Enacted by U.S. Congress, March 2, 1867

Reprinted on About Texas: Texas State Library and Archives Commission (Web site)

Congress devises a plan for remaking Southern society

"No legal State governments or adequate protection for life or property now exists in the rebel States.…"

Two horse-drawn carriages—one driven by a white man, the other by an African American man—collided May 1, 1866, on the streets of Memphis, Tennessee, a city that swelled with African American refugees and racial tensions after the American Civil War (1861–65). Police arrested the African American driver, and a nearby group of African American war veterans stepped in to ask what was happening. The scene attracted a crowd of white men, many of them resentful of the African Americans who were making a good living in the city or were wandering the streets of Memphis looking for work. Tempers began...