An Absolute Massacre: The New Orleans Race Riot of July 30, 1866

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LSU Press, 2004 - History - 168 pages

In the summer of 1866, racial tensions ran high in Louisiana as a constitutional convention considered disenfranchising former Confederates and enfranchising blacks. On July 30, a procession of black suffrage supporters pushed through an angry throng of hostile whites. Words were exchanged, shots rang out, and within minutes a riot erupted with unrestrained fury. When it was over, at least forty-eight men -- an overwhelming majority of them black -- lay dead and more than two hundred had been wounded. In An Absolute Massacre, James G. Hollandsworth, Jr., examines the events surrounding the confrontation and offers a compelling look at the racial tinderbox that was the post-Civil War South.

 

Contents

Introduction
1
1 Give Us a Free State
5
2 No Better Constitution
19
3 There Is No Middle Ground
28
4 We Are in Revolutionary Times
43
5 Not More Than Half a Million Will Survive
53
6 Please Instruct Me at Once by Telegram
61
7 Tomorrow Will Be the Bloodiest Day
69
9 Go Away You Black Son of a Bitch
97
10 For Gods Sake Dont Shoot Us
107
11 Hurrah for Hell
117
12 Can I Go Home?
126
13 The Rebels Have Control Here
138
Postscript
151
Bibliography
157
Index
165

8 You Better Stay Home
87

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About the author (2004)

James G. Hollandsworth, Jr., is also the author of The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience during the Civil War and Pretense of Glory: The Life of Nathaniel P. Banks.He lives in Jackson, Mississippi.

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