocent Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of 164 Detroit Free Press, “The Lynching of the Delhi Mur- Man Lynched,” August 5, 1867. 179 See Stephen V. Ash, A Massacre in Memphis: The Race Texas Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned derer,” August 31, 1866. Lands, 1865 - 1869 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Riot that Shook the Nation One Year After the Civil War 154 United States Congress, Testimony taken by the Joint (New York: Hill & Wang, 2013); Memphis Daily Appeal, Microfilm Publication), M821 Roll 32. 165 New York Times, “The Vicksburg Troubles,” December Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in “Gibson County,” August 27, 1874; The Wheeling Daily Intel- 14, 1874. ligencer (Wheeling, W.V.), May 25, 1865; The Lawrence Trib- 140 “Miscellaneous Reports and Lists,” Records of the As- the Late Insurrectionary States (Misc. and FL), 1871, 263. une (Lawrence, Kan.), “Memphis via Cairo, May 19,” May 25, sistant Commissioner for the District of Columbia Bureau of 112 113

1865; The Leavenworth Bulletin (Leavenworth, Kan.), 191 Ibid. Other Criminal Offenses Committed in Texas 1865-1868,” 217 Detroit Free Press, “The Lynching of the Delhi Mur- “Negro Barbarity,” May 26, 1865. Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of derer,” August 31, 1866. NOTES 192 “Reports of Murders and Outrages,” Records of the As- Texas Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands 180 The Daily Phoenix (Columbia, SC). “The Millican Riot,” sistant Commissioner for the State of South Carolina Bu- 1865 - 1869 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Microfilm 218 Chicago Tribune, “The Ingham County Tragedy,” Au- August 2, 1868; The Tennesseean (Nashville, TN), “Galve- reau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands 1865 - Publication), M821 Roll 32. gust 30, 1866. ston,” July 18, 1868; The Daily Evening Express (Lancaster, 1870 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Publi- PA), “Rebel Massacre in Texas,” August 11, 1868; see also cation), M869 Roll 34. 206 Ibid. 219 Ibid. Millican “Riot,” 1868, https://millican.omeka.net/. 193 Lorraine Boissoneault, “The Deadliest Massacre in Re- 207 Carl Schurz, “Report on the Condition of the South by 220 Ibid. 181 Richmond Dispatch (Richmond, Va.), “The Ravishers construction-Era Louisiana Happened 150 Years Ago,” 1865,” 39th Congress 1st Session 20 (1865). Lynched,” August 23, 1869; The Native Virginian, “Another Smithsonian Magazine, September 28, 2018. 221 Richmond Dispatch, “A Negro Lynched in Michigan,” Outrage By Negroes,” August 27, 1869. 208 “Miscellaneous Records Relating to Murders and September 5, 1866. 194 Title VI, Art. 99 La. Const. (1868); Title VII, Art. 135 La. Other Criminal Offenses Committed in Texas, 1865-1868,” 182 New York Times, “Vindicating the Law: A Sample of Const. (1868). Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of 222 The Rocky Mountain News, April 29, 1867.

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION Southern Justice,” August 26, 1874; The Star-Democrat Texas Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned (Easton, Md.), August 18, 1874; The Elk County Advocate 195 Christopher Long, “Knights of the White Camellia,” Lands, 1865-1869 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Mi- 223 Ibid. (Ridgway, Penn.), August 27, 1874. Texas State Historical Association, May 1, 2019. crofilm Publication), M821 Roll 32. https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/vek01 224 The Baltimore Sun, “Riots in Philadelphia,” October 11, 183 Wood County Reporter (Grand Rapids, Wisc.), “Mob in 209 “Freedmen’s Bureau Report of Outrages in North Car- 1871; The Philadelphia Inquirer, “The Fifth Ward Murders,” Milwaukee–A Negro Lynched,” September 14, 1861; The 196 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 177. olina, February 1867-December 1867,” Records of the Assis- October 14, 1871. Bay City Press (Green Bay, Wisc.), “Mob Law in Milwau- tant Commissioner for the State of North Carolina Bureau of kee,” September 14, 1861; Kevin Abing, “The Lynching of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Washington, 197 Boissoneault, “The Deadliest Massacre in Reconstruc- 225 Atchison Daily Patriot (Atchison, Kansas), “Indiana: George Marshall Clark in Milwaukee,” Milwaukee Inde- D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Publication), M843 Roll tion-Era Louisiana Happened 150 Years Ago”; Carl A. Negro Hanged at Midnight by an Infuriated Mob,” June 29, pendent, March 21, 2018. 33. Brasseaux, Keith P. Fontenot & Claude F. Oubre, Creoles of 1875. Color in the Bayou Country (Jackson: University Press of 184 Abing, “The Lynching of George Marshall Clark in Mil- 210 “Miscellaneous Reports and Lists Relating to Murders Mississippi, 1994), 101. 226 “Statements Relating to Abuses of Freedmen in Rich- waukee.” and Outrages Mar. 1867-Nov. 1868,” Records of the Assis- mond,” Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State tant Commissioner for the State of Louisiana Bureau of 198 Carolyn E. DeLatte, “The St. Landry Riot: A Forgotten of Virginia Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands 1865 - 1869 185 “Letter from Hopkins County,” Records of the Assistant Incident of Reconstruction Violence,” J. La. Hist. Assoc. Lands (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Pub- (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Publica- Commissioner for the State of Texas Bureau of Refugees, (Vol. 17: Winter 1976), 41-49; New Orleans Republican, “The lication), M1048 Roll 59. Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865 - 1869 (Washington, St. Landry Massacre,” October 12, 1868. tion), M1027 Roll 34. D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Publication), M821, Roll 227 “Reports Relating to Murders and Outrages 1865- 32. 211 United States Congress, Report of the Joint select com- 199 Boissoneault, “The Deadliest Massacre in Reconstruc- 1868; List of Freedmen Murdered or Assaulted 1867,” mittee appointed to inquire into the condition of affairs in tion-Era Louisiana Happened 150 Years Ago.” Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of the late insurrectionary states, so far as regards the execu- 186 Foner, Reconstruction, xviii Georgia Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned tion of laws, and the safety of the lives and property of the 200 New Orleans Republican, “The St. Landry Massacre,” Lands (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Pub- citizens of the United States and Testimony taken (Wash- 187 The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, La.), “Capital for October 12, 1868, reprinting editorials from The Franklin lication), M798 Roll 32. the Fall Campaign,” October 5, 1870. Banner, October 10, 1868. ington: Govt. print. off, 1872), 225, 229, 238; Kidada E. Williams, They Left Great Marks on Me: Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I (New 228 Ibid. 188 United States Congress. Joint Select Committee On 201 Ibid. York: NYU Press, 2012), 34. The Condition Of Affairs In The Late Insurrectionary 229 “Miscellaneous Records Relating to Murders and States. Report of the Joint select committee appointed to in- 202 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 681. Other Criminal Offenses Committed in Texas 1865-1868,” quire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrectionary 212 United States Congress, Report of the Joint select committee appointed to inquire into the condition of affairs Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of states, so far as regards the execution of laws, and the safety 203 The Baltimore Sun, “Riots in Philadelphia,” October 11, Texas Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands of the lives and property of the citizens of the United States in the late insurrectionary states, so far as regards the exe- 1871; The Philadelphia Inquirer, “The Fifth Ward Murders,” cution of laws, and the safety of the lives and property of the 1865 - 1869 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Microfilm and Testimony taken (Washington: Govt. print. off, 1872), October 14, 1871; Daniel R. Biddle and Murray Dubin, Tast- Publication), M821 Roll 32. 270, 462. citizens of the United States and Testimony taken (Wash- ing Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in ington: Govt. print. off, 1872), 225, 229, 238. Civil War America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 230 “Registered Reports of Murders and Outrages, Sept. 189 “List of Freedmen Murdered or Assaulted 1867,” 2010); Harry C. Silcox, “Nineteenth Century Philadelphia 213 Ibid., 244. 1866-July 1867,” Records of the Assistant Commissioner for Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Black Militant: Octavius V. Catto (1839-1871),” Penn. Hist., the State of Texas Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Aban- Georgia Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Vol. 44 (1977); Anthony Waskie, “Biography of Octavius V. doned Lands 1865 - 1869 (Washington, D.C.: National 214 Foner, Reconstruction, 26 Lands 1865 - 1869 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Mi- Catto,” Temple.edu . 215 Ibid. 231 Ibid. 190 “Affidavit of Jacob Nail: Affidavits Relating to Outrages 204 “Registered Reports of Murders and Outrages, Sept. Mar. 1866-August 1868,” Records of the Assistant Commis- 216 See Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots: 1866-July 1867,” Records of the Assistant Commissioner for 232 “Reports Relating to Murders and Outrages 1865- sioner for the State of Tennessee Bureau of Refugees, Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the the State of Texas Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Aban- 1868; List of Freedmen Murdered or Assaulted 1867,” Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1869, (Washington, Age of Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); doned Lands 1865 - 1869 (Washington, D.C.: National Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Publication), M999 Roll James M. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Re- Archives Microfilm Publication), M821 Roll 32. Georgia Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned 34. construction (New York: Knopf, 1982). Lands (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Pub- 205 “Miscellaneous Records Relating to Murders and lication), M798 Roll 32. 114 115

233 See “Stephen F. Hale to Beriah Magoffin, December vol. 270), 41–42. city of Memphis...” 278 “Register of Outrages Committed on Freedmen Jan. - 27, 1860,” reproduced in full in Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Dec. 1868,” Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the NOTES Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the 245 “Testimony of Witnesses Before the Joint Congres- 259 U.S. Congress, Report of the House Select Committee State of Virginia Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Aban- Cause of the Civil War (Charlottesville, VA: University Press sional Committee: Spartanburg, South Carolina,” in Black on the Memphis Riots, July 25, 1866. doned Lands (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Micro- of Virginia, 2001), 91-103; Junius P. Rodriguez, Slavery in Women in White America: A Documentary History (New film Publication), M1048 Roll 59. the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclo- York: Vintage Books, 1972), 183-86. 260 Ibid. pedia Vol. 1 (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2007), 279 “Registered Reports of Murders and Outrages, Sept. 171. 246 Nashville Daily Union, May 24, 1866; The Owensboro 261 Ibid. 1866-July 1867,” Records of the Assistant Commissioner for Monitor (Ky.), “Mob Law in Owensboro,” May 23, 1866; the State of Texas Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Aban- 234 Manfred Berg, Popular Justice: A History of Lynching George C. Wright, Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865-1940: 262 Ibid. doned Lands 1865 - 1869 (Washington, D.C.: National in America (Lanham, Maryland: Ivan R, Dee, 2011), 76-77; Lynchings, Mob Rule, and “Legal Lynchings” (Baton Rouge: Archives Microfilm Publication), M821 Roll 32. Joan E. Cashin, “A Lynching in Wartime Carolina: The Louisiana State University Press, 1990); J. Michael Crane, 263 Freedmen’s Bureau, “Report of ... the late riots in the Death of Saxe Joiner,” Under Sentence of Death: Lynching “The Rebels Are Bold, Defiant, and Unscrupulous in Their city of Memphis...” 280 United States Congress. Joint Select Committee On in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Dementions of All Men: Social Violence in Daviess County, The Condition Of Affairs In The Late Insurrectionary

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION Press, 1997), 109-31; Bruce E. Baker, This Mob Will Surely Kentucky, 1861-1868,” Ohio Valley Hist. (Spring 2002), 24. States. Report of the Joint select committee appointed to in- 264 Ibid. Take My Life: Lynchings in the Carolinas, 1871-1947 (New quire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrectionary York: Continuum Books, 2008), 14. 247 The Daily Standard (Raleigh, N.C.), December 10, 1869; states, so far as regards the execution of laws, and the safety 265 Ibid. The Daily Journal (Wilmington, N.C.), December 10, 1869; of the lives and property of the citizens of the United States 235 The Daily Standard, “A Proclamation by His Excel- Wright, Racial Violence in Kentucky; Crane, “The Rebels and Testimony taken (Washington: Govt. print. off, 1872), lency, the Governor of North Carolina,” June 22, 1870. Are Bold, Defiant, and Unscrupulous...”, 17, 23. 266 Ibid. 78.

236 Crystal N. Feimster, “What If I Am A Woman: Black 248 Michael Tadman, Speculators and Slaves: Masters, 267 Ibid. 281 The Tennessean (Nashville, Tenn.), August 12, 1873; Women’s Campaigns for Sexual Justice and Citizenship,” in Traders, and Slaves in the Old South (Madison: University of Memphis Daily Appeal, August 18, 1873; The Sunbury The World the Civil War Made (Chapel Hill: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 184. 268 Memphis Argus, “The Reign of Bloodshed,” May 2, Gazette (Sunbury, Penn.), August 29, 1873. North Carolina Press, 2015), 250-51, citing Maria Stewart, 1866. Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality: The Sure Foun- 249 Ibid., 184-85. 282 Foner, Reconstruction, xviii. dation on Which We Must Build, October 1831. 269 U.S. Congress, Report of the House Select Committee 250 “John H. Barrett to W.W. Holden, May 31, 1870,” Gover- on the Memphis Riots, July 25, 1866. 283 “Letter from Hopkins County,” Records of the Assis- 237 Douglas O. Linder, “Celia, A Slave, Trial (1855): An Ac- nor’s Papers of W.W. Holden, North Carolina Division of tant Commissioner for the State of Texas Bureau of count,” Famous Trials (Kansas City: UMKC School of Law, Archives and History, Raleigh; The Daily Standard (Raleigh, 270 Mary White Ovington, “REVIEW: The Truth About Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865 - 1869 2011). N.C.), “A Proclamation by His Excellency the Governor of Lynching and the Negro in the South by: Winfield H. (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Publica- http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/celia/celi- North Carolina,” June 27, 1870; The Weekly Standard Collins,” The Survey (Vol. 41), March 8, 1919, 843. tion), M821, Roll 32. aaccount.html (Raleigh, N.C.), “Ku Klux Outrages,” October 5, 1870. 271 Memphis Daily Appeal, “Gibson County,” August 27, 284 Hans L. Trefousse, Andrew Johnson: A Biography (New 238 4248 Sec. XXXIII, Code of the State of Georgia (1861). 251 Ash, A Massacre in Memphis, 68-89. 1874. York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1989).

239 “Miscellaneous Reports and Lists Relating to Murders 252 Freedmen’s Bureau, “Report of an investigation of the 272 Ibid. 285 “Proclamation Pardoning Persons Who Participated in and Outrages, Mar. 1867 - Nov. 1868,” Records of the Assis- cause, origin, and results of the late riots in the city of the Rebellion,” May 28, 1865. tant Commissioner for the State of Louisiana Bureau of Memphis made by Col. Charles F. Johnson, Inspector Gen- 273 Nashville Union and American, “From Gibson County,” Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865 - 1869 eral States of Kentucky and Tennessee and Major T.W. August 29. 1874. 286 Frank O. Bowman III, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Publica- Gilbreth, A.D.C. to Major General Howard, Commissioner A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump (New York: tion), M1027 Roll 34. Bureau R.F.&A. Lands,” May 7, 1866. 274 Ibid. Cambridge University Press, 2019), 156.

240 Ibid. 253 “The general tone of certain city papers which in arti- 275 “Letter from Hopkins County,” Records of the Assistant 287 Andrew Johnson, First Annual Message, December 4, cles that have appeared almost daily, have councilled the Commissioner for the State of Texas Bureau of Refugees, 1865. 241 Estelle B. Freedman, Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence low whites to open hostilities with the blacks.” Freedmen’s Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865 - 1869 (Washington, in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation (Cambridge: Harvard Bureau, “Report of ... the late riots in the city of Memphis...” D.C.: National Archives Microfilm Publication), M821, Roll 288 Ibid. University Press, 2013), 74. 32. 254 Ash, A Massacre in Memphis, 95. 289 Frederick Douglass, Reply of the Colored Delegation to 242 “Register of Outrages Committed on Freedmen Jan. - 276 “Jane Bugg: Affidavits Relating to Outrages Mar. 1866- the President, February 7, 1866. Dec. 1868,” Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the 255 Freedmen’s Bureau, “Report of ... the late riots in the August 1868,” Records of the Assistant Commissioner for State of Virginia Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Aban- city of Memphis...”; U.S. Congress, Report of the House Se- the State of Tennessee Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and 290 New York Times, “Thaddeus Stevens on the Great doned Lands, 1865 - 1869 (Washington, D.C.: National lect Committee on the Memphis Riots, July 25, 1866. Abandoned Lands (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Mi- Topic of the Hour,” September 6, 1865. Archives Microfilm Publication), M1048 Roll 59. crofilm Publication), M999 Roll 34. 256 Freedmen’s Bureau, “Report of ... the late riots in the 291 Thaddeus Stevens, Speech, December 18, 1865. 243 Ibid. city of Memphis...” 277 “Lewis Powell: Affidavits Relating to Outrages Mar. http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1851-1875/thad- 1866- August 1868,” Records of the Assistant Commis- deus-stevens-speech-of-december-18-1865.php 244 “Affidavit of Rhoda Ann Childs, 25 Sept. 1866,” 257 Ibid; U.S. Congress, Report of the House Select Com- sioner for the State of Tennessee Bureau of Refugees, Records of the Subassistant Commissioner for Griffin, Geor- mittee on the Memphis Riots, July 25, 1866. Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Washington, D.C.: Na- 292 See Freedmen’s Bureau, “Report of an investigation of gia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, & Abandoned Lands tional Archives Microfilm Publication), M999 Roll 34. the cause, origin, and results of the late riots in the city of (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Record Group 105, 258 Freedmen’s Bureau, “Report of ... the late riots in the Memphis made by Col. Charles F. Johnson, Inspector Gen- 116 117

eral States of Kentucky and Tennessee and Major T.W. 308 Ibid., 221. 326 Keith Hulett, “James M. Smith (1823-1890),” New Origins,” The Atlantic, November 17, 2019. Gilbreth, A.D.C. to Major General Howard, Commissioner Georgia Encyclopedia, August 4, 2006. http://www.geor- NOTES Bureau R.F.&A. Lands,” May 7, 1866. 309 Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life giaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/james- 346 Foner, Reconstruction, 428; Cong. Testimony 77; After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, m-smith-1823-1890. Green Bay Weekly Gazette (WI), “Universal Amnesty,” Feb- 293 See James G. Hollandsworth Jr., An Absolute Mas- 2007), 9-10. ruary 25, 1871; Alabama State Journal, “The Cross Plains sacre: The New Orleans Race Riot of July 30, 1866 (Baton 327 Annual Message and Accompanying Documents of the Riot,” July 22, 1870; Alabama State Journal, “Democratic Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001); Donald E. 310 Ibid. Governor of Virginia to the General Assembly, December 2, Gospel and its Fulfilment,” July 22, 1870. Reynolds, “The New Orleans Riot of 1866, Reconsidered,” J. 1874. La. Hist. Assoc.(Winter 1964). 311 16 Stat. 140-146 (May 31, 1870); 16 Stat. 433 (Feb. 28, 347 NPR, “Story Behind the Number: Literacy and Lynch- 1871); 17 Stat. 13 (April 20, 1871); Foner, Reconstruction, 328 Hartford Courant (Conn.) , “Election Riots in Alabama: ings,” February 4, 2006. 294 Articles of Impeachment, March 4, 1868. 454. Ballots Destroyed — Unarmed Negroes Shot — A Demo- https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?sto- https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/br cratic Legislature Elected,” November 6, 1874. ryId=5189912 iefing/Impeachment_Johnson.htm. 312 United States Congress, Report of the Joint select committee appointed to inquire into the condition of affairs 329 New York Times, “The Alabama Democrats: Their 348 Emmett Jay Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe, Booker

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION 295 Tenure of Office Act, March 2, 1867. https://www.sen- in the late insurrectionary states, so far as regards the exe- Platform as Adopted by the State Convention,” May 31, T. Washington: Builder of a Civilization (Garden City, New ate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/Johnson_Tenu cution of laws, and the safety of the lives and property of the 1878. York: Doubleday, 1916), 313. reofOfficeAct.pdf. citizens of the United States and Testimony taken (Wash- ington: Govt. print. off, 1872), 1271. 330 Alabama Department of Archives and History. “Al- 349 Michael Perman, Struggle for Mastery: Disenfranchise- 296 Articles of Impeachment, March 4, 1868. abama’s Black Leaders During Reconstruction.” Alabama ment in the South, 1888-1908 (Chapel Hill: University of 313 The Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 36, 78 (1873). Moments. North Carolina Press, 2001), 1, 6. 297 L. P. Brockett, Biographical Sketches of Patriots, Ora- http://www.alabamamoments.alabama.gov/sec26det.html tors, Statesmen, Generals, Reformers, Financiers and Mer- 314 Roland M. Labbe and Jonathan Lurie, The Slaughter- 350 Daniel Brantley, “Blacks and Louisiana Constitutional chants, Now on the state of Action: Including Those Who in house Cases: Regulation, Reconstruction, and the Four- 331 J. Wayne Flynt. Alabama in the Twentieth Century Development, 1890-Present: A Study in Southern Political Military, Political, Business and Social Life, are the Promi- teenth Amendment (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 5. Thought and Race Relations,” Phylon (Vol. 48, no. 1, 1987), nent Leaders of the Time in This Country (Philadelphia: 2005), 122-23. 51–61. Ziegler & McCurdy, 1872), 501. 332 Alabama Constitution of 1875. accessible at: 315 Ibid. http://digital.archives.alabama.gov/cdm/compoundob 351 Alabama Constitutional Convention (1901), Official 298 Edward McPherson, A Handbook of Politics (Washing- ject/collection/legislature/id/213577/rec/77 Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of ton D.C.: Philip & Solomon, 1868). 316 Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 500 (1857) Alabama: May 21st, 1901, to September 3rd, 1901 (We- (Campbell J. concurring) (“It is a settled doctrine of this 333 Thomas Howell, “The Colfax Massacre: An Essay Re- tumpka, Alabama: Wetumpka Printing Co., 1940). 299 Articles of Impeachment, March 4, 1868. court, that the Federal Government can exercise no power view,” 51 Louisiana Hist.: the J. of the Louisiana Hist. Ass’n over the subject of slavery within the States, nor control the 69 (Winter 2010), 69 . 352 Foner, Reconstruction, 562. 300 “Testimony of Sen. Henry Wilson,” Trial of Andrew intermigration of slaves, other than fugitives, among the Johnson, President of the United States, Before the Senate 334 Foner, Reconstruction, 530. 353 Nikole Hannah-Jones, “The Idea of America,” The 1619 States.”) of the United States, on Impeachment by the HousAe of Project. New York Times Magazine, August 18, 2019. Representatives for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Vol. III 335 Charles Lane, The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Mas- (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1868). 317 Michael A. Ross, “Obstructing Reconstruction: John sacre, The Supreme Court, and The Betrayal of Reconstruc- 354 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Three Evils, May 10, Archibald Campbell and the Legal Campaign against tion (New York: Holt, 2008), 196-97, 203. 1967. 301 Andrew Johnson, State of the Union Address, Decem- Louisiana’s Re-publican Government, 1838-1873,” 49 Civil https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/ War Hist. 235 (Sept. 2003), 241. ber 25, 1868. 336 United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 554 (1876). martin-luther-king-hungry-club-forum/552533/ 318 See Labbe & Lurie, The Slaughterhouse Cases, 25-66. 302 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 602. 337 Lane, The Day Freedom Died, 242-43. 355 Eds. David Edwin Harrell Jr. et al., “Reconstruction and the New South,” Unto A Good Land: A History of the Ameri- 319 Ibid. at 126. 303 S.L. Alexander, Reconstruction Violence and the Ku 338 Foner, Reconstruction, 559-60. can People, Volume 2: From 1865 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Klux Klan Hearings (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2015), 10. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005), 54. 320 The Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 36, 69, 75-80 339 Ibid., 575-86. 304 United States Congress, Report of the Joint select (1872). 356 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 347. committee appointed to inquire into the condition of affairs 340 Ibid. in the late insurrectionary states, so far as regards the exe- 321 Ibid., 38 (Field J. dissenting). 357 Ibid. cution of laws, and the safety of the lives and property of the 341 The Louisiana Democrat, “Now You Can Crow: The Re- 322 Foner, Reconstruction, 560. citizens of the United States and Testimony taken (Wash- publican Party is Dead,” November 15, 1876. 358 C. Vann Woodward, “The Political Legacy of Recon- ington: Govt. print. off, 1872), 1722. struction,” J. of Negro Ed. (Vol. 26: Summer 1957), 231-40. 323 James A. Rawley, “The General Amnesty Act of 1872: 342 Adam Serwer, “Civility is Overrated,” The Atlantic, De- 305 Ibid. A Note,” J. Am. Hist. (Vol. 47: December 1960), 480–84. 359 Claude Pepper (FL). “Congressional Record-Senate- cember 2019. January 24.” Congressional Record 83 (1938) p. 974. 306 Ibid., 1723. 324 Ibid. 343 Foner, Reconstruction, 584. 360 Christopher Waldrep, Lynching in America: A History 307 Leon F. Litwack and A. Meier, Black Leaders of the 325 Annual Message and Accompanying Documents of the in Documents (New York: NYU Press, 2006), 235; Berg, Nineteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, Governor of Virginia to the General Assembly, December 2, 344 Lane, The Day Freedom Died, 249. Popular Justice: A History of Lynching in America, 154. 1991). 1874. 345 Wilfred Codrington III, “The Electoral College’s Racist 361 Mark Potok, “Is This the Nation’s Ugliest Monument?” 118

Daily Beast, August 18, 2017. tional Republican, November 10, 1874.

362 Claude Sitton, “Robert Kennedy Unable to Budge Ala- 376 State grand juries failed to indict the perpetrators but bama Governor on Race Issue,” New York Times, April 26, a federal grand jury brought 30 indictments including the 1963. one against Miles. James L Pugh, Senate Report, 1860-61, 1871-1972; A.E. Williams, Senate Report, 618; The Liv- 363 Melinda M. Hennessey, “Reconstruction Politics and ingston Journal, November 27, 1984; The Montgomery Ad- the Military: The Eufaula Riot of 1874,” Alabama Historical vertiser, November 24, 1874; Hennessey, “Reconstruction Quarterly 38, no. 2 (Summer 1976), 112-113; Dan T. Carter, Politics and the Military: The Eufaula Riot of 1874,” 123-124; The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the Carter, The Politics of Rage, 36-37. New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 377 Carter, The Politics of Rage, 36-37. 2000), 35-36. 378 Keils, House Report, 1148; “Views of the Minority,”

RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA RECONSTRUCTION 364 See Report on the Alabama Election of 1874, House House Report, LXVIII-LXIX. Reports, no. 262, 43rd Cong., 2nd Sess. (Washington, 1875); Report on the Election in Alabama, Senate Reports, 379 Carter, The Politics of Rage, 37. no. 704, 44th Cong., 2nd Sess. (Washington, 1877). Here- after these sources are referred to as House and Senate 380 Max Garland, Alex Amico, Ali Schmitz, Phillip Jack- Report and they are cited as the person testifying, the re- son, and Pam Ortega, “African-Americans in the South face port, and then page number. new barriers to vote,” VotingWars News21, August 20, 2016, https://votingwars.news21.com/african-americans-in-the- 365 Lazarus Gardner, House Report, 804; Lawrence south-face-new-barriers-to-vote/. Bowen, House Report, 814; Edwin Odon, House Report, 972. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, “voter purges are an often-flawed process of cleaning up voter rolls by 366 A. S. Daggett, House Report, 598; Eli Shorter, House deleting names from registration lists. While updating reg- Report, 800; Henry Frazer, House Report, 214-215; Elias istration lists as voters die, move, or otherwise become in- Keils, House Report, 2-3. eligible is necessary and important, when done Acknowledgments irresponsibly — with bad data or when two voters are con- 367 Daggett, House Report, 598; Hennessy, 115-116. fused for the same person — the process can knock eligible voters off the roll en masse, often with little notice. Many 368 Odon, House Report, 966-967; Gardner, House Re- voters discover they’re no longer listed only when they ar- This report is written, researched, designed, and produced port, 804. Hennessey, House Report, 117; Carter, House Re- rive at the polling place. As a result, many eligible Ameri- port, 37. cans either don’t vote or are forced to cast provisional by the Equal Justice Initiative. It is a part of a series of re- ballots.” ports researched, written, and produced by EJI on the his- 369 See Williford, House Report, 428; Williford, Senate tory of racial inequality in America. We would like to Report, 445-446; Maurice Seals, House Report, 814-815; See Brennan Center, “Voter Purges,” https://www.brennan- Hamilton, House Report, 817; Aaron Hunter, House Report, center.org/issues/ensure-every-american-can-vote/vote- specially thank Jennifer Taylor for research, writing, editing, 831; Odon, House Report, 966-67; Williams, House Report, suppression/voter-purges and photo research. Special thanks to Aaryn Urell for layout 979. 381 The Times and News (Eufaula, Ala.), “The Biggest and editing; Kiara Boone for research, writing, and photo 370 Williford, House Report, 427-28; Williams, House Re- Day,” Dec. 1, 1904; S.H. Dent, House Report, 803. research; Jonathan Gibson for research, writing, photo re- port, 978; Daggett, House Report, 597; Hamilton, House search, photography, and data visualization; Adam Murphy, Report, 817; Bowen, House Report, 814; Frazer, House Re- 382 Tim Good, “Construction Memories of Reconstruc- port, 216. tion,” Memphis Massacre 1866, April 13, 2016. Sade Stevens, Kayla Vinson, Trey Walk, Sumita Rajpurohit, https://blogs.memphis.edu/memphismassacre1866/2016/ and Breana Lamkin for research and writing; John Dalton 371 Daggett, House Report, 597-598; See Keils, House Re- 04/13/constructing-memories-of-reconstruction/; David port, 5. Waters, “Marker Finally Honors Truth, Victims of Memphis and Keiana West for editing; Gabrielle Daniels, Kari Nelson, Massacre,” The Commercial Appeal, May 1, 2016. Menna Elsayed, Jesse Chung, Alison Ganem, and Abigail 372 Hamilton, House Report, 817. 383 Maura Ewing, “How One Agency Is Fixing American Gellman for research; Jose Vazquez for photography and 373 Keils, House Report, 4. Amnesia About Reconstruction,” Pacific Standard, January image research; Bryan G. Stevenson for photography; and 22, 2018. https://psmag.com/social-justice/remembering- Michaela Clark for photo research. We are also grateful to 374 See Senate Report, 577; Williford, House Report, 433. reconstruction Josh Cannon, Elizabeth Woodson, Randy Susskind, Sonia 375 Montgomery Morning News, “Special to Morning 384 “Rachel Adams,” Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Narra- Kapadia, and Emily Lumpkin for project support, produc- tive Project, Vol. 4, Georgia, Part 1, Adams-Furr. 1936. News,” November 4, 1874, quoted in Congressional Report, tion, and memorial assistance. We are also thankful to 1278; The Weekly Advertiser, “Eufaula Riot,” February 25, https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn041/. 1874; Wisconsin State Journal, “Election Fights,” November Jamiel Law, Matt Rota, and Dola Sun for illustrations. 5, 1874; The Burlington Free Press, November 5, 1874; Na-