The Vicksburg massacre was one of the longest and deadliest attacks on freed Black Americans during the Reconstruction era. Beginning on December 7, 1874, and continuing until around January 5, 1875, the violence in Vicksburg, Mississippi left an estimated 150 to 300 Black people dead. For nearly a month, White mobs terrorized Black communities, burned property, hunted down Black residents, and worked to destroy the little political power freedmen had gained after the Civil War.
After the Civil War ended in 1865 with a Union victory, the Confederacy was defeated and slavery was legally abolished. During the period known as Reconstruction, the federal government reshaped Southern politics. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments outlawed slavery, granted citizenship, and extended voting rights to formerly enslaved Black men.
For the first time, millions of formerly enslaved Africans could vote and hold office. Freedmen registered in large numbers, and in many Southern counties, they became the majority voting bloc. Black men began winning local, state, and federal offices. In Warren County, Mississippi, one of these men was Peter Crosby.
Peter Crosby was elected sheriff of Warren County in November 1873 and was set to take office on January 1, 1874. His election coincided with the inauguration of Adelbert Ames, a Republican governor committed to protecting Black civil rights. The rise of Black political leadership threatened White supremacists who refused to accept a society where Black officials held real power.
By late 1874, White elites had begun organizing against Crosby. A coalition calling itself the Taxpayers’ League emerged, determined to remove him from office and undo the gains of Reconstruction, setting the stage for the violent conflict that would follow.
On December 2, 1874, a white mob stormed into Crosby’s office. They demanded that he resign. Crosby refused, asserting his legal right to the position he had earned through the vote. The mob left, but their retreat was only temporary.
Hours later, they returned with six hundred armed men. Surrounded and outnumbered, Crosby was forced at gunpoint to sign a resignation letter, and effectively removed him from office by intimidation.
But the Black community refused to accept the overthrow of their sheriff.
On December 7, 1874, hundreds of Black residents marched peacefully to the Warren County Courthouse to demand that Crosby be reinstated. Their goal was simple: restore the man they had legally chosen to represent them.
At the courthouse they met a line of organized White men with weapons. The crowd was ordered to disperse. As many began to leave, a second White group, identified in some sources as the White League, a paramilitary group dedicated to restoring White rule, opened fire on the mostly unarmed Black citizens. That day alone, twenty-five Black men were killed and one White man died.
The violence did not stop at the courthouse. White militants swept across the area in the following days and weeks. Homes and gin houses were burned, Black neighborhoods were terrorized, and hunting parties dragged people from their homes and lynched them. Witnesses later described bodies left in the countryside and survivors burying relatives under threat. The terror campaign drove many Black residents from Vicksburg and silenced political opposition by sheer violence.
President Ulysses S. Grant eventually sent federal soldiers, but they arrived weeks after the violence began. Some historians estimate that when federal forces finally reached Vicksburg on January 5, 1875, between 150 and 300 Black people had already been murdered.
With troops present, Crosby was briefly reinstated as sheriff.
But even this small victory would be short lived.
Shortly after returning to office, Crosby appointed a new deputy named J. P. Gilmer, a White man. On June 7, 1875, Gilmer attempted to assassinate him rather than take orders from a Black superior. He shot Crosby in the head.
Crosby survived, but he never fully recovered. He was unable to continue his duties, and a White man replaced him for the remainder of his term, and Crosby faded from public life. Gilmer was arrested but never tried or punished.
By the fall of 1875, just months after the killings, White Democrats used intimidation, murders, and voter suppression to regain control of Mississippi’s legislature. The “Mississippi Plan,” perfected in places like Vicksburg, became a blueprint for violently destroying Black political power across the South.
Despite the month long killing of an estimated 150 to 300 Freed African Americans, none of the White men who led or participated in the massacre were punished, none of the men responsible for the killings were brought to trial, and none suffered any legal or financial consequences for their actions. They simply returned to their homes and continued their lives as though nothing had happened.
A congressional investigation later reviewed the massacre and heard from more than one hundred witnesses. The majority report clearly stated that the White mob was responsible for the violence. But despite this official conclusion, no one was punished. The federal government took no further action, and Mississippi authorities refused to prosecute any of the perpetrators.
Peter Crosby, the Black sheriff at the heart of the violence, died in 1884 at just forty years old. Warren County would not have another Black sheriff until Otha Jones was appointed more than 120 years later, from 1995 to 1996.
No photographs or images of Crosby from his lifetime are known to exist. In 2015, however, a local student, Michael Neal, painted a portrait that now hangs in the lobby of the Warren County sheriff’s office, placing Crosby alongside the other historical sheriffs and finally honoring his legacy.
Sources:
https://www.nps.gov/vick/learn/historyculture/the-end-of-reconstruction.htm
150 years ago in Vicksburg: National Park Service commemorates 1874 Vicksburg Massacre
‘Our State Needed This’: Sheriff Crosby honored in marker unveiling ceremony
https://www.nytimes.com/1875/01/02/archives/the-vicksburg-massacre-testimony-before-the-investigating-committee.html
