ABSTRACT
The era of access during the Reconstruction years is the focus in Chapter 2. During this period, three factors led to the black political emergence that occurred during the 1990s-black suffrage, the 1866 race riots, and the yellow fever epidemics. After 1867, black voters participated in the political system for the first time by electing local and state representatives. Despite the passage of laws which denied most Southern blacks the right of suffrage, blacks in Tennessee continued to vote. In other Southern states, blacks were disfranchised because of grandfather clauses, literacy tests, and white primaries. Blacks in the city of Memphis continued to cast bloc votes for candidates, form political groups, and mobilize voters after the end of federal Reconstruction.
