Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [211]
The most far-reaching disturbances broke out in Memphis in early May 1866 and in New Orleans several months later. In Memphis, trouble began when freedmen and recently discharged black soldiers clashed with local police over the arrest of a black man; the forcible release of the prisoner triggered pent-up emotions and frustrations, aggravated by large numbers of black refugees, economic distress, and the enforcement of vagrancy laws. The riot took the lives of forty-six blacks (including two children and three women) and two white men (a policeman and a fireman), with many of the casualties incurred when white mobs invaded the black section of the city and burned homes, churches, and schoolhouses while terrorizing the residents. The Union Army commander, who had demobilized many of the black soldiers stationed near Memphis, initially refused to intervene to halt the violence, explaining to the local Freedmen’s Bureau agent that “he had a large amount of public property to guard; that a considerable part of the troops he had were not reliable; that they hated Negroes too.” While applauding his actions (“He knows the wants of the country, and sees the negro can do the country more good in the cotton fields than in the camp”), the local newspaper also expressed satisfaction with the overwhelming lesson taught by the riot. “The late riots in our city have satisfied all of one thing: that the southern men will not be ruled by the negro.… The negroes now know, to their sorrow, that it is best not to arouse the fury of the white man.”126
The pattern of race rioting seldom varied in these years. When relations between the freedmen and the whites reached a breaking point, the slightest incident might be seized as a pretext for an organized assault upon the entire black community. In New Orleans, tension had mounted over warring political factions, the convening of a constitutional convention in 1866, and the aggressive demands of the colored community. When black laborers paraded to press their demands for equal suffrage on the convention, that was sufficient provocation. Confronted by a mob of hostile whites, the paraders dispersed, street fighting broke out, and numerous delegates and black spectators trying to flee the convention hall were shot and killed. By the end of the affray, 48 men had been killed and 166 wounded, and Federal authorities had distinguished themselves largely by their indecision and belated intervention. What began as a “riot,” a congressional inquiry later concluded, ended as a “massacre.”127
If the postwar riots and violence were intended to teach the freedman “not to arouse the fury of the white man,” they taught him that and considerably more. Law enforcement agencies and officers, if not co-conspirators in violating the civil rights of ex-slaves, might be expected to protect or ignore the violators. Neither the Union Army nor the Freedmen’s Bureau could be trusted to afford them adequate protection; instead, Union troops in some localities alternated with native whites as the principal aggressors. To seek a redress of grievances in the courts of law, as many freedmen also quickly discovered, resulted invariably in futility if not personal danger.
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NOTHING SEEMED BETTER DESIGNED to drive blacks into total exasperation and ultimately into lawlessness than the law itself. In the experience of many freedmen at least, the differences between the law and lawlessness often became so blurred as to be indistinct. Not surprisingly, the legal system and its enforcement agents reflected, as they always had, the domination and the will of the white man. Few voiced that conviction more eloquently than an illiterate rural delegate to a freedmen’s convention