Answer:
It came in the spring of 1871, at the trial of three blacks charged with inciting arson in the town. Almost everyone came to the courtroom well armed, as Mississippians had been doing for years. This time shots rang out, killing the white Republican judge and several black spectators. The crowd surged forward, chasing down one defendant, whose body they riddled with bullets, and hurling another from the roof. ("When this failed to kill him," a witness reported, "his throat was cut.") For the next three days, local Klansmen rampaged through Meridian, murdering "all the leading colored men of the town with one or two exceptions." Despite frantic pleas for help, federal troops in Mississippi did not arrive in time. When the slaughter finally ended, more than twenty-five blacks were dead. So, too, was Republican rule in this hill country town.(42)
