The Colfax Massacre

 The Colfax Massacre in Louisiana on April, 13 1873 is a testament of how the reconstruction period after the Civil War is in some ways just as brutal as the war itself. While freed blacks began to try and adapt from forced labor to freedom, white Southerners saw them as nothing more than peasants who did not deserve freedom because of their skin color. The massacre took place in Grant Parish, located in the middle of Louisiana on April 13, 1873.  The Colfax massacre of 1873 may be one of the most senseless acts of violence in American history.

            While the north had won the war and freed blacks had started their transition to their new life of freedom, white southern democrats began to form white supremacist groups that were opposed to blacks and also the Republican Party. In a newspaper article entitled, “The Massacre a Most Terrible One-Escape of the Whites-Difficulty in Sending off Troops,” the author alludes to the horrible atrocities that occurred in Grant Parish that day. The author states, “the massacre of the negroes at Colfax Court-house was even more horrible in all its details and more complete in its execution than at first reported.” The author states that the atrocities were even worse than at first reported. They go on to say, “It appears that not a single colored man was killed until all of them had surrendered” and “over 100 of the unfortunate negroes were brutally shot down in cold blood.” Because the black population had moved into Grant Parish and began to make up officials in the town, white southerners, and their sense of mastery, felt that the freed blacks deserved to be working on plantations rather than making up the governing body of a town. Speaking about a group of blacks, the author says, “was burned to death in the Court-house when it was set on fire.” The brutality of this massacre was horrifying as it spread through the south and other blacks began to hear about it. “The details of the massacre, as they are related by eye-witnesses to the terrible scenes enacted at Colfax Court-house, are positively appalling in their atrocity” this alludes to the fact that even the people, of the north, while not truly excepting the black population, felt that same way about this massacre when it happened as we do today.

            After the massacre, many of the whites that had took part in it fled to the border of Texas. The source states, “After the butchery of the surrendered negroes the whites scattered to every direction” and “It is understood that many of them left for the Texas border, in hopes of escaping the consequences of their crime.” Louisiana was now under national radar because of these crimes and state militias were in charge to go into Grant Parish and take control of the situation. Speaking about the militia, “they did not arrive at the scene of the hostilities until Monday, the day after the massacre.” Because the troops could not find transportation in a timely fashion, many of the people responsible were already gone by the time Federal troops had arrived. Once they arrived to see the atrocities of the massacre, they were now in charge of trying to clean it up. The source states, “These troops buried over sixty bodies of the scene of the slaughter.” Also, referring to the fleeing of the participants in the massacre, the source states, it “seems to have been the whole scope of their operations, as all the whites participating in the battle had escaped before they arrived.”

            The Colfax massacre was a complete act of senseless violence by white southerners because they could not get over their sense of mastery.    

Source: "Grant Parish: The Massacre a Most Terrible One-Escape of the Whites-Difficulty in Sending off Troops." New York Times, April 18, 1873.