Colfax massacre | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 2018-12-05

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
Colfax massacre


00:03:01 1 State and national background
00:05:53 2 Background in Grant Parish
00:07:33 3 Enforcement against the Klan
00:08:29 4 Louisiana and Grant Parish
00:09:31 5 The Louisiana election of 1872
00:14:51 6 Colfax courthouse conflict
00:17:41 7 Massacre
00:22:58 8 Aftermath
00:26:43 9 Memorials
00:28:11 10 Renewed attention
00:29:32 11 See also



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SUMMARY
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The Colfax massacre, or Colfax riot as the events are termed on the 1950 state historic marker, occurred on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, the seat of Grant Parish, when approximately 150 black men were murdered by white Southerners. The bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the Reconstruction era, the Colfax massacre was an example of the lengths to which some opponents of Reconstruction would go to regain their accustomed authority. Among blacks, the incident was long remembered as proof that in any large confrontation, they stood at a fatal disadvantage.In the wake of the contested 1872 election for governor of Louisiana and local offices, a group of white Democrats armed with rifles and a small cannon, overpowered Republican freedmen and state militia (also black) occupying the Grant Parish courthouse in Colfax. Most of the freedmen were killed after they surrendered; nearly 50 were killed later that night after being held as prisoners for several hours. Estimates of the number of dead have varied, ranging from 62 to 153; three whites died but the number of black victims was difficult to determine because bodies had been thrown into the river or removed for burial. There were rumors of mass graves at the site.
Historian Eric Foner described the massacre as the worst instance of racial violence during Reconstruction. In Louisiana, it had the highest fatalities of any of the numerous violent events following the disputed gubernatorial contest in 1872 between Republicans and Democrats. Foner wrote, "...every election [in Louisiana] between 1868 and 1876 was marked by rampant violence and pervasive fraud." Although the Fusionist-dominated state "returning board," which ruled on vote validity, initially declared John McEnery and his Democratic slate the winners, the board eventually split, with a faction declaring Republican William P. Kellogg the victor. A Republican federal judge in New Orleans ruled that the Republican-majority legislature be seated.Federal prosecution and conviction of a few perpetrators at Colfax under the Enforcement Acts was appealed to the Supreme Court. In a key case, the court ruled in United States v. Cruikshank (1876) that protections of the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply to the actions of individuals, but only to the actions of state governments. After this ruling, the federal government could no longer use the Enforcement Act of 1870 to prosecute actions by paramilitary groups such as the White League, which had chapters forming across Louisiana beginning in 1874. Intimidation and black voter suppression by such paramilitary groups were instrumental to the Democratic Party regaining political control in the state legislature by the late 1870s.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, historians have paid renewed attention to the events at Colfax and the resulting Supreme Court case, and their meaning in American history.