About this item
An unprecedented account of one of the bloodiest and most significant racial clashes in American historyIn May 1866, just a year after the Civil War ended, Memphis erupted in a three-day spasm of racial violence that saw whites rampage through the city’s black neighborhoods. By the time the fires consuming black churches and schools were put out, forty-six freed people had been murdered. Congress, furious at this and other evidence of white resistance in the conquered South, launched what is now called Radical Reconstruction, policies to ensure the freedom of the region’s four million blacks—and one of the most remarkable experiments in American history. Stephen V. Ash’s A Massacre in Memphis is a portrait of a Southern city that opens an entirely new view onto the Civil War and its aftermath.
About the Author
Stephen V. Ash taught American History for many years at the University of Tennessee and is now a Professor Emeritus. He lives in Knoxville with his wife, Jean. A Civil War enthusiast since his early teens, he has written many books about the war and its aftermath, focusing especially on the experiences of people in the South. He has a cat named Emily Dickinson.
