1874 - Human Rights, Social Justice

Human Rights, Social Justice

Local feminists organize the Dublin Women's Suffrage Society, but the suffrage movement will be slow to spread in Ireland.

The 29-year-old Comanche chief Quanah Parker forges an alliance with the Kiowa and Cheyenne to rid the Texas bison range of white hunters. Illinois-born hunter William Barclay "Bat" Masterson, 20, joins an expedition that penetrates Indian-held lands and sets up camp near an abandoned trading post called Adobe Walls; Parker attacks the camp with 200 warriors, but the Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa bullets cannot penetrate the earthen walls of the sodhouses, rifles fired by the 28 men and one woman inside take a deadly toll of attackers, and Parker retires after 2 hours to seek easier targets (see crime [Masterson], 1878). Colonel Ranald S. (Slidell) Mackenzie, now 35, of the U.S. 4th Cavalry captures and destroys Quanah Parker's herd of 1,400 horses in the fall. Called "Bad Hand" by the Comanche, the New York-born Mackenzie was promoted to the rank of major general before he was 25, sustained battle wounds in three encounters, and lost some fingers as a result (see Parker, 1875).

Nashville-born cabinet maker Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, 65, helps lead a migration of "Exodusters" from the cotton states westward to Kansas. Sold into slavery several times in his youth, he always managed to escape and helped others to do likewise; he has tried to help blacks buy farmland in Tennessee, whites refused to sell at reasonable prices, and in the next 5 years some 50,000 sharecroppers will respond to his appeal, moving to the colony that Singleton and his partner Columbus Johnson establish against the wishes of whites, who patrol rivers and roads to prevent blacks from leaving (see 1881).

Federal troops at New Orleans put down a revolt by the White League against the black state government September 17.

Former anti-slavery activist David Lee Child dies at Wayland, Massachusetts, September 18 at age 80. His widow, Lydia, will survive until 1880.

A race riot at Vicksburg, Mississippi, December 7 leaves some 75 blacks dead and many injured.