Armed insurgents threatening American freedom, political unrest, rioting and racial tension were rampant; change the dates and locations, and 1874 sounds an awful lot like 2014.
Rather than Islamic extremist in the Middle East and Africa, in 1874 armed white supremacist groups roamed the South, slaughtering and intimidating black voters in a victory-at-all-costs attempt to regain power after the Civil War.
“They are the American Al Qaeda of Reconstruction,” said Dr. Brooks Simpson, a history professor at Arizona State University and one of five speakers Saturday at Vicksburg National Military Park’s symposium commemorating the Vicksburg Riots of Dec. 7, 1874.
After white supremacist groups clashed with blacks in New Orleans and Meridian, a Warren County organization calling themselves a “citizen’s taxpayers league,” forcibly removed Warren County’s first black sheriff, Peter Crosby, from office, the group of historians said.
“Make no mistake about it, the bad guys won in Mississippi in 1874 and 1875,” Simpson said.
Crosby also served as tax collector, and on Dec. 2, 1874 — the date local taxes were due — the group of “political terrorists with a political aim” marched to the Warren County Courthouse and demanded Crosby resign, said Nicholas Lemann, a professor of journalism at Columbia University and author of a book on the riots.
The sheriff escaped on horseback and jumped aboard a train bound for Jackson. The next day, he met with Gov. Adelbert Ames who ordered him to return to Vicksburg and reclaim his office, Lemann said.
“Crosby, for reasons we can understand, was not really enthusiastic about Ames’ request,” Lemann said.
Several of Crosby’s colleagues had been indicted earlier in the year by a Warren County grand jury made up of both black and white Republicans, said Dr. Ronald L.F. Davis, emeritus professor of history at California State University-Northridge.
“The grand jury — just as it is in New York and Missouri — is a reflection of the political atmosphere,” Davis said, referring to recent decisions not to indict police officers accused in the deaths of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City.
Ames, who had been a Union general in the Civil War, had previously asked President Ulysses S. Grant to send federal troops to Mississippi to deal with unrest across the state. Sending federal troops into states was highly unpopular, even among liberal northern Republicans, Lemann said.
When Grant sent Gen. Phil Sheridan to New Orleans in early 1875 — not long after the Vicksburg Riots — to restore the Republican government to power, Democrats called him a jack-booted thug, Simpson said.
“The use of federal forces came under denunciation as a reckless power grab,” Simpson said.
Without federal aid, Crosby returned to town and was promptly arrested. A group of blacks marched into Vicksburg from the countryside to restore him to power and were met near the present day Cherry Street bridge over the Kansas City Southern Railroad tracks by an armed militia made up of whites — some Democrats and some Republicans.
The leader of the black militia was allowed to visit Crosby in jail where the deposed sheriff told his supporters to go home. They were outnumbered and outgunned. The fight was hopeless.
As the black militia was turning to leave town, the group of whites opened fire, Lemann said. In the fighting, two whites and 29 blacks were killed.
The leader of the white militia was a Republican.
“A white Republican was there in the forefront, shooting and killing people who had once been members of his own party, all because blacks had taken over leadership,” Davis said.
Some historians estimate as many as 300 people were killed in the ensuing violence. Lemann said white supremacist squads roamed the county shooting unarmed blacks.
The racial tension of the period was not confined to the South. Working-class northern whites were uneasy about the prospect of losing their jobs to black laborers, and many in the North held the same racists views as many Southerners.
The common conception nationally was that blacks were unfit for freedom and happy in slavery, said Dr. Deidre Cooper Owens, professor of history at Queens College, New York.
“If black people were so happy, you wouldn’t have seen thousands of them run to contraband camps when the Union Army came,” she said.
The program held at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church was a first for the park, said VNMP Superintendent Mike Madell.
“We really want over the coming years to diversity our programs at the national military park,” he said.
Formerly enslaved people founded the church in 1864 and many of them became business leaders and educators, the Rev. Arnita Spencer said.
Commemoration of the Vicksburg Riots continues at 1 p.m. today with an interpretative program on at the old administration building on Pemberton Avenue near the spot where Confederate Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton surrendered to Grant on July 4, 1863. The program will be followed by a wreath-laying ceremony.