Clothed in Conflict: Clothing and Racial Violence in the Post-Civil War American South

In 1864, Samuel Johnson, a U.S. Colored Cavalry sergeant, recounted the brutal murder of his black comrades and his own narrow escape from death at the hands of Confederate soldiers. He survived, he recalled, only because he “pulled off my uniform and found a suit of citizens clothes which I put on”—an act that convinced the Confederates that he was merely a local slave.

As Johnson’s experience illustrates, clothing was pivotal in prompting physical violence against African Americans during and after the American Civil War. As the war drew to a close, many white southerners lashed out at ex-slaves for dressing “above” their station, as well as at Union soldiers, whose uniforms were material reminders of defeat. With the rise of the first Ku Klux Klan, clothing and regalia played a central role in intimidation and violence towards newly freed African Americans.  In this milieu—as North and South confronted the work of Reconstruction—clothing took on intense political meaning as people debated the appropriate way to cover and display the body.  At the center of these debates were struggles over the freedom of dress and bodily display in the public spaces of the emancipated, occupied South

This paper examines the pivotal role clothing played in the violent encounters of negotiating post-war social and political identities. Examining violence and debates over clothing illuminates how the material world did not merely serve as the backdrop upon which legal, political, and labor disputes played out, but rather, actively reshaped social engagement, political expression, and cultural continuity. By investigating the policies, violence, and politics related to clothing consumption and the body, this paper draws material culture to the forefront of public conflicts at the end of the Civil War, offering new insight into conceptions of freedom and rights in the post-war South.