Memphis riots of 1866
| Memphis riots of 1866 | |||
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| Part of the Reconstruction Era | |||
Illustration of an attack on black Memphians. Harper's Weekly, 26 May 1866
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| Date | May 1 - 3, 1866 | ||
| Location | Memphis, Tennessee | ||
| Causes | Racial tension | ||
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| Parties to the civil conflict | |||
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White forces
The Memphis riots of 1866 were the violent events that occurred from May 1 to 3, 1866 in Memphis, Tennessee. The racial violence was ignited by political, social and racial tensions following the American Civil War, in the early stages of Reconstruction. After a shooting altercation between white policemen and black soldiers recently mustered out of the Union Army, mobs of white civilians and policemen rampaged through black neighborhoods and the houses of freedmen, attacking and killing black men, women and children.
Federal troops were sent to quell the violence and peace was restored on the third day. A subsequent report by a joint Congressional Committee detailed the carnage, with blacks suffering most of the injuries and deaths by far: 46 blacks and 2 whites were killed, 75 blacks injured, over 100 black persons robbed, 5 black women raped, and 91 homes, 4 churches and 8 schools burned in the black community. Modern estimates place property losses at over $100,000, suffered mostly by blacks. Many blacks fled the city permanently; by 1870, their population had fallen by one quarter compared to 1865.
Public attention following the riots and reports of the atrocities, together with the New Orleans riot in July 1866, strengthened the case made by Radical Republicans in U.S. Congress that more had to be done to protect freedmen in the South and grant full rights. The events influenced passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to grant full citizenship to freedmen, as well as passage of the Reconstruction Act to establish military districts and oversight in certain states.
Investigation of the riot suggested specific causes related to competition in the working class for housing, work and social space: Irish immigrants and their descendants competed with freedmen in all these categories. The white planters wanted to drive freedmen out of Memphis and back to plantations, to support cotton cultivation with their labor. The violence was a way to enforce white supremacy after the end of slavery.
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