Colfax massacre

Colfax massacre, murder of some 150 African American militia members who were attempting to surrender to a white militia on April 13, 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana. Like the Rosewood massacre of 1923, the Colfax massacre was largely forgotten for decades until renewed scholarly interest brought greater public awareness to the event.

During the Reconstruction era following the American Civil War, the South was in turmoil. Many Republican politicians, who controlled the federal government, wanted equality for Black people. Black men were newly able to vote, and many were elected to public office. Many Southern Democrats, however, were former slave owners who wanted to keep Black people in a condition as close to slavery as possible, which led to frequent clashes.

In 1872 a bitterly contested election for Louisiana governor left both Republicans and Democrats declaring their candidate the winner. Tensions rose in Colfax, the seat of Grant Parish, as both sides set up competing governments. Federal troops and a Black militia supported the Republicans, while the Democrats formed a militia made up of local white residents. The white militia included members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations.

In early April 1873 a Black armed militia unit occupied the Grant Parish courthouse, hoping to prevent the Democrats from overthrowing the local Republican government. On April 13 the white militia—with perhaps as many as 300 supporters—surrounded the courthouse. Fighting broke out between the two militias, and several people were shot and killed. The white militia fired a cannon and forced a Black man to set the courthouse on fire. The fighting ended when most of the Black militia members fled or surrendered. However, the white militia members killed many of those who tried to surrender, and they pursued and killed others who had run away. They also shot or hanged some of the Black militia members they had detained as prisoners.

On April 14 Louisiana’s Republican governor, William Pitt Kellogg, sent in troops to reestablish order. By the end of the massacre, just three white people but as many as 150 Black people had been killed. Federal authorities arrested almost 100 white militia members but formally indicted only nine of them. Believing that murder convictions would be difficult to attain, prosecutors instead charged the militia members with violation of the Enforcement Act of 1870, which protected the rights of Black Americans guaranteed under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. Three men were found guilty, but they subsequently appealed. In 1876 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned their convictions, ruling that the Enforcement Acts did not apply to actions by individuals. The state of Louisiana never brought charges against any of the other white militia members.

Although the Colfax massacre made headlines nationwide at the time, the incident was quickly forgotten in the national consciousness. In 1921 local officials erected a memorial to the three white militia members who died. The inscription on the memorial referred to the event as the “Colfax Riot” and called the white militia members “heroes” who died “fighting for white supremacy.” That memorial and a similar honorary plaque that was put up in 1951 stood for decades until activists successfully agitated for their removal in 2021. Two years later the Colfax Massacre Memorial, which lists all of the known victims of the massacre by name and provides a historically accurate depiction of the event, was dedicated on the 150th anniversary of the murders.