First Reconstruction Act of 1867 | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

First Reconstruction Act of 1867

Enacted by U.S. Congress, March 2, 1867

Reprinted on About Texas: Texas State Library and Archives Commission (Web site)

Congress devises a plan for remaking Southern society

"No legal State governments or adequate protection for life or property now exists in the rebel States.…"

Two horse-drawn carriages—one driven by a white man, the other by an African American man—collided May 1, 1866, on the streets of Memphis, Tennessee, a city that swelled with African American refugees and racial tensions after the American Civil War (1861–65). Police arrested the African American driver, and a nearby group of African American war veterans stepped in to ask what was happening. The scene attracted a crowd of white men, many of them resentful of the African Americans who were making a good living in the city or were wandering the streets of Memphis looking for work. Tempers began to flare. Shoves turned into punches, touching off one of the bloodiest riots of the post-war era, as noted in Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution. By the end of the three-day Memphis riots, at least forty-six African Americans were dead, five African American women had been raped, and "hundreds of black dwellings, churches, and schools were pillaged or destroyed by fire."

A second round of riots broke out in New Orleans on July 30, 1866, outside a convention that had been called to add voting rights for African American men to the Louisiana stateconstitution.

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