New Orleans riot
| New Orleans riot | |||
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| Part of the Reconstruction Era | |||
The riot in New Orleans – murdering negroes in the rear of Mechanics' Institute ; Platform in Mechanics' Institute after the riot, Harper's Weekly, 1866
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| Date | July 30, 1866 | ||
| Location | New Orleans, Louisiana | ||
| Causes | Louisiana State Constitutional Convention | ||
| Result | Martial law declared | ||
| Parties to the civil conflict | |||
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The New Orleans riot, which occurred on July 30, 1866, was a violent conflict in which whites attacked blacks parading outside the Mechanics Institute in New Orleans, where a reconvened Louisiana Constitutional Convention was being held. The Radical Republicans in Louisiana had called for the Convention as they were angered by the legislature's enactment of the Black Codes and its refusal to give black men the vote. Democrats considered the reconvened convention to be illegal and were suspicious of Republican attempts to increase their power in the state. The riot "stemmed from deeply rooted political, social, and economic causes," and took place in part because of the battle "between two opposing factions for power and office." There were a total of 150 black casualties including 44 killed. In addition, three white Radical Republicans were killed as was one white protester.
During much of the American Civil War, New Orleans had been occupied and under martial law imposed by the Union. On May 12, 1866 Mayor John T. Monroe was reinstated as acting mayor, the position he held before the war. Judge R. K. Howell was elected as chairman of the convention, with the goal of increasing participation by voters likely to vote Republican.
The riot expressed conflicts deeply rooted within the social structure of Louisiana. It was a continuation of the war: more than half of the whites were Confederate veterans, and nearly half of the blacks were veterans of the Union army. The national reaction of outrage at the Memphis riots of 1866 and this riot nearly three months later led to Republicans gaining a majority in the United States House of Representatives and the Senate in the 1866 election, and support for the Fourteenth Amendment, extending suffrage and full citizenship to freedmen, and the Reconstruction Act, to establish military districts to oversee areas of the South and work to change their social arrangements.
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