This Day in History

July 23, 1890: F. M. B. “Marsh” Cook Killed

Time Periods: 1877
Themes: Reconstruction, Democracy & Citizenship, Laws & Citizen Rights
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F.M.B. "Marsh" Cook | ZInn Education Project

Assassination of F. M. B. “Marsh” Cook marker. Source: Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

On July 23, 1890, six men ambushed F. M. B. “Marsh” Cook, a white Republican, in Jasper County in Mississippi, riddling him with 27 shots.

He was murdered because he took a stand against the upcoming 1890 Mississippi Constitutional Convention, led by white Democrats to restore white supremacy and undo the advances of Reconstruction.

The convention took place and the new Constitution included poll taxes and literacy tests to disenfranchise African Americans — a Constitution other Southern states soon imitated.

Read more at the Rise and Fall of Jim Crow and History Engine. Find resources below to teach outside the textbook about the Reconstruction era.

Learn more in the Zinn Education Project national report, “Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction,” and find teaching resources on Reconstruction below.

Related Resources
Teaching Activities (Free)

Reconstructing the South: A Role Play

Lesson. By Bill Bigelow. 17 pages.
This role play engages students in thinking about what freedpeople needed in order to achieve — and sustain — real freedom following the Civil War. It’s followed by a chapter from the book Freedom’s Unfinished Revolution.

Teaching Activities (Free)

Who Gets to Vote? Teaching About the Struggle for Voting Rights in the United States

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. 2020.
Unit with three lessons on voting rights, including the history of the struggle against voter suppression in the United States.

Articles

The Voting Rights Act: Ten Things You Should Know

Article. By Emilye Crosby and Judy Richardson. 2015.
Key points in the history of the 1965 Voting Rights Act missing from most textbooks.

The First Vote
Articles

Freedom’s Unfinished Revolution: Teaching a People’s History of Reconstruction

Article. Background reading for teachers. By Bill Bigelow. 4 pages.
A review of Freedom’s Unfinished Revolution, a collection of primary documents for high school on the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Books: Non-Fiction

The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The “Great Truth” about the “Lost Cause”

Book — Non-fiction. Edited by James W. Loewen and Edward H. Sebesta. 2010. 484 pages.
Primary documents on the causes of the Civil War.

Books: Non-Fiction

Black Reconstruction in America

Book — Non-fiction. By W. E. B. Du Bois. Edited by Eric Foner and Henry Louis Gates. 2021. 1097 pages.
Originally published in 1935, Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction was the first book to challenge the prevailing racist historical narrative of the era and in sharp, incisive prose, tell the story of the Civil War and Reconstruction from the perspective of African Americans.

Session of Mississippi Legislature 1890
This Day in History

Nov. 1, 1890: Mississippi Constitution

Mississippi adopted a state constitution with poll tax and literacy tests to roll back the gains of the Reconstruction era.