This guide provides information and links to websites that detail the many racially inspired slaughters of African Americans in the United States of America by those considered white Americans.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., gives us a sumptuously illustrated landmark book tracing African American history from the arrival of the conquistadors to the election of Barack Obama. Informed by the latest, sometimes provocative scholarship and including more than seven hundred images--ancient maps, fine art, documents, photographs, cartoons, posters--Life Upon These Shores focuses on defining events, debates, and controversies, as well as the signal achievements of people famous and obscure. Gates takes us from the sixteenth century through the ordeal of slavery, from the Civil War and Reconstruction through the Jim Crow era and the Great Migration; from the civil rights and black nationalist movements through the age of hip-hop to the Joshua generation. By documenting and illuminating the sheer diversity of African American involvement in American history, society, politics, and culture, Gates bracingly disabuses us of the presumption of a single "black experience." Life Upon These Shores is a book of major importance, a breathtaking tour de force of the historical imagination.
The meaning of race in the antebellum southern United States was anchored in the racial exclusivity of slavery (coded as black) and full citizenship (coded as white as well as male). These traditional definitions of race were radically disrupted after emancipation, when citizenship was granted to all persons born in the United States and suffrage was extended to all men. Hannah Rosen persuasively argues that in this critical moment of Reconstruction, contests over the future meaning of race were often fought on the terrain of gender. Sexual violence--specifically, white-on-black rape--emerged as a critical arena in postemancipation struggles over African American citizenship. Analyzing the testimony of rape survivors, Rosen finds that white men often staged elaborate attacks meant to enact prior racial hierarchy. Through their testimony, black women defiantly rejected such hierarchy and claimed their new and equal rights. Rosen explains how heated debates over interracial marriage were also attempts by whites to undermine African American men's demands for suffrage and a voice in public affairs. By connecting histories of rape and discourses of "social equality" with struggles over citizenship, Rosen shows how gendered violence and gendered rhetorics of race together produced a climate of terror for black men and women seeking to exercise their new rights as citizens. Linking political events at the city, state, and regional levels, Rosen places gender and sexual violence at the heart of understanding the reconsolidation of race and racism in the postemancipation United States.
Racial tension grew in Memphis with the presence of a black regiment and Irish police force. White mobs hunted down black people, shooting and raping them; every black church and black school was burned down. The testimony of survivors helped convince Congress the rights of black should be written into the Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. Distributed by PBS Distribution.
“Reconstruction: America After the Civil War—Episode 1.” Films On Demand, Films Media Group, 2019, fod.infobase.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=95565&xtid=188580. Accessed 20 July 2020.
Hardwick, Kevin R. "'Your old father Abe Lincoln is dead and damned': black soldiers and the Memphis race riot of 1866." Journal of Social History, vol. 27, no. 1, 1993, p. 109+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A14446815/AONE?u=lincclin_sjrcc&sid=AONE&xid=20ef1b8f. Accessed 20 July 2020.
Scholars typically discuss the rule of law as an abstract concept, rather than a practical reality susceptible to failure. The Memphis Massacre of 1866 provides a valuable case study in the failure of foundational principles o f the rule of law. After the Civil War, in Memphis, Tennessee, there was a massive influx of former slaves, coterminous with the State stripping former Confederates of their right to hold office. In May 1866, racial terror enfolded the city, and for three days police and local officials led a massacre o f dozens of African-American men, women, and children. The city was set ablaze, resulting in mass burning o f homes, schools, churches, and businesses; and rapes, beatings, and robberies o f African Americans. The Memphis Massacre was one o f many race riots that occurred in the Reconstruction South, precipitated in part by the radical developments intended to promote equal citizenship following the Civil War, the resistance of white southerners, and change in the social order. Yet, the local response wholly failed to provide any criminal or civil remedies to the victims of the massacre. In fact, no local action was ever taken to bring those responsible to justice for the heinous acts committed. The perpetrators o f racial violence themselves believed that their actions were enforcing the rule of law-fueled by a perception that the new freedoms and economic liberty o f freedmen were contrary to the Constitution. In considering the rule of law, this Article utilizes the Memphis Massacre as a case study to examine how individuals interpret, understand, and abide by the substantive application of formal law and procedure. The Article places the Massacre in context with other race riots-both in the same period and decades after. What was the substantive rule of law? Was it the notions o f racial inferiority or white racial supremacy perpetuated by white citizens? Or was it the ideals of equality that informed the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment? Turning to the passage o f the Fourteenth Amendment, this Article evaluates how [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
DONALD, BERNICE BOUIE. “When the Rule of Law Breaks Down: Implications of the 1866 Memphis Massacre for the Passage of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Boston University Law Review, vol. 98, no. 6, Dec. 2018, pp. 1607–1676. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=a9h&AN=134059065&site=ehost-live.
Waller, Altina L. “Community, Class and Race in the Memphis Riot of 1866.” Journal of Social History, vol. 18, no. 2, 1984, pp. 233–246. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3787286. Accessed 20 July 2020.
Lovett, Bobby L. “The Negro's Civil War in Tennessee, 1861-1865.” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 61, no. 1, 1976, pp. 36–50. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3031531. Accessed 20 July 2020.