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

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.