The Memphis Massacre

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We are coming up on
the one hundred and sixtieth anniversary of the Memphis Massacre

(00:22):
of eighteen sixty six, and it is a coincidence that
this episode is coming out right alongside that anniversary. I
had originally planned a somewhat different episode, and the focus
shifted along the way, and we will talk about that
in our Friday Behind the Scenes. This was a truly
horrific wave of destruction and violence, including sexual violence and murders,

(00:45):
against the black community of Memphis, just a year after
the end of the US Civil War. The perpetrators of
this included police officers and firefighters, and the victims included
veterans who had fought for the United States during the war.
We've talked about a number of other similar waves of
mass anti black violence on the show, including the Wilmington

(01:08):
Coup of eighteen ninety eight, the Tulsa Massacre of nineteen
twenty one, and multiple incidents that took place in and
around the Red Summer of nineteen nineteen just as examples.
So the Memphis massacre was part of this pattern of violence,
and these incidents all had some similar traits, but what
happened in Memphis also had a couple of aspects that

(01:30):
really set it apart. It played a role in the
passage and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution,
and the investigations that followed. The massacre heard the first
known testimony of a transgender person before a Congressional committee,
so for background. In eighteen eighteen, the United States and

(01:51):
the Chickasaw Nations signed the Treaty of Tuscaloosa, also known
as the Treaty of Old Town. The negotiators on the
US side were future President Andrew Jackson and former Kentucky
Governor Isaac Shelby, and the Chickasaw Nation was represented by
brothers Levi and George Colbert. Under this treaty, the US
purchased land between the Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers in what

(02:14):
is now Kentucky and Tennessee, with the Chickasaw Nation receiving
three hundred thousand dollars at the rate of twenty thousand
dollars annually for fifteen years. This became known as the
Jackson Purchase. This, of course, is just one tiny piece
of the United States relationship with the Chickasaw Nation. Among

(02:34):
other things, the Treaty of Tuscaloosa was one of several
that were signed in eighteen eighteen. Jackson would face allegations
of corruption over his land speculations during these negotiations, and
the Chickasaw Nation would later be one of the indigenous
nations that was forced to move west under the Indian
Removal Act of eighteen thirty. That act, of course, was

(02:55):
passed early in Jackson's presidency and was part of his
overall policy toward indigenous people. The part of this history
that is most relevant to today's episode, though, is the
Jackson Purchase, since a year later, the city of Memphis
was established on a part of the acquired land. Tennessee

(03:16):
had been admitted to the Union as a slave state
in seventeen ninety six, and on June eighth, eighteen sixty one,
a few months after the start of the Civil War,
Tennessee residents voted to secede from the Union. Tennessee was
the last state to secede, and this vote was largely
split along regional lines. East Tennessee voted decisively to remain

(03:39):
in the Union, and a substantial majority of West Tennessee,
where Memphis is, voted to secede. East Tennessee is in
the Appalachian mountains and foothills, and slavery was not widely
practiced there, which was not the case in the western
part of the state. The United States captured Memphis from
the Confederacy on June six, eighteen sixty one. Two. The

(04:01):
Confederacy launched a series of raids and incursions into Memphis
after this, including the Second Battle of Memphis in eighteen
sixty four, but the city remained in Union hands for
the rest of the war, and the population of Memphis
changed dramatically during that time. In eighteen sixty Memphis had
about twenty two thousand residents. The next census was not

(04:23):
until eighteen seventy, so there's not an exact population number
for eighteen sixty six, when the massacre happened, but it's
estimated to have been around thirty five thousand or forty
thousand people. Many of those new residents were black, including
people who had fled from more rural areas after hearing
that Memphis was under Union control. President Lincoln issued the

(04:46):
Emancipation Proclamation on January first, eighteen sixty three, and six
months later, the third US Colored Heavy Artillery was established
and started recruiting black soldiers who were garrisoned at Fort
Pickering in Memphis. That same year, the US decided to
consolidate some of its contraband camps in the Mississippi River Valley,

(05:07):
and Memphis was chosen as one of the locations to
move people to. We have done an episode about these camps.
They were established to house people who liberated themselves from
enslavement and made it to Union territory or were confiscated
when Confederate sites were captured. Memphis also became home to
a Freedman's Bureau office in eighteen sixty five, which freed

(05:30):
people saw as a resource for protection and help and
became another reason to go to the city. There were
about four thousand enslaved and free black people in Memphis
in eighteen sixty and at that point, the city's population
was about eighty percent white. As a result of everything
we just talked about. When the war ended in eighteen
sixty five, the city's free black population had quadrupled to

(05:54):
about sixteen thousand people. And made up about forty percent
of the city's population. Some estimates are even higher, estimating
a black majority in Memphis at some points in the
mid eighteen sixties, Memphis's Irish population had also grown dramatically.
The Great Famine had started in eighteen forty five, and

(06:15):
people fleeing Ireland typically arrived at northeastern ports, but many
started making their way to Kentucky and Tennessee in the
eighteen fifties to find work building railroads. Prior to eighteen
fifty three, most of the manual laborers building railroads were
enslaved Africans who the railroad companies rented from there enslavers,

(06:36):
But that year the Supreme Court of Alabama ruled that
people who rented enslaved laborers would be liable if they
were harmed doing work that they didn't typically do, like
building a railroad instead of working in a field. In
other words, the railroads would have to compensate in slavers
for injuries or deaths among the people who were considered

(06:56):
their property. It became more economical to higher Irish laborers,
who didn't have that financial risk if they were hurt
or killed doing the work. In eighteen fifty less than
ten percent of the population of Memphis was Irish. That
number more than doubled by eighteen sixty If you've listened
to some of our other episodes about this kind of

(07:18):
mob violence, including previous Hosts episode on the New York
Draft riots of eighteen sixty three, this probably sounds familiar.
There were black and Irish entrepreneurs in Memphis, but aside
from the soldiers, most black and Irish men were competing
for the same jobs doing manual labor. Irish laborers saw

(07:40):
the influx of black people into Memphis as a threat
to their livelihoods, and this was particularly true immediately after
the Civil War, when slavery had been abolished and the
city was in an economic recession, mostly staying afloat through
investments and loans from the North. Broadly speaking, the Irish
community also had a strong sense of solidarity, in part

(08:02):
because they faced so much bigotry and derision from other
white people. Sometimes you'll see this described as Irish immigrants
not being considered white, but that's not exactly true. Irish
immigrants to the United States could and did become US citizens.
They could vote, and own property and hold public office,

(08:23):
things that people who were not considered white would not
be allowed to do They were barred from those activities.
It was more like Irish immigrants were thought of as
the wrong kind of white people. For example, a Freedman's
Bureau report on the massacre refers to the instigators who
were predominantly Irish as quote low whites at two different points.

(08:45):
The Congressional report on the massacre uses both Irish and white.
In eighteen sixty six, Irish people also had a lot
of political power and influence in Memphis. The year before,
Tennessee had passed a distance franchisement law that stripped former
Confederates and Confederate sympathizers of the right to vote for

(09:05):
a minimum of fifteen years. A lot of the people
who had previously held office in Memphis were wealthy landowners
and slaveholders, and they were affected by this law. Even
if they hadn't explicitly sided with the Confederacy or if
they had not been in favor of Tennessee's secession, A
lot of them refused to do things like take a

(09:27):
loyalty oath that was required that endorsed the Emancipation Proclamation. Meanwhile,
the vast majority of the Irish residents of Tennessee were
newly arrived in the United States and didn't feel a
real connection to the war or a reason to fight.
They only did because they had been conscripted. Most were
also poor and had never enslaved anyone. Some who had

(09:52):
served in the Confederate military could make the case that
they had been forced into service and had otherwise remained
loyal to the United States. Others deserted the Confederacy and
fought for the United States after the Union took control
of the area where they were so. In the eighteen
sixty five municipal election in Memphis, Irish Men were disproportionately

(10:14):
still able to vote, while non Irish white men disproportionately
were not. John Park, who was either Irish or the
child of Irish immigrants, I found sources calling him each
of those things. He was elected mayor. Irish Men were
elected to nine of the sixteen seats on the Board
of Aldermen. Irish people also held two thirds of all

(10:37):
the elected and appointed offices in the Memphis government. The
large majority of the police and firefighters in Memphis were
also Irish. All of this is part of the context
for this massacre which we will talk about after we
pause for a sponsor break. During and after the Civil War,

(11:05):
the black population of Memphis fought to be treated with
dignity and respect. This was particularly true of black soldiers
and veterans, who felt that they had earned that dignity
and respect through their service to the United States, and
whose presence in uniform was just really galling to people
who thought that they should not have it. For months

(11:28):
leading up to the massacre, black people in Memphis had
faced increasing antagonism and harassment from the city's white population,
including and especially its predominantly Irish police force and firefighting forces.
This really spiraled, with black soldiers and veterans and civilians
pushing back against racism, wrongful arrest, police brutality, and other mistreatment,

(11:52):
only for the white population to become even more hostile.
This whole cycle also seemed to strengthen this of solidarity
among Irish immigrants, who had an increasingly US versus them mentality,
with US specifically meaning Irish people, not white people. More broadly.
In April of eighteen sixty six, the Civil War was over,

(12:16):
and black soldiers stationed at Fort Pickering were waiting to
be paid and mustered out. Of the Army. On April thirtieth,
a group of black soldiers were walking down Cosey Street
when four Irish police officers forced them off the sidewalk.
The details of this aren't clear, like I don't know
if there was some instigation of forcing them off the

(12:37):
sidewalk besides just to be antagonistic. But one witness said
that some words passed between the men, but not what
was said other than that strong language was used on
both sides. One of the soldiers fell and then one
of the police officers tripped over him. Then the police
officers attacked the soldiers, including one who started beating the

(12:59):
men with his pistol. This fight went on for several minutes,
and in the words of the Freedman's Bureau report on
the massacre quote, both parties then separated, deferring the settlement
by mutual consent to some future time. Most of the
black soldiers were mustered out of the army on April thirtieth,
but they didn't receive their back pay until May first.

(13:22):
That day, after being paid, many of them went out
to celebrate. A Large group of people, including women and children,
congregated on South Street, which was seen as a border
between white and black neighborhoods of Memphis. This crowd was
boisterous and loud, with some people singing and dancing. Some
of them were intoxicated, none of which is surprising since

(13:44):
they had just been mustered out of the army after
serving in a war and had just gotten the back
pay that they had been waiting for. Yes, this was
definitely rowdy. Understandably, that is exactly the time you should celebrate. Correct.
Police arrived and they arrested two black men from the
crowd and tried to escort them from the scene. Several

(14:07):
other black men tried to intervene. They surrounded the police
and the men they'd taken into custody, and they fired
their pistols into the air. The police officers thought they
were being fired upon, and they started firing into the
crowd again. In the words of the freedman Spiau report quote,
during this afray, one police officer was wounded in the finger. Another, Stevens,

(14:31):
was shot by the accidental discharge of the pistol in
his own hand, and afterward died. Word of what was
happening started to spread through Memphis, including rumors that black
residents were going to try to take over the city.
John C. Creighton, the city recorder, went out into the
streets and made a speech on horseback, encouraging the white

(14:53):
residents around them to arm themselves and to try to
kill Memphis's black population or them from the city. Shelby
County Sheriff TM Winters went to Major General George Stoneman,
who was in command of the troops in Memphis, to
ask for military help in restoring order. By that point,

(15:14):
though most of the troops who had been in Memphis
had been mustered out or transferred elsewhere. Stoneman argued that
he only had enough men on hand to try to
protect government property from the mob. He also pointed out
that the people of Memphis had been very ready to
get rid of the federal troops who had been stationed
there to enforce the law. His attitude was sort of like, well,

(15:38):
you all claimed you were competent and able to take
care of yourselves, so we sent most of the troops
away like you asked, and now look where we are. Meanwhile,
Winters raised a posse that seems to add to the
violence rather than controlling it. The violence in Memphis stretched
from May first through the third, eighteen sixty sive again.

(16:01):
In the words of the Freedmen's Bureau report quote, the
city seemed to be under the control of a lawless mob.
During this and the two succeeding days, all crimes imaginable
were committed, from simple larceny to rape and murder. Several
women and children were shot in bed. One woman, Rachel Johnson,

(16:21):
was shot and then thrown into the flames of a
burning house and consumed. Another was forced twice through the
flames and finally escaped. In some instances, houses were fired
and armed men guarded them to prevent the escape of
those inside. A number of men, whose loyalty is undoubted.
Long residents of Memphis who depreciated the riot during its

(16:45):
progress were denominated Yankees and abolitionists, and were informed in
language more emphatic than gentlemanly that their presence here was unnecessary.
Mayor John Park was described as totally losing control of subordinates.
Those subordinates, including the police officers and firefighters who terrorized, raped, robbed,

(17:07):
and killed black residents of the city. Park was described
as intoxicated during part or most of the time, and
unable to carry out his duties as the mayor. While
other people characterized him as intentionally sowing discord and disorder
among the other city officials to try to get them
to grant him emergency powers. He did make his own

(17:30):
request for Stoneman to send troops, and Stoneman told him
that one hundred and fifty troops would be made available,
but only in the case of quote extreme necessity. He
left it up to Park to determine whether the need
was extreme. Meanwhile, black residents of Memphis flooded the Freedman's
Bureau office to ask Brevet Brigadier General Ben P. Runkle,

(17:54):
chief superintendent for the Bureau in Memphis, for help. He
described himself as human in his inability to help them.
He had no troops to deploy, and when he went
out to appeal to the mob, no one would listen
to him. Veterans who had turned in their service weapons
when they were mustered out went to General Stoneman to
ask to have them returned, and they were denied. Eventually,

(18:18):
on May third, Stoneman declared martial law, banned the posse
that the sheriff had rallied, and deployed reinforcements from the
fourth US Cavalry to restore order. By that point, forty
six black Americans, many of them US Army veterans, had
been murdered at the hands of white perpetrators. Many of
those perpetrators were Irish police officers and firefighters. About seventy

(18:42):
five other black people had been injured. At least five
black women had been raped. Police and civilians had fired
at patients who were sitting in front of the Freedman's
Bureau hospital and then fired into the hospital itself. The
mob had burned down between fifty and ninety homes all Way,
along with every black church and school in Memphis, and

(19:03):
they had robbed and burned down black owned businesses. Two
white men were killed over those three days, the police
officer named Stevens who was killed when his own pistol
accidentally discharged, and a firefighter named Dunn, who was shot
and killed by another white man by mistake. A number

(19:23):
of civic and business leaders, many of whom were Irish,
intentionally spread racism and panic during all this. That included
Attorney General William Wallace, who made public speeches to stoke
anger and racism, and business leader John Pendergrass, who allowed
rioters to use his home as a planning and rallying point.

(19:44):
News reporting played role as well, with conservative newspapers including
The Daily Argus and The Memphis Avalanche publishing just incendiary articles.
These newspapers were already highly critical of the Republican governments
of both the United sis States in Tennessee, and they
were especially critical of the Radical Republican faction, which was

(20:06):
known for their opposition to slavery and their efforts to
secure freedom and equal rights for black people. These newspapers
framed Radical Republicans as violent and dangerous and described black
people using racist stereotypes. The Avalanche started printing the names
of radical Republicans and rumors that black men who had

(20:28):
been mustered out of service were going to attack the town.
Multiple investigations were launched within days of the massacre. We're
going to talk more about that after we pause for
a sponsor break. The Memphis massacre took place during congressional

(20:53):
debates over a constitutional amendment that had been proposed by
the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. Earlier drafts of this amendment
had failed, but the one that the committee reported to
Congress on April thirtieth, eighteen sixty six was largely the
same as today's fourteenth Amendment. Debates over the newly drafted

(21:14):
amendment started a few days after the massacre ended. On
May tenth, during debates in the House, Representative Thaddeus Stevens
of Pennsylvania referenced the massacre in a speech about the
amendment's third provision, which barred anyone who had quote engaged
in an insurrection or rebellion against the United States from

(21:35):
holding civil or military office. Speaking to representatives who thought
this language was too strong, Stephens said, quote, let not
those friends of secession sing to me their siren song
of peace and goodwill until they can stop my ears
to the screams and groans of the dying victims at Memphis.

(21:55):
I hold in my hand an elaborate account from a
man whom I know to be of the highest respectability
in the country, every word of which I believe. This
account of that foul transaction only reached me last night.
It is more horrible in its atrocity, although not to
the same extent than the massacre in Jamaica. Tell me

(22:17):
Tennessee or any other state is loyal of whom such
things are proved. On May fourteenth, as the debates continued,
Stevens motioned for the House to send a committee to
Memphis to investigate what had happened. The resulting House Select
Committee was made up of two Republicans, Eli Hugh Washburn
of Illinois and John Brumall of Pennsylvania, and one Democrat,

(22:41):
George Shanklin of Kentucky. They arrived in Memphis on May
twenty second. They interviewed one hundred and seventy victims and witnesses,
as well as officials who had been ostensibly in charge
in Memphis during the massacre, including Major General Stoneman and
Mayor John Park. Resulting report, which is not the Freedman's

(23:02):
Bureau report that we have read from earlier. That was
a much shorter report. The resulting Congressional Report was about
four hundred pages long and was printed through the Government
Printing Office. It detailed the initial altercation on April thirtieth,
the incidents that happened afterward, and the decisions made by
civil and military leaders. It reported on the destruction of

(23:24):
the schools, churches, businesses, and homes, and on the murders,
sexual assaults, and rapes. It also detailed incidents of white
residents trying to shelter and protect black people. Most often
these were landlords and employers who were trying to protect
people who lived on their property or worked for them.
Although at least forty of the known perpetrators served in

(23:47):
the Confederate Army, the people who were interviewed really focused
on the fact that they were Irish, not on their
status as former Confederates. In his testimony, General Stoneman tried
to dispel ideas that were circulating about the soldier's conduct
having justified the massacre. He acknowledged that some had behaved

(24:07):
lawlessly on the night of May the first, and said
that was inexcusable, but he said that overall their conduct
compared very favorably to that of white troops and similar circumstances.
Other officers also testified to the black troops general good
conduct and said that none of them had tried to
mistreat or attack the white population in any way. Captain

(24:29):
Thomas J. Dornan said quote, I never saw any riotous
act among them, and one thing I will say for
them that there is no number of white soldiers that
I ever saw that could be held in such subjection
as they were when their houses were being burned as
theirs were. I could not have expected it, never could
have believed it could be done. The congressional report also

(24:51):
included the oral testimonies of the people who were interviewed.
These testimonies included those of five black women who brave
testified about having been raped. Those were Lucy Tibbs, Harriet Armer,
Francis Thompson, Lucy Smith, and Rebecca Ann Bloom. Lucy Smith
was Francis Thompson's sixteen year old housemate. Both of them

(25:14):
testified that men had come to their house. Francis had
said there were six men, and Lucy said there were seven.
Both of them said that men had demanded food, so
they had fed them. They both testified that after the
men were done eating, they raped Smith and Thompson both
so badly that they had to get medical treatment and
stay in bed for about two weeks afterward. Lucy thought

(25:37):
that the men had been particularly violent toward them because
they had pictures of Union officers in the house, including
one of Union General Joseph Hooker. The committee's members came
to very different conclusions, and those conclusions fell along political lines.
Its Republican members concluded that what happened in Memphis was
not a riot, it was a massacre. They pair offf

(26:00):
Race General Stoneman as saying the black population of Memphis
quote had nothing to do with it after the first day,
except to be killed and abused. Conversely, Democrat George Shanklin
put more of the blame on the black community for
instigating the violence and Tennessee's disenfranchisement law for barring most
of the city's property owners and businessmen from voting, leaving

(26:23):
people from quote the more inferior classes of society to
be elected quote against the consent of the masses of
the better population of the city. Shanklin also cited the
quote antagonistic interest and feelings of hostility that exists between
the laboring classes of foreign population and the Negro race. Yeah,

(26:45):
just to be clear, the black population had not instigated
the violence. He was blaming them here for things that
had they had not done. As the Select Committee was
conducting its interviews, Harper's Weekly printed a front page article
about the massacre. It was illustrated with the depiction of
a mob burning down a freedman's schoolhouse and one of

(27:07):
a group of houses in flames, with black families trying
to flee as men brandished weapons and fired at them.
Harper's described this incident as quote a disgrace to civilization,
but it also framed the quote lower class of white
citizens and the third United States Colored Infantry as equally

(27:29):
responsible for the original incident on the first day, but
after that point, Harper's described the mob as indiscriminately killing
people who were simply going about their days, doing their
jobs or trying to get to safety. This article also
made a comparison between what happened in Memphis and the
eighteen sixty three New York Draft riots, which were similarly

(27:52):
carried out by a predominantly Irish mob. The House Select
Committee left Memphis for Washington, d C. On June sixth,
and by that point the massacre had become a national
news story beyond the reporting Tracy just talked about in
Harper's Weekly. On June thirteenth, the House voted to propose
that the fourteenth Amendment be ratified, and it was sent

(28:13):
to the States for ratification on June sixteenth, eighteen sixty six.
The massacre has been credited with giving this a sense
of urgency since the Fourteenth Amendments first section includes quote
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.

(28:33):
Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty,
or property without due process of law, nor deny to
any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
On July twenty fourth, eighteen sixty six, perhaps surprisingly considering
that it had just been the site of a racist

(28:53):
massacre two months before, Tennessee was readmitted to the Union.
Although the House Committee, the Freedman's Bureau, and the military
all investigated the massacre, no charges were ever filed against
any of the perpetrators. Almost all of Memphis's elected officials
were replaced in the eighteen sixty six election, and the

(29:15):
police and firefighting forces also turned over almost completely. Tennessee
also passed the Metropolitan Police Bill in eighteen sixty six,
which gave the governor the authority to appoint commissioners to
oversee the police in four cities, one of those was Memphis,
basically took control of the police force out of Memphis's

(29:38):
direct hands. This law was repealed in eighteen sixty nine.
While there were virtually no consequences for the perpetrators beyond
being voted out of office, the Memphis massacre and the
investigations and news reporting around it are credited with galvanizing
radical Republicans and voters. As a quick recap, black actor vists,

(30:00):
radical Republican legislators, and others had been pushing President Abraham
Lincoln on the need for rights and protections for black
people and for strict requirements before Confederate states could be
readmitted to the Union. That was happening for years before
his assassination in eighteen sixty five. His successor, Vice President

(30:21):
Andrew Johnson, who had served as military governor of Tennessee,
was more lenient toward the rebelling states and former Confederate leaders.
His less ambitious plan became known as Presidential Reconstruction, But
in the elections that took place the November after this massacre,
Republicans won majorities in both the Senate and the House,

(30:43):
and that began the era known as Congressional Reconstruction or
radical reconstruction. Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts of eighteen sixty seven,
which organized the rebelling States or the formerly rebelling states
into military districts except for Tennessee, which had already been readmitted,
and then required those states to pass new constitutions that

(31:05):
had to be approved by Congress. Those constitutions had to
include suffrage for all men, regardless of race, and the
states had to approve the Fourteenth Amendment to be readmitted.
The Memphis massacre and another massacre that took place in
New Orleans in July of eighteen sixty six are seen
as providing obvious evidence that the black population had to

(31:28):
have equal rights any core protections under the laws. This
also connects to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment by
the States. It was ratified on July ninth, eighteen sixty eight.
At the top of the show, we said that the
first known transgender person to testify before a Congressional committee
did so after the Memphis riots. To be clear, the

(31:52):
word transgender as is just a term that didn't exist
in eighteen sixty six, and it's not a concept that
was part of the commonly held understanding of sex and
gender in the US at the time. But there have
always been people across cultures and throughout history whose gender
or sexual orientation hasn't aligned with the standards and expectations

(32:13):
of their culture. So we're using the broad definition of
transgender here, meaning a person whose gender does not align
with the sex they were assigned at birth. That was
the case with Francis Thompson, who had been born in
Maryland and enslaved from birth before eventually moving to Memphis
and being freed, not actually sure the order in which

(32:34):
that happened, her move and her freedom. On July eleventh,
eighteen seventy six, a decade after the massacre, she was
arrested for suspicion of cross dressing. When she was questioned,
she described herself as being quote of double sex or
most likely intersex in modern parlance. She said she had

(32:56):
been wearing dresses since she was a child. All of
her friends and neighbors knew her to be a woman,
and she said that had been the case for twenty
seven years, and an article in the Memphis Daily Appeal,
she described herself as quote regarded always as a woman.
After these allegations, Thompson was forced to undergo a physical

(33:17):
examination by a panel of four doctors. They concluded that
she was male. Afterwards, she was forced to wear men's
clothing and a station housekeeper basically put her on exhibit.
At the jail, she was fined and sentenced to work
on a chain gang. Despite the fact that she was
physically disabled. She used a cane and said that she'd

(33:39):
had cancer in her foot. Thompson contracted pneumonia while being
forced to work on that chain gang and died in
a hospital on November first, eighteen seventy six. This is
obviously a sad and dehumanizing thing to have happened to her,
and news reporting around all of this was horrible. Articles

(34:00):
implied or stated that Thompson was a sex worker. It's
really not clear whether that was true, since cross dressing
was associated with sex work, and she's also described as
a cook and a domestic worker, sometimes in the same article. Regardless,
the idea of sex work was used to discredit her.

(34:21):
Articles also framed her as criminal and deviant when she
said she planned to leave Memphis after being released. Police
took photographs of her, one in a dress and one
an immen's shirt, jacket and hat, so that they could
distribute those photographs to other jurisdictions. A New York publication
called The Day's Doings made illustrations from these photographs and

(34:44):
published them. Newspapers also dug up other examples of people
accused of cross dressing, especially other black people accused of
cross dressing to hype up the idea that this was
some kind of ongoing massive skge. This happened as the
period of Reconstruction was coming to an end. The former

(35:06):
Confederate States had all been readmitted to the Union, and
there had been a brief window in which civil rights
and legal protections for black people had led to some
first steps toward racial equality, but a backlash had followed,
including the passage of discriminatory laws that relegated Black Americans
to second class citizenship. Reconstruction is considered to have ended

(35:30):
in eighteen seventy seven after a compromise to settle the
outcome of the eighteen seventy six election included the removal
of the last federal troops from the former Confederate States.
The US was on the cusp of the period that
has been described as the Natiir of race relations. The
news reporting around Francis Thompson's eighteen seventy six arrest and

(35:54):
sentencing was connected to this. Newspapers all across the country
either wrote or republished articles that led with her testimony
before the Select Committee, and then they accused her of
committing perjury during that testimony, saying that she was lying
about having been raped. These reports called not just her

(36:16):
testimony into question, but the whole investigation into the eighteen
sixty six massacre, and, by extension, congressional Republicans and the
entire project of congressional reconstruction. By the early twentieth century,
the Memphis Massacre and Francis Thompson had largely fallen out
of public memory. That continued until the approach of the

(36:40):
Massacres one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. In twenty sixteen, Among
other things, the University of Memphis hosted a whole semester
of workshops, talks by historians, and other events, culminating in
a symposium on the massacre. This was to both encourage
new research into the massacre and to spread awareness of

(37:00):
its history. A historical marker was also erected in twenty sixteen,
and that's something that illustrates how debates over how to
interpret this event have continued until today. The Tennessee Historical
Marker Commission wanted the term race riot at the top
of the marker, while Black historians, the NAACP, and others

(37:22):
felt that term was not reflective of what had actually
happened and would give people who only looked at the
heading the wrong idea about what had happened. The NAACP
ultimately wound up putting up a marker privately in conjunction
with the city headed eighteen sixty six Memphis Massacre, rather
than going through the State Historical Marker Commission and having

(37:44):
that race riot language on there. Sometimes you got to
go around instead of through. Do do you have listener
mail for us? I do have listener mail. This listener
mail is from Amelia, who wrote about an episode Holly
wrote and one about and I wrote. Amelia wrote, Hey,
Holly and Tracy. I live in metro Atlanta and recently

(38:05):
returned from a trip to Philadelphia. So the Richard Peters
podcast was well timed and I enjoyed learning about his
life and lasting impacts on the city of Atlanta. Can
you imagine what the property he owned would be worth today?
I be Hall, built by Richard's son, is a beautiful
home and I tried to get married there but it
didn't work out. We later got married in the Hay

(38:25):
House in Macon. The Mom's Mabley podcast reminded me of
my trip to mom's hometown of Brevard, North Carolina. Did
you know the town is known for their white squirrels.
All the downtown businesses promote the white squirrel with merchandise
and signage, and even have a big festival each year.
I thought it was just a funny mascot until I

(38:46):
saw one myself. Rumor has it a white squirrel escaped
from a carnival. I attached a picture of myself as
a white squirrel with my aunts and a picture of
the real squirrel. Thank you for your podcast. You've covered
topics I have never thought to wonder about. In topics
I greatly enjoy, like embroidery. We also have a lot
of fur babies, so I have no shortage of pet tacks.

(39:07):
I've attached a picture of Indie, my black German Shepherd
husky mix who loves cold weather like me. And my cats.
Juniper the tuxedo or the Russian Blue and Helena the
blind torty were pictured together, and we recently foster failed
with Danny, a three legged torty who fits right in
with our pack. We frequently find them all sleeping together

(39:28):
in one big cat pile. Sincerely, Amelia, thank you so
much for this Amelia. I when I read this, I
was like, why have I never heard of this white
squirrel situation in Brevard because I've been to Brevard a
number of times, and then I realized that like my
going to Brevard was never to the downtown area of Brevard,

(39:52):
it was to get to Pisga National Forest and go hiking.
Had no concept that there was a white squirrel trend
is not the right word. There are real white squirrels
that live there, and they're also kind of a theme.
And then we have adorable animal pictures. They're always so good.
So thank you so much Amelia for this email. If

(40:12):
you would like to write to us, we're at History
Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. If you would like to
look at the show notes for all of our episodes,
they are at our website which is at mistonhistory dot com.
And you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio
app and anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts.

(40:34):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
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Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

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