End of an Era

ID: 2916 ~ Source: “Shepart Mullins – Original Marker.” Photograph. First Street Cemetery, McLennan County, Texas. ACPL Genealogy Center. Accessed July 28, 2022. https://www.genealogycenter.info/viewpage_txfirststreetcem.php?surname=mullins&firstname=shepart%20-%20original%20marker; Equal Justice Initiative. “Chapter Three: Documenting Reconstruction Violence, Known and Unknown Horrors.” Reconstruction in America. Accessed July 28, 2022. https://eji.org/report/reconstruction-in-america/documenting-reconstruction-violence/.
This file appears in: Shep Mullens
End of an Era

After Shep Mullens’s death in 1871, Reconstruction efforts began to unravel. In the post-Reconstruction era, not only did white Americans restrict Black voting rights and political leadership but also limited the protections again white violence that Mullens advocated for. The Equal Justice Initiative reports that white Americans lynched more than 4,400 Black Americans from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to 1950.

This file appears in: Shep Mullens

By Allie Roberts
At the end of the Civil War, a new nation seemed to be on the horizon. Emancipation and the beginning of Reconstruction signaled a shift in national, state, and local institutions across the country. The Reconstruction Era, though certainly flawed,…