| Chapter : | Introduction |
|
|
Larger numbers of slaves were to be found in the rural areas surrounding Memphis; according to one source, 60% of West Tennessee’s population was enslaved. Although the Memphis townspeople included such accomplished freedmen as grocer Joseph Clouston and clergyman Morris Henderson, these men held a precarious position in an increasingly racialized society, where they also had to compete, economically, with European immigrants, primarily Irish and German, who moved to the city in the 1840s and ’50s.
Rising Phoenix-Like from the Ashes: 1860 to 1900
By the beginning of the Civil War, in 1861, the population of Memphis had risen to 22,623, and the Black population of the city increased exponentially during the war, because of the flight to the urban center of escaped slaves from outlying plantations. As many as 6,000 fugitives lived in three contraband camps—Shiloh, New Africa, and Camp Dixie—located in South Memphis, where a cohesive Black community was emerging. When Union gunboats forced the surrender of Memphis on June 6, 1862, the soldiers built a military camp, Fort Pickering, on the outskirts of Memphis, which housed many Black Union troops. By 1865, when the Civil War ended, the number of Blacks in Memphis had increased from 4,000 in 1860, to 17,000—almost half of the total population—and that strong African American presence was threatening to some, who reacted with violence. In 1864, slave trader Nathan Bedford Forrest led Confederate troops in a massacre of Black soldiers at Fort Pillow, a Union camp located about forty miles north of Memphis. The slaughter was a prelude to the violence that erupted in Memphis two years later. In 1866, a White mob swept through the streets of Memphis in a three-day rampage that resulted in the murder of 46 Blacks, wounding of 75 others, rape of 5 women, and burning of many homes, schools, and churches. Ironically, the violence occurred during Reconstruction, at a time when the federal government guaranteed the right of citizenship to former slaves.