Unhidden Transcripts Essay

Josh Baker 9/12/13
AAAS 2218
Professor Goings
“Unhidden Transcripts” Essay The lynching of Ell Persons was one of several major physical attacks against the African American community in Memphis before the 1920s. Robin Kelley outlines these “hidden transcripts” of political culture, activities ranging from jokes and songs to destruction of property. The first major attempt to keep African Americans and their community in their “place” had come with the Memphis Riot in 1862. Immediately after the fall of Memphis to Union troops in 1862, thousands of newly freed African Americans poured into the city from western Tennessee, eastern Arkansas, and northern Mississippi. The African American migrants had created a personal, social and gender leveling. African Americans in Memphis and Shelby County demanded the right to vote, to serve on juries even when whites were being tried, and to be treated as equals. Tensions between black and white Memphians finally escalated into a race riot on May 1, 1866. During these days of rioting, black Memphians were beaten and robbed, and African American women were raped. However, the percentage of African Americans in the workforce in Memphis declined from 48 percent in 1900 to 39 percent by 1920, reflecting the continued migration into the city not only of African Americans but also native-born whites from fields and small towns of the region. The physical attack known as the “curve riot” was part of a larger trend to impose a new “accommodation” of segregation and disenfranchisement in African American Communities all over the South. Another example of African American resistance took place in October 1916, when John Knox, an African American, and an unidentified white passenger got into an argument over a streetcar seat. The verbal confrontation led to Knox drawing his gun, while a white passenger drew his, which caused several other white male passengers to draw their guns as well. When the shooting was over, four African Americans along with Knox had been shot. Three other African Americans did not get involved in the argument, nor had they been a part of the shooting. The main reason they had been shot was simply because they had been “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” A third interracial altercation on the streetcars had taken place in November 1916, immediately following the reelection of President Woodrow Wilson. After an African American allegedly insulted Wilson, a newsboy “Red Eye” Sanders, took umbrage at the insult and grabbed the switchman’s bar to strike Wilson’s alleged insulter. A different African American intervened, snatching the bar, and the “near race riot” was on. People began jumping off of cars

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