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The Memphis riots of 1866 were the violent events that occurred from May 1 to 3 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.〔Zuczek, Richard (ed.). 2006. ''Encyclopedia of the Reconstruction Era:'' Memphis Riot (1866).〕 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 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: 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.〔(United States Congress, House Select Committee on the Memphis Riots, ''Memphis Riots and Massacres'' ), 25 July 1866, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office (reprinted by Arno Press, Inc., 1969)〕 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. Public attention following the riots and reports of the atrocities, together with the New Orleans riot in July, strengthened the case made by Radical Republicans in U.S. Congress.〔Ryan, "The Memphis Riots of 1866" (1977), p. 243.〕 The events influenced passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to grant full citizenship to freedmen, as well as passage of the Reconstruction Act to establish military districts and oversight in certain states.〔Waller, "Community, Class, and Race" (1984), p. 233.〕 Investigation of the riot suggested specific causes related to competition for housing, work and social space between Irish immigrants and their descendants, and the freedmen. The white gentry also sought to drive freedpeople out of Memphis and back onto plantations where their labor could be exploited. Through violent terrorism, the white community at large sought to force blacks to respect white supremacy as the time of fully legal slavery was nearing its end.〔Hardwick, "Your Old Father Abe Lincoln Is Dead And Damned" (1993), p. 123. "The Memphis riot was a brutal episode in the ongoing struggle that continued well past the actual moment of emancipation to establish the boundaries around and possibilities for action by blacks. The rioters asserted dominance over blacks and attempted to establish limitations on black behavior. Where one cultural code had governed racial interaction under slavery, another, more appropriate to the new black status, had to be established after blacks claimed their freedom."〕 ==Background == After the capture of Memphis by Union forces in 1862 and occupation of the state, the city became a center for contraband camps as well as haven for fugitive slaves seeking refuge from their former owners. In Shelby County and the four adjacent counties around the city, the slave population in 1860 was 45,000. With the people migrating to the city, the black population of Memphis increased from 3,000 in 1860 to nearly 20,000 in 1865.〔Ryan, "The Memphis Riots of 1866" (1977), p. 244.〕 While some lived in camps, families of the 3rd Artillery, a black unit that had been stationed there for a time, built cabins and shacks. They settled beyond the city limits near Fort Pickering, in what was called South Memphis. Many of their families moved to the same area.〔Hardwick, "Your Old Father Abe Lincoln Is Dead And Damned" (1993), p. 112. "Once large numbers of black soldiers came to be stationed at Memphis, members of their families began to settle there as well."〕 Unique among states because of the long term military occupation, Tennessee was subject to a de facto Black Code which depended on the complicity of police, lawyers, judges, jailers, etc.〔Forehand, "Striking Resemblance" (1996), pp. 12–13.〕 The slaveholding economy of Tennessee and the Memphis area had also begun to feel the effects of autonomous emancipation, as they could no longer rely on profits from forced labor. White resentment of the freedmen in Memphis led the military to establish a policy of capturing blacks on vagrancy charges, so they could be forced back onto plantations 〔Hardwick, "Your Old Father Abe Lincoln Is Dead And Damned" (1993), pp. 113–115. "Major William Gray, one of Dudley's officers, remarked in September, that 'I am daily urged by influential persons in the city' to compel freedmen and women to accept plantation jobs.' Dudley's attitude regarding the status of freedmen is apparent in a letter that same month, in which he wrote 'worthless, idle, persons have no rights to claim the same benefits arising from their freedom that the industrious and honest are entitled to.' In October he ordered that the streets be patroled by soldiers from Fort Pickering to pick up 'vagrants' and force them to accept labor contracts with rural planters. To some, and especially to blacks, this policy seemed akin to the reimposition of slavery."〕 To General Nathan Dudley, who established this policy for the Memphis Freedman's Bureau, local Reverend T. E. Bliss wrote: How is it that the colored children in Memphis even ''with their spelling books in their hands'' are caught up by your order & taken to the same place & there insolently told that they 'had better be picking cotton.' Is it for the purpose of conciliating' their old rebel masters & assisting them to get help to secure their Cotton Crop? Has it come to this that the most Common rights of these poor people are thus to be trampled upon for the benefit of those who have wronged them all their days?〔Quoted in Hardwick, "Your Old Father Abe Lincoln Is Dead And Damned" (1993), p. 115.〕 Black soldiers counteracted efforts to direct people back to the plantations. General Davis Tilson, head of the Memphis Freedman's Bureau prior to Dudley, complained, regarding soldiers dispatched to threaten people to return to work on the plantations, that "colored soldiers interfere with their labors and tell the freed people that the statements made to them . . . are false, thereby embarrassing the operations of the Bureau."〔Hardwick, "Your Old Father Abe Lincoln Is Dead And Damned" (1993), p. 116. Tilson is discussing "the soldiers employed to visit the Freed people in and about Memphis and inform them that none but those having sufficient means or so permanently employed as to be able to take care of themselves will be allowed to remain."〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Memphis riots of 1866」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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