A little over two months later, violence ripped through New Orleans. Ex-Confederates had won the 1866 local elections in which blacks could not vote. Louisiana Radicals called a convention in New Orleans with the goal of enfranchising blacks and disenfranchising “rebels.” The New Orleans police force, consisting largely of Confederate veterans, plotted to break up the convention. On July 30 the police and a white mob attacked a march of twenty-five convention delegates and two hundred supporters, mostly black veterans. The police and white mob were well armed; the Radicals were not.
