Date of Award
8-2025
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School
Humanities
Committee Chair
Dr. Rebecca Tuuri
Committee Chair School
Humanities
Committee Member 2
Dr. Andrew Haley
Committee Member 2 School
Humanities
Committee Member 3
Dr. Heather Stur
Committee Member 3 School
Humanities
Committee Member 4
Dr. Susannah J. Ural
Committee Member 4 School
Humanities
Committee Member 5
Dr. Beverly G. Bond
Committee Member 5 School
Humanities
Abstract
This dissertation provides the first modern account of the Clinton Massacre. Located ten miles west of Jackson, Mississippi, Clinton was a center of early slavery and cotton production in the antebellum world. On September 4, 1875, a seismic wave of racial terror was unleashed upon the Black community in and around this small, college town. The violence initially erupted at a large, Republican political rally held on the site and among the ruins of a once prominent cotton plantation destroyed during the Civil War. This site, referred to as Moss Hill by white residents and as Moses Hill by newly-freed Black citizens, became a contested space in the postbellum period. Over the following days, white paramilitary groups connected to the Mississippi Democratic Party murdered as many as fifty Black citizens.
In the aftermath, three different, competing narratives were created. Initially, two accounts were produced—one by the Mississippi Democratic Party and another by a bipartisan, congressional committee. These initial accounts are not only segregated by race and politics, they are bifurcated by truth. However, the Clinton Massacre was not relegated to these two narratives. A third, subtler and distinctly different narrative also persisted. This narrative, found within the local Black community, is highly private and has been protected and guarded out of necessity. Yet, it represents a persistent and resilient counternarrative maintained by those most affected by racial violence.
The struggle to control the historical meaning of the Clinton Massacre is not unique or unusual. It represents the contested nature of a Southern society attempting to both reckon with and avoid a sordid racial past. This dissertation offers a means by which to recognize and dismantle forms of white supremacy venerated as heritage (not history). Because a false narrative became the publicly-sanctioned version, the violence committed in and around Clinton in 1875 did not end. Rather, it mutated into a rippling form of historical trauma meted out via publications of state and local historical societies, textbooks, historical markers, and public memorializations. Ultimately, this dissertation demonstrates the ways in which the past and present continue to insist and impinge upon one another in persistent and pervasive ways.
Copyright
Melissa Janczewski Jones, 2025
Recommended Citation
Jones, Melissa Janczewksi, "The Clinton Massacre of 1875: Competing Narratives & Reconstruction Memory in a Deep South Town" (2025). Dissertations. 2375.
https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/2375
Included in
African American Studies Commons, Cultural History Commons, History of Gender Commons, Public History Commons, Women's History Commons