This is the story of a night of horror that began as celebration of the recognition of the citizenship of Black people. The death toll was in the single digits, but the impact was dramatic. These events occurred in Norfolk, Virginia on April 16, 1866.
Those familiar with the Civil War naval battle between the Merrimac and the Monitor know that Norfolk was one of the earliest Confederate cities occupied by Union forces. The city had been continuously under Union control since 1862. Industrial and tied into the merchant economy of the coast, It might not seem like the likeliest place for the spilling of blood after the war ended.
The Black community made up nearly a third of Norfolk’s population at the start of the Civil War, and it grew during the conflict as escaped slaves entered Union lines there. In the 1860 Census there were 1,046 Free Blacks and 3,284 enslaved Black people out of a total population of 14,620. By 1870 when the next Census was taken, the city’s population had grown to 19,229, but nearly all the growth had come in the increased size of the Free Black community. Over 45% of the people of Norfolk were Free Blacks by then. [1]
The Black community began to assert itself publicly in January 1863 when four thousand marched in a celebration of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln. Nervous white leaders must have wondered if it was a portent of big changes to come. [2]
The Day Book was a white supremacist newspaper in Norfolk, Virginia that had begun publishing a few years before the Civil War. It was vocally outspoken against the changes that Emancipation, occupation, and Reconstruction wrought. The paper attacked the recognition of Blacks as citizens and referred to white supporters of Reconstruction as the “enemies of our own race.” The newspaper would interpret the Civil Rights Act and the conflict on April 16 for many of Norfolk’s whites. [3]
From January through April 1866 there had been a number of clashes between white and Black residents of the city. These included white mobs attacking Black saloons, Black and white youths pelting each other with bottles during a circus parade, and clashes by locals with Union soldiers, particularly with United States Colored Troops. But as Spring came on, these conflicts seemed minor compared to the threat to white power contained in the Civil Rights Act. [4]
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was revolutionary in its intent. It went to war with the Dred Scott Decision, declaring that African Americans were citizens and that they had rights white people had to respect. The opening sentence of the Act declared; “That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude…shall have the same right, in every State and Territory in the United States, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens…” Just as importantly, it gave the Federal judiciary jurisdiction over cases where the rights of Blacks were abridged on account of race. [5]
In early April, Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson’s veto of the Civil Rights Act and Black communities across the South held meetings and celebrations to mark the recognition, for the first time, that all Black people born in the United States were citizens. In Norfolk, the Black community celebrated with a march through the city on April 16. Hundreds of African Americans joined the procession with signs reading “Ballot Box Free to All” and announcing that they were “The Rising Sons of Freedom.” Black veterans of the United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.) provided an armed protective ring to prevent attacks on the marchers. The United States Army commander, Maj. William Stanhope estimated that about twenty armed men marched with the celebrants. Early in the parade, some onlookers insulted the marchers, throwing bricks and bottles at them. [6]
The procession reached a field where speeches were to be given. At that point an apparently intoxicated police officer attempted to arrest one of the Black men, but a crowd formed around the policeman and chased him off. A Confederate veteran named Robert Whitehurst fired his gun at the men chasing the policeman, and he himself was shot. When his step-mother tried to restrain Whitehurst, he shot her, apparently by accident. Both Whitehurst and his step-mother died from their wounds. Armed whites roamed the streets attacking Blacks, killing at least two and wounding others. At 9:30 that night, an organized band of a hundred Confederate veterans dressed in their old uniforms attacked the United States Army forces. Major Stanhope reported to his superiors that the “mob firing upon me, were to a man, dressed in rebel gray.” He testified later that the Confederate veterans had formed into three units and marched in military cadence. He said that the city government and police did not suppress the white bands and he characterized the city officials as “extremely hostile to the black population.”[7]
On April 18, Major Stanhope received an order to bypass the local mayor if he refused to protect African Americans. The orders said that “If disturbances occur, or are, in your judgment, likely to occur, threatening violence to the Colored people, you will interfere to protect or suppress them.” [8]
The city’s Black-oriented newspaper The True Southerner warned its readers that “The white citizens are threatening to kill everybody that approves of the Civil Rights Bill.” [9]
The Day Book blamed the passage of the Civil Rights Act for the violence, saying; “Does the Negro suppose that freedom means to butcher indiscriminately white men, women, and children whenever they choose to have a procession…Are the drunken carnivals of the blood of white people to mark each step of the negro in his march to superiority over the peaceable white citizens of the South?”[10]
The day after the violence, United States troops were sent to the city. Whites demanded that Stanhope disarm the Black community, which he decided against, since it would leave the whites with a monopoly of armed force. After the violence, the city authorities arrested fifty Black men, but no whites, for crimes they allegedly committed that fateful day. When no evidence of most of their guilt could be found, all but seven were released. [11]
The city’s mayor, whose actions the army commander said contributed to the violence, blamed the fighting on the African Americans. He wrote a letter saying “I only knew there was to be a negro procession from rumors. I certainly [did] not approve of negro processions, and would prevent such occurrences if I had the power.” [12]
This excerpt from The True Southerner describes the procession, an attack on the marchers by whites, and the beginning of the armed conflict. You can find the full article here on page 2. The newspaper was edited by Joseph Wilson, a Black Union veteran. Wilson was born in Norfolk, educated in Massachusetts, and he enlisted in the 2nd Louisiana Native Guard and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, two of the first Black regiments in the Union Army. He was wounded at the Battle of Olustee in Florida. Wilson asked after the attacks on the Civil Rights Act celebration; “Are we to be forbidden to hold national celebrations in our own country, lest we offend the enemy?” The April 19th issue was the newspaper’s last. White supremacists destroyed Wilson’s press and the paper had to close. [13]
True Southerner, Volume 1, Number 20, 19 April 1866
The Richmond Daily Dispatch also covered the events of April 16 in Norfolk, but with a decidedly different tone. Here, the armed U.S.C.T. veterans guarding the procession were depicted as a threat to the white power structure as was the Civil Rights Act itself. This is the headline and first paragraph.
