NARRATOR
Since the end of the war, black political conventions had been taking place across the South. The central issue was black suffrage. "We simply ask that we be recognized as men," declared the South Carolina Convention of Colored People, "that the same laws which govern over white men shall govern black men." "We stood by the government when it wanted help," a delegate from Mississippi wrote President Johnson, "Now will it stand by us?" In New Orleans, hundreds of black men declared they were ready to fight for the right to vote. Militant whites in the city vowed to stamp out black agitators and Radical Republicans. President Johnson dismissed the growing signs of trouble. At midday on July 30th 1866, New Orleans exploded. At the state convention, a mob attacked white Radical Republican delegates and their black supporters. The Republicans were chased out of the convention hall and shot down. Black men were murdered in the streets. By the time federal troops restored order, thirty-four blacks and three white Radicals had been killed.

AYERS
And the Radicals say, "We told you. We told you that unless you stamp out this serpent of white power in the South, unless you kill it, it's going to rise up again."