John C. Creighton had emerged as an important figure in Irish American politics in Memphis in 1866. He was elected recorder for the city and he had a following among immigrant voters. He reflected the anti-black sentiment of many Irish in the city and he fanned the flames of hatred against the rising number of ex-slaves moving to the Mississippi river port.1
In the year since the Civil War ended, antipathy towards blacks was rapidly becoming hatred as the newly powerful Irish community saw blacks as rivals not just for jobs, but for political dominance. In 1865 and 1866 the Irish had won most of the elected political positions in the city because both former Confederates and former slaves could not vote under Tennessee law. It was the immigrants, who had held themselves aloof during the war, who were the most fully enfranchised voting block in the city. With laws in the offing that would extend the suffrage to blacks, the Irish could well imagine that their grip on power might end if the African American population continued to swell.2
Blacks made up half of Memphis’s population, outnumbering both native-born former Confederates and the Irish. Many had arrived in the last year of the war as refugees from slavery on plantations, or had been drawn to the city after the war seeking the protection of the Union soldiers stationed there and assistance from the Freedmen’s Bureau. The population of blacks had grown from four thousand in 1860 to approximately 20,000 in 1866. 3
Soon after Union forces occupied Memphis in 1862, Fort Pickering began to house escaped slaves coming into the city seeking freedom from their Confederate masters. The discharged black soldiers involved in the opening hours of the Memphis Riots were living in Fort Pickering in April of 1866.
The Irish had newfound political power and the blacks had hard-earned freedom, but both groups were at the bottom of the economic scale. While the Irish and the blacks had both seen important improvements in their situations, they both struggled to feed and clothe their families, and they struggled with each other for many of the same poorly paid jobs.4
The Union military force in Memphis a year after the war ended was tiny compared to the task that would confront it in May. It had included a local artillery unit, the 3rd U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery, which had originally been recruited in Memphis from the area’s black population. In spite of its name, it had served as an infantry unit during the war. On April 17, the 3rd U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery was disbanded. Most of the discharged soldiers, without homes to go to, stayed at Fort Pickering south of the city even after their time in the army had ended. 5
Sergeant Tom Strawn of Company B, 3rd U.S. Colored Troops Heavy Artillery Regiment. During the Civil War African American recruits were placed in segregated units designated as United States Colored Troops (USCT)
The black troops who remained at the fort had access to guns and they did not have the restraining influences of family or church on their behavior. In the weeks after their unit broke up, some of the men were known to head into the city to drink and carouse, and to fight with the mostly Irish police force. Clashes between patrolmen and groups of United States Colored Troops veterans were becoming common by the end of April, and they often involved strong elements of communal bigotry. Police increasingly beat blacks accused of crimes, and veterans denounced the cops as “low Irishmen.”6
Rachel Dilts, a white woman from Illinois, witnessed the opening moments of the Memphis Race Riot on Monday, April 30, 1866. She testified before the Joint Congressional Committee investigating the riots that she saw several black men, wearing soldiers’ clothing, stopped by four policemen. “Some words were passed between them,” she told the Congressmen, and she recalled that “the policemen ran after one of the negroes , and I suppose struck him, for the negro fell and the policeman on top of him. “ The blacks escaped and began to run off down the street, but “one of the policemen ran after this negro that fell down and struck him on the head with his pistol…another negro ran and struck the policeman with a stick.”7
The next morning, May 1, residents in South Memphis were disturbed by dozens of discharged black troops drinking and celebrating their mustering out of the army. Recorder Creighton found four policemen and ordered them to disperse the blacks. The badly outnumbered police objected to the order, but eventually they tried to break up the gathering. Instead of dispersing, the former soldiers cursed and insulted the police. 8
The police withdrew, but some of the ex-soldiers pursued them, insulting the police and threatening them. When the police reached a bridge, some of their tormentors began to throw split logs at them. At least one of the black men fired a pistol in the air. The police drew their guns and more of the ex-soldiers begin firing, now at the police. 9
Although none in the crowd of soldiers or the among the policemen were killed in these initial encounters, word soon spread in both the black community and among the police that men on both sides were dead. Groups of armed men from the Irish community began to assemble.10
Major General George Stoneman was informed on the afternoon of Tuesday May 1, 1866 by the sheriff that a riot had broken out in South Memphis and that the Union troops under Stoneman were needed to quell it. Stoneman responded that he did not want to use soldiers until the local resources had first been exhausted. He said later that he had only recently turned protection of the city over to civilians and that he wanted to see if the civil authorities were “capable of taking care of themselves” before the United States troops intervened. The mayor of Memphis also requested assistance, but Stoneman said that while he readied his troops, he did not want to intervene immediately. He testified later that he kept his men from intervening at this crucial early stage “for the purpose of testing whether they [the police and sheriff] were capable of keeping peace and order themselves.” Stoneman had fewer than two hundred men at his disposal, but his decision to test the abilities of local authorities ended any chance that the worst phases of the riots could be avoided. 11
Union Major General George Stoneman had commanded thousands of men during the Civil War, but in Memphis in 1866 he only had two hundred soldiers available when the riots began.
Irish political leaders incited the growing mob to attack blacks in retaliation for the shooting of the police. Barbour Lewis, a white lawyer, testified that on May 1 he saw the police bringing in black prisoners along the street. “I am sorry to say that they pounded their prisoners,” he testified, “The policemen with their clubs would strike them…” A crowd gathered around the police and their prisoners calling for the blacks to be killed. Lewis said that he heard many wild rumors designed to incite the crowd, which included many Irish immigrants, including charges that the blacks were staging an uprising and that three or four whites had been killed. When Barbour Lewis approached the black district he did not see dead whites. Instead he saw the bodies of five black men. Groups of dozens of white men followed police back into the black community.12
John Moller, a white store owner, saw the growing number of white men heading into the black community. He heard some of the rioters say that “they were going to shoot every d—-d nigger.” Someone said that the Germans “ought to be killed too because they make the negroes free.”13
The riot was quickly passing beyond being a simple fight between the police and some discharged black soldiers. George Todd, a German immigrant, said that he saw John Creighton, an elected official, inciting the mob to “clean out” the blacks from Memphis that Mayday. A black man happened past the crowd, and the police began firing at him but he apparently slipped away. The next day Todd saw a crowd administer whippings to blacks on the streets.14
Union army Captain A.W. Allyn testified that after the initial disturbances by the black soldiers the larger violence was set off by the police attacking and beating blacks whom they encountered. Crowds collected around these policemen and joined in the attacks. The army officer said that along with some of the city’s Irish population, he saw rioters who appeared to be men from the countryside who had come in by train to join in the attacks on the black community.15
During the first hour of the revenge attacks, the police and their followers seemed to have focused on capturing or beating black men wearing articles of Union soldiers’ clothing. Soon, they began attacking blacks more generally. General Stoneman testified that while blacks had been involved in fighting at the beginning of the riots, after that “the negroes had nothing to do with the riot except to be killed and abused.”16
On May 2 African American men, women and children were attacked indiscriminately in South Memphis.
Lavinia Godell was a black woman whose husband was killed on May 2. Her husband had come home from work that evening and found that she was sick and that there was no food in the house. He went to a nearby store with a pan to get some corn meal.17
The white grocer who rented his basement to Jackson Godell was John Moller. He testified that Jackson was a “very quiet, …sensible man” who on coming home from work had come into Moller’s store “to get some cornmeal.” Three men “followed him with revolvers “and they knocked him on the head.” They knocked him down and fired two shots at him and left him bleeding in the gutter.18
A short time later, a friend burst in to Lavinia’s home and shouted that “Jackson is dead.” Lavinia testified that she found him lying in the street groaning. “I sat with his head in my hand.” She said that a man told her to get some friends to take Jackson off the street and into the house. She could not find help, and afraid for her own safety she stayed inside. The next morning Jackson’s body was missing. She found him dead at the local police station.19
Not all of the attacks were fatal. Henry Jackson was a black man who had lived in Memphis since the previous year. On May 2, he was standing with a friend when a policeman came by “and he just struck me and grabbed me by the beard and struck me again until the blood ran down all over my clothes. “ Frances Thompson, a black woman, testified that she and a sixteen year old girl were gang-raped by seven Irish rioters who included two policemen.20
Schools educating black children were a particular target of the mobs.
The riots were over by Thursday morning after General Stoneman at last took decisive action. A report three weeks later by the Freedmen’s Bureau said that the riots had been set off because of a history of mutual antagonism between the police and the African American soldiers in the city. It said that hatred of the black community had been stoked by pro-Confederate newspapers which had depicted the growing black community as a menace to working class whites. The propaganda had poisoned the atmosphere so much that “the slightest provocation [might] bring about an open rupture.” Reports estimated that thirty to forty-six blacks were killed, 50 wounded, and that 11 black churches and schools were burned. Two whites died, although both appear to have been killed by other whites. 21
Although only a small percentage of the city’s Irish community participated in the attacks on blacks, it is clear that some of their communal leaders encouraged them. Similar riots took place in a dozen cities throughout the South during reconstruction, none led by Irish politicians. A little over a year after the riots, organized political violence by the Ku Klux Klan and other groups established to terrorize freed slaves used violence to reestablish white control in the South. 22
After the riots, the Memphis Freedmen’s Bureau office became a place where burned out blacks could seek help. The Freedmen’s and Refugee Bureau had been established the year before to assist ex-slaves in the transition to freedom. A major function of the Bureau was to provide education for African Americans.
The Freedmen’s Bureau report concluded that freed blacks were extremely vulnerable in the post-war situation. The hostility towards them was deadly, as the Memphis riots proved. They could only be protected by the “bayonet.” 22
The policy of President Andrew Johnson of dramatically reducing the role of the Federal government and the Union army in protecting freed slaves in the South would soon be reversed by a Congress that passed two new Constitutional Amendments and Reconstruction and Civil Rights Acts to place the government of the United States between black communities and white terror.23
Video: Stephen Ash lectures on the Memphis Riots:
Resources:
The complete reports and testimony of the Joint Committee that investigated the Memphis Riots are available for free here.
A Massacre in Memphis: The Race Riot That Shook the Nation One Year After the Civil War by Stephen V. Ash published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2013) is the leading book on the riots. This series on the Memphis Riots draws heavily on Ash’s work.
The Freedmen’s Bureau report on the riots is available here.
The Memphis Riot Series:
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