On May 14, 1867, a Black political mass meeting in Mobile, Alabama, ended in violence when a white mob attacked attendees, leading to a deadly riot. At least one Black and one white individual were killed in the chaos, which highlighted the dangerous backlash against Black political mobilization during the Reconstruction era. That same year, the Knights of the White Camelia was founded in Louisiana—a paramilitary white supremacist organization similar to the Ku Klux Klan. They used terror and intimidation to suppress Black political participation and maintain white dominance in the South. These events underscored the fierce resistance to Black freedom and the federal attempts to rebuild a multiracial democracy after the Civil War.
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