Memphis Massacre

1866 Memphis Massacre

The Memphis riots of 1866 were the violent events that occurred from May 1st to 3rd, 1866 in Memphis, Tennessee. The racial violence was ignited by political, social and racial tensions following the American Civil War, in the early stages of Reconstruction.[1] After a shooting altercation between white policemen and black soldiers recently mustered out of the Union Army, mobs of white civilians and policemen rampaged through black neighborhoods and the houses of freedmen, attacking and killing black men, women and children.

Federal troops were sent to quell the violence and peace was restored on the third day. A subsequent report by a joint Congressional Committee detailed the carnage, with blacks suffering most of the injuries and deaths by far: 46 blacks and 2 whites were killed, 75 blacks injured, over 100 black persons robbed, 5 black women raped, and 91 homes, 4 churches and 8 schools burned in the black community.[2] Modern estimates place property losses at over $100,000, also suffered mostly by blacks. Many blacks fled the city permanently; by 1870, their population had fallen by one quarter compared to 1865.

Please go to the Guy Family web-site at www.guyfamilyreunion.com and view the videos on the "Battle of Memphis" and the "Memphis Massacre of 1866".

Baldy Guy & George Guy both fought in the Battle of Memphis and both moved to Memphis after the Civil War and were here during the Memphis Massacre of 1866.

 

 

Memphis Riot, 1866  The Black Past

 

Freedmen's Schoolhouse Burns in 1866 Memphis, Tennessee


 

 

 

Black Massacres