Editing Memphis, Tennessee (section)

=== Postwar years, Reconstruction and Democratic control ===
The rapid demographic changes added to the stress of war and occupation and uncertainty about who was in charge, increasing tensions between the city's ethnic Irish policemen and black Union soldiers after the war.<ref name="carden" /> In three days of rioting in early May 1866, the [[Memphis Riots of 1866|Memphis Riots]] erupted, in which white mobs made up of policemen, firemen, and other mostly ethnic [[Irish Americans]] attacked and killed 46 blacks, wounding 75 and injuring 100; raped several women; and destroyed nearly 100 houses while severely damaging churches and schools in South Memphis. Much of the black settlement was left in ruins. Two whites were killed in the riot.<ref name="Ryan" /> Many blacks permanently fled Memphis afterward, especially as the [[Freedmen's Bureau]] continued to have difficulty in protecting them. Their population fell to about 15,000 by 1870,<ref name="carden" /> 37.4% of the total population of 40,226.

[[File:Memphis airview 1870.jpg|thumb|Historic aerial view of Memphis, 1870]]

Historian Barrington Walker suggests that the Irish rioted against blacks because of their relatively recent arrival as immigrants and the uncertain nature of their own claim to "whiteness"; they were trying to distinguish themselves from blacks in the underclass. The main fighting participants were ethnic Irish, decommissioned black Union soldiers, and newly emancipated African-American [[freedmen]]. Walker suggests that most of the mob was not in direct economic conflict with the blacks, as by then the Irish had attained better jobs, but were establishing social and political dominance over the freedmen.<ref name="Walker" />

Unlike the disturbances in some other cities, ex-Confederate veterans were generally not part of the attacks against blacks in Memphis. As a result of the riots in Memphis, and a similar one in [[New Orleans, Louisiana]] in September, Congress passed the [[Reconstruction Act]] and the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution]].<ref name="Ryan" />