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A white supremacist terrorist militia that led a massacre of African Americans, with backing and support from the local police department, in Hamburg, South Carolina in 1876. This was part of a wave of such attacks, which were intended to scare African Americans so that they would not vote in the 1876 elections, and so that Southern American states would return to having all-white governments after Reconstruction. These massacres were successful, and the Southern governments that took power in 1877 “instituted a system of segregation and exploitation that persisted for the next century.” In fact, in South Carolina, the Red Shirt terrorists were so popular that their leader, Benjamin Tillman, was elected to the Senate four times (for 24 years).
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Red Shirts Term Timeline in The Color of Law
The timeline below shows where the term Red Shirts appears in The Color of Law. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3: Racial Zoning
A group called the Red Shirt s conducted one such massacre in Hamburg, South Carolina. The group’s leader, Benjamin Tillman, exploited...
(full context)
Chapter 4: “Own Your Own Home”
...Harris, whose “great-uncle, Leroy Mereday, was born in Hamburg [South Carolina] fourteen years after the Red Shirt massacre.” Mereday ended up on Long Island, and most of his family followed him. During...
(full context)
