Editing Vicksburg, Mississippi (section)

===Political and racial unrest after Civil War===
{{See also|Vicksburg massacre}}
In the first few years after the Civil War, white Confederate veterans developed the [[Ku Klux Klan]], beginning in Tennessee; it had chapters throughout the South and attacked freedmen and their supporters. It was suppressed about 1870. By the mid-1870s, new white [[paramilitary]] groups had arisen in the [[Deep South]], including the [[Red Shirts (Southern United States)|Red Shirts]] in Mississippi, as whites struggled to regain political and social power over the black majority. Elections were marked by violence and fraud as white Democrats worked to suppress black Republican voting.

In August 1874, a black sheriff, [[Peter Crosby (sheriff)|Peter Crosby]], was elected in Vicksburg. Letters by a white planter, Batchelor, detail the preparations of whites for what he described as a "race war," including acquisition of the newest Winchester guns. On December 7, 1874, white men disrupted a black Republican meeting celebrating Crosby's victory and held him in custody before running him out of town.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hahn |first=Steven |title=A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2003 |pages=297}}</ref> He advised blacks from rural areas to return home; along the way, some were attacked by armed whites. During the next several days, armed white mobs swept through black areas, killing other men at home or out in the fields, in what would come to be known as the [[Vicksburg massacre]]. Sources differ as to total fatalities, with 29–50 blacks and 2 whites reported dead at the time. Twenty-first-century historian Emilye Crosby estimates that 300 blacks were killed in the city and the surrounding area of [[Claiborne County, Mississippi]].<ref name="crosby">[https://books.google.com/books?id=C4Jio5kajiwC Emilye Crosby, ''Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230430172427/https://books.google.com/books?id=C4Jio5kajiwC |date=April 30, 2023 }}, Univ of North Carolina Press, 2006, p. 3</ref> The Red Shirts were active in Vicksburg and other Mississippi areas, and black pleas to the federal government for protection were not met.

At the request of Republican Governor [[Adelbert Ames]], who had left the state during the violence, President [[Ulysses S. Grant]] sent federal troops to Vicksburg in January 1875. In addition, a congressional committee investigated what was called the "Vicksburg Riot" at the time (and reported as the "Vicksburg massacre" by northern newspapers.) Testimony from both black and white residents was given, as reported by the ''New York Times'', but no one was ever prosecuted for the deaths. The Red Shirts and other white [[insurgents]] suppressed Republican voting by both whites and blacks; smaller-scale riots were staged in the state up to the 1875 elections, at which time white Democrats regained control of a majority of seats in the state legislature.

Under new constitutions, amendments and laws passed between 1890 in Mississippi and 1908 in the remaining southern states, white Democrats [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disenfranchised]] most blacks and many poor whites by creating barriers to voter registration, such as [[Poll tax (United States)|poll taxes]], [[literacy test]]s, and [[grandfather clause]]s. They passed [[Jim Crow laws]] through which they imposed racial segregation of public facilities. In 1908, a publication documented some of Vicksburg's leading African Americans including lawyer and banker [[W. E. Mollison]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:The_leading_Afro-Americans_of_Vicksburg,_Miss.,_their_enterprises,_churches,_schools,_lodges_and_societies;_(IA_leadingafroameri00moll).pdf&page=21 |title=The leading Afro-Americans of Vicksburg, Miss., their enterprises, churches, schools, lodges and societies |access-date=December 12, 2023 |archive-date=December 25, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231225170259/https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:The_leading_Afro-Americans_of_Vicksburg,_Miss.,_their_enterprises,_churches,_schools,_lodges_and_societies;_(IA_leadingafroameri00moll).pdf&page=21 |url-status=live }}</ref>

On March 12, 1894, the popular soft drink [[Coca-Cola]] was bottled for the first time in Vicksburg by [[Joseph A. Biedenharn]], a local [[Confectionery|confectioner]]. Today, surviving 19th-century Biedenharn [[Soft drink|soda]] [[bottle]]s are prized by collectors of Coca-Cola memorabilia. The original candy store has been renovated and is used as the Biedenharn Coca-Cola Museum.