In March, Prof. Timothy Huebner of Rhodes’ Department of History presented a lecture at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library titled “A Massacre in Memphis: The Bloody Race Riot of 1866.”
It was May 1866, a year after the Civil War ended, when recently freed African Americans living in Memphis endured a three-day wave of terror, rape, arson, theft, and murder. It also was the first large-scale racial massacre to erupt in the post-Civil War South, impacting subsequent federal policies and constitutional law.
Several Memphis Massacre 150th Anniversary Commemorations are being held this month, but public discussions about the historical event didn’t start to take place until this year. In an WKNO-FM interview, Huebner weighs in on one of the more recent discussions. View it here.