Karr 's famous epigram plus ça change, plus c 'est la même chose stuck with me throughout reading Stephen Ash 's A Massacre in Memphis: The Race Riot That Shook the Nation One Year After the Civil War. In 1866, during the uneasy aftermath of the Civil War, Memphis was swept by an orgy of racial violence. How did it start? Armed white policemen sparked a confrontation with a group of young black men – many of whom were Union veterans. Sound familiar? By the time the situation was brought under control, the grim tally was: 46 African-Americans and three whites killed, 75 blacks injured, five black women raped, 100 blacks robbed, 96 homes destroyed, as well as four black churches and twelve black schools burned to the ground. Of the African-American …show more content…
To me a riot is a civil disorder resulting from some real or perceived injury by a segment of a community. The Memphis events weren 't a riot. Ash used the word massacre. That 's closer to the reality. An even better word would be pogrom. The events in Memphis were an anti-black pogrom sparked by Irish racial resentment, fueled by the precariousness of social and economic life in the post-war South, aided by the blatant discrimination practiced by the city government, and not thwarted by the feckless local Union Army commander, Major General George …show more content…
His book is insightful, thoroughly-researched, and well-written. He delved deeply into the post-massacre reports produced by Congress and the U.S. Army, as well as the verbatim testimony recorded by the Freedmen 's Bureau from over 200 eye-witnesses. The first half of the book deals well with the complicated social, economic, and political background leading up to the initial clash on the Bayou Bridge. The book 's second half explores the violence in chronological detail and reviews the aftermath with an eye toward the political repercussions. Stephen Ash 's book is a short read, only 196 pages of text, followed by 79 pages of notes, bibliography and index. I recommend A Massacre in Memphis: The Race Riot That Shook the Nation One Year After the Civil War to Civil War enthusiasts or any reader interested in a long-range perspective on the racial cauldron that is American history. 2016 marks the sesquicentennial of the Memphis pogrom. And Karr was
On August 28, 1955, fourteen year old Emmett Till was beaten, tortured and shot. Then with barbed wire wrapped around his neck and tied to a large fan, his body was discarded into the Tallahatchi River. What was young Emmett’s offense that brought on this heinous reaction of two grown white men? When he went into a store to buy some bubblegum he allegedly whistled at a white female store clerk, who happened to be the store owner’s wife. That is the story of the end of Emmett Till’s life. Lynchings, beatings and cross-burning had been happening in the United States for years. But it was not until this young boy suffered an appalling murder in Mississippi that the eyes of a nation were irrevocably opened to the ongoing horrors of racism in the South. It sparked the beginning of a flourish of both national and international media coverage of the Civil Rights violations in America.
In 1950's America, there was a uprising that would sculpt the world into the place we now inhabit. The particular event in question is one concerning the black communities plight in 1950's America, with names such such as Rosa Parks, Emmett Till and (most importantly), Elizabeth Eckford Heading the list of names who took a stand, and, in turn, made America the place it is today. As the years went by, details of the many riots the segregation incurred were documented. The focus of this essay will be on a particular documentation titled 'The Long Shadow of Little Rock', a book published in 1962 on what happened to Elizabeth Eckford in Little Rock, Arkansas. However, just what can we learn from this Document?
The battalion’s arrival to Texas was met with great hostility from the white residents. “So opposed were whites to the very sight of black men in uniform that it was not unusual for trains carrying black troops to be fired on as they passed through Southern towns.” (Dorau, 1988) Houston patrolmen harassed and arrested soldiers for minor infractions and perceived slights that further increased racial tensions in the
On Easter of 1873 the city of Colfax experienced what is considered to be the last, but bloodiest battle of the Civil War and the end of the Reconstruction Era. This devastating event is known as the Colfax Massacre. In hopes of intimidating African Americans to keep them from voting, the Colfax Massacre resulted in the deaths of hundreds of black men. All of the incidents that occurred in the narrative were a result of the racism whites had against African-Americans which makes this one of the major themes of the book. The prevalence of racism in Colfax leads to many violent outbreaks, thus making violence a reoccurring theme in the narrative. In Nicholas Lemann’s work, Redemption: The Last Battle of The Civil War, Lemann illustrates the themes of racism, and the
On July 25, 1946, two young black couples- Roger and Dorothy Malcom, George and Mae Murray Dorsey-were killed by a lynch mob at the Moore's Ford Bridge over the Appalachee River connecting Walton and Oconee Counties (Brooks, 1). The four victims were tied up and shot hundreds of times in broad daylight by a mob of unmasked men; murder weapons included rifles, shotguns, pistols, and a machine gun. "Shooting a black person was like shooting a deer," George Dorsey's nephew, George Washington Dorsey said (Suggs C1). It has been over fifty years and this case is still unsolved by police investigators. It is known that there were atleast a dozen men involved in these killings. Included in the four that were known by name was Loy Harrison. Loy Harrison may not have been an obvious suspect to the investigators, but Harrison was the sole perpetrator in the unsolved Moore's Ford Lynching case. The motive appeared to be hatred and the crime hurt the image of the state leaving the town in an outrage due to the injustice that left the victims in unmarked graves (Jordon,31).
David W. Blight's book Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory and the American Civil War, is an intriguing look back into the Civil War era which is very heavily studied but misunderstood according to Blight. Blight focuses on how memory shapes history Blight feels, while the Civil War accomplished it goal of abolishing slavery, it fell short of its ultimate potential to pave the way for equality. Blight attempts to prove that the Civil War does little to bring equality to blacks. This book is a composite of twelve essays which are spilt into three parts. The Preludes describe blacks during the era before the Civil War and their struggle to over come slavery and describes the causes, course and consequences of the war. Problems in Civil War memory describes black history and deals with how during and after the war Americans seemed to forget the true meaning of the war which was race. And the postludes describes some for the leaders of black society and how they are attempting to keep the memory and the real meaning of the Civil War alive and explains the purpose of studying historical memory.
What is a Riot? According to Encyclopedia.gov a riot “is a social occasion involving relatively spontaneous collective violence directed at property, persons, or authority.” There are five main
Marable, Manning. Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
Perman Michael, Amy Murrell Taylor. Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2011.
Have you ever heard the term, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid?” or “You have drank the Kool-Aid.”? Well, ”Drinking the Kool-Aid” means you have done something that others have told you to do or did yourself. This saying comes from the cult society led by Reverend Jim Jones, named Jonestown. Jonestown was a small community in the jungle of Guyana, South America. After getting word of people coming to investigate the society, Jones had committed a mass suicide by poisoning Kool-Aid and giving it to the people of Jonestown.
This riot was in a sense a sign of the new revolution to come, due to the song “Burn, Baby Burn” by the Creators, being played... ... middle of paper ... ... g that is dance able but has a marching feel to it, lyrics such as “ Uncle Jam’s army, here- yeah. Disturbing the peace at the bridge of the river quiet.
A dress-up party in Texas turned deadly when the host of the party, dressed as Santa Claus, began shooting at his guests. By the end of his shooting spree, he had killed one person and injured three others.
One positive aspect of the book is how Sanford includes actual accounts of the massacre from the survivors, instead of briefly summarizing them herself. It would be quicker and easier for her to briefly point out what the testimonies said and what aspects they had in common. I thought reading the perspective of the massacre from different people like a widow, someone who was recruited to be a member of the Guatemalan army, someone who was forced to become a member of the army, etc. gave me a new perspective on the massacres. These testimonies and the pictures give the reader an emotional tie to the data that is being presented. I believe using the emotions of the reader helps them see her point that they Guatemalan army intended to harm their
Heidler, David Stephen, and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: a
There were several causes which led to this riot and the immediate cause was racial tension. Racism tends to persist most readily when there are obvious physical differences among groups e.g. “Black” and “white” differences. This no doubt results in attempts to limit economic opportunities, to preserve status, to deny equal protection under law and to maintain cheap labor. Discrimination was represented ...