MEMPHIS RACE RIOT

(May 1866), in the U.S. post-Civil War period, attack by members of the white majority on black residents of Memphis, Tenn., illustrating Southern intransigence in the face of defeat and indicating unwillingness to share civil or social rights with the newly freed blacks. In the attack, which occurred a little more than a year after Appomattox, 46 blacks (most of them Union veterans) were murdered, more than 70 wounded, 5 black women raped, and 12 churches and 4 schools burned. Such unprovoked violence aroused sympathy in the U.S. Congress for the freedmen, drawing attention to the need for legal safeguards in their behalf and thus helping to win passage (June 13, 1866) of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.