Good Morning POU!
Robert has opened his first business which proves successful, but the Confederates are livid that he has done so, and attempt to kill him, will he survive? Read to find out!
Was Robert Reed Church alive?
A bipartisan consort of congressmen led by Radical Republican Elihu Washburne arrived in Memphis from Washington DC to conduct an investigation of the Memphis riots. They interviewed black townsfolk, local government officials and police officers. Toward the end, a man with a wound on his head came ambling up to speak. He introduced himself as Robert Reed Church.
“How much of a colored man are you?” Washburne asked. He seemed shocked that the rioters had attacked a man who looked so white.
“I do not know, very little. My father was a white man. My mother was as white as I am.”
Robert told his story of being shot and lying bleeding as rioters ransacked his store. He named his assailant as David Roach, adding that Roach was down at the tavern that very moment.
After the investigation, the federal government opted not to bring any charges and most of the police officers kept their jobs. 46 black people were killed, 5 black women raped, 75 people, including Robert, injured; over 100 were robbed, 91 homes, 12 black schools and 5 black churches burned; $100,000 ($1.6 million) of property damage was done. “We have decided this does not merit federal charges” investigators concluded.
In the aftermath, thousands left Memphis, but thousands more stayed, refusing to give in to mob terror. Among them was Robert Reed Church.
As merchants closed their stores and families left, Church began buying real estate. He purchased five properties in what was coming to be known as Beale Street. In 1867, months after nearly being killed, Robert became a father again, this time to a son, whom he and Lou named Thomas. With his family and business portfolio growing in Memphis, Robert was resolute about staying and helping rebuild the city. The Beale Street District was the heart of black Memphis.
After the riots, those that stayed in the African American community, flowed into the district, extending from the riverfront for eleven blocks into the city. Its dirt streets held an office of the Freedmen’s Bureau, a black church, black rooming houses, brick stores and bars and wood frame houses. In Beale, the African American community built a stronghold after the riots.
One Sunday afternoon, Robert was standing on a street corner with a group of men. A police officer approached and told them to disperse. When they didn’t comply, he grabbed Robert by his collar. Robert wrestled free, drew his gun from his hip and fired a warning shot over the officer’s head. The officer pulled his gun, pistol-whipped Church over the head and dragged him to jail. Church hired a lawyer and evaded any formal charges.
Church rebuilt his billiard hall in 1870, a two story brick building on Beale Street. The bar was stocked with fine wines and expensive cigars. A third room was a barbershop with its own entrance and over each entrance was a black sign lettered with gold leaf that read “r.r.church.”
One winter, a few years later, it snowed in Memphis for the first time in memory. A snowfall was unforeseen but Robert Reed Church had anticipated such an event. In a previous year on a trip up North, he had purchased a sleigh. His friends made fun of him, thinking he was insane, but he predicted that “one day it will snow here. You’ll see.”
When snow finally did come, he affixed it to his horse and rode around town with his young daughter Mary next to him. As they galloped through the streets, people watched as they played in the snow and tossed snowballs.
At one point, he was struck by a hail of snowballs and laughed, thinking it to be good natured fun. But when he picked up one of the snowballs, he found that it was a rock covered in snow. A larger rock then came hurling at him and hit him in the face. Robert pulled out the revolver he kept at his side and pointed it at the men who had thrown the rocks. He let off a shot and they scattered. Robert drove the sled home.
“My father had the most violent temper of any man I ever met,” his daughter Mary recalled.
In the late 1869s, Robert Reed Church’s old friend from the docks, Blanche K. Bruce walked into his bar. Since Emancipation he had become one of the wealthiest black men in Mississippi, having purchased a large sharecropping plantation there. He was weighing a run for the US Senate and wanted to get Church’s ideas since he shared a similar background and status. Church advised him to run. ”I’ll support you,” he assured him.
After Bruce announced his candidacy, he returned to Church’s saloon several times to raise money and talk strategy. In 1875, he was elected to the Senate from Mississippi. After Bruce’s election and with his own money, celebrity and political connections, Church became a political power broker seemingly overnight.
His saloons served as de facto headquarters for black political and civil rights activity. Aspiring black politicians would wade through a crowd of gamblers and partiers to talk to him. Local Republicans would often visit to ask for an endorsement or advice.
Church and his band of black political mavens would then face an uphill battle. In 1877, the remainder of Union forces in Memphis left the city when new president Rutherford B. Hayes, decreed that he was returning the South to “home rule.” Hayes ordered away the Union troops that had protected blacks and their white Republican allies in the South.
Almost immediately, ex-Confederates returned to power, eager to reverse a decade of racial progress.