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On May 1, 1866, a minor exchange between white Memphis city police
and a group of black Union soldiers quickly escalated into murder
and mayhem. Changes wrought by the Civil War and African American
emancipation sent long-standing racial, economic, cultural, class,
and gender tensions rocketing to new heights. For three days, a mob
of white men roamed through South Memphis, leaving a trail of
blood, rubble, and terror in their wake. By May 3, at least
forty-six African American men, women, and children and two white
men lay dead. An unknown number of black people had been driven out
of the city. Every African American church and schoolhouse lay in
ruins, homes and businesses burglarized and burned, and at least
five women had been raped. As a federal military commander noted in
the days following, "what [was] called the 'riot'" was "in reality
[a] massacre" of extended proportions. It was also a massacre whose
effects spread far beyond Memphis, Tennessee. As the essays in this
collection reveal, the massacre at Memphis changed the trajectory
of the post-Civil War nation. Led by recently freed slaves who
refused to be cowed and federal officials who took their concerns
seriously, the national response to the horror that ripped through
the city in May 1866 helped to shape the nation we know today.
Remembering the Memphis Massacre brings this pivotal moment and its
players, long hidden from all but specialists in the field, to a
public that continues to feel the effects of those three days and
the history that made them possible.
With emancipation, a long battle for equal citizenship began.
Bringing together the histories of religion, race, and the South,
Elizabeth L. Jemison shows how southerners, black and white, drew
on biblical narratives as the basis for very different political
imaginaries during and after Reconstruction. Focusing on everyday
Protestants in the Mississippi River Valley, Jemison scours their
biblical thinking and religious attitudes toward race. She argues
that the evangelical groups that dominated this portion of the
South shaped contesting visions of black and white rights. Black
evangelicals saw the argument for their identities as Christians
and as fully endowed citizens supported by their readings of both
the Bible and U.S. law. The Bible, as they saw it, prohibited
racial hierarchy and Amendments 13, 14, and 15 advanced equal
rights. Countering this, white evangelicals continued to emphasize
a hierarchical paternalistic order that, shorn of earlier
justifications for placing whites in charge of blacks, now fell
into the defense of an increasingly violent white supremacist
social order. They defined aspects of Christian identity so as to
suppress black equality - even praying, as Jemison documents, for
wisdom in how to deny voting rights to blacks. This religious
culture has played into remarkably long-lasting patterns of
inequality and segregation.
With emancipation, a long battle for equal citizenship began.
Bringing together the histories of religion, race, and the South,
Elizabeth L. Jemison shows how southerners, black and white, drew
on biblical narratives as the basis for very different political
imaginaries during and after Reconstruction. Focusing on everyday
Protestants in the Mississippi River Valley, Jemison scours their
biblical thinking and religious attitudes toward race. She argues
that the evangelical groups that dominated this portion of the
South shaped contesting visions of black and white rights. Black
evangelicals saw the argument for their identities as Christians
and as fully endowed citizens supported by their readings of both
the Bible and U.S. law. The Bible, as they saw it, prohibited
racial hierarchy and Amendments 13, 14, and 15 advanced equal
rights. Countering this, white evangelicals continued to emphasize
a hierarchical paternalistic order that, shorn of earlier
justifications for placing whites in charge of blacks, now fell
into the defense of an increasingly violent white supremacist
social order. They defined aspects of Christian identity so as to
suppress black equality - even praying, as Jemison documents, for
wisdom in how to deny voting rights to blacks. This religious
culture has played into remarkably long-lasting patterns of
inequality and segregation.
On May 1, 1866, a minor exchange between white Memphis city police
and a group of black Union soldiers quickly escalated into murder
and mayhem. Changes wrought by the Civil War and African American
emancipation sent long-standing racial, economic, cultural, class,
and gender tensions rocketing to new heights. For three days, a mob
of white men roamed through South Memphis, leaving a trail of
blood, rubble, and terror in their wake. By May 3, at least
forty-six African American men, women, and children and two white
men lay dead. An unknown number of black people had been driven out
of the city. Every African American church and schoolhouse lay in
ruins, homes and businesses burglarized and burned, and at least
five women had been raped. As a federal military commander noted in
the days following, "what [was] called the 'riot'" was "in reality
[a] massacre" of extended proportions. It was also a massacre whose
effects spread far beyond Memphis, Tennessee. As the essays in this
collection reveal, the massacre at Memphis changed the trajectory
of the post-Civil War nation. Led by recently freed slaves who
refused to be cowed and federal officials who took their concerns
seriously, the national response to the horror that ripped through
the city in May 1866 helped to shape the nation we know today.
Remembering the Memphis Massacre brings this pivotal moment and its
players, long hidden from all but specialists in the field, to a
public that continues to feel the effects of those three days and
the history that made them possible.
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