Hey folks,
I am going to try to avoid names, but right now in Europe and the US there is a lot of political violence that has become very racial.
One of the presidential candidates in the 21st century is campaigning on as close to an openly racist ticket I think someone can.
So to say my piece, I am going to talk about one dark corner of US history, where we can learn that then as now, politics is more than just rhetoric.
Under the pageantry, it is deadly serious.
This is the story of the Colfax massacre.
I warn that this is going to be quite a bit darker than my normal videos.
Before I begin we just have one short aside about American Politics.
The political parties in the US shift ideologies and constituencies over time, and in this moment we have a pro-business, anti-slavery, northern Republican party allied with the newly freed black people in the south.
The Democrats are a southern, farmer focused, white supremacist party largely made up of politicians from the old Confederacy.
Ok, let’s start.
We begin in 1866.
Louisiana was just taken out of federal occupation following the Civil War.
Congress in open revolt against president Andrew Johnson, passed the Civil Rights act of 1866.
This ended the black codes passed by former Confederates in southern states, which basically stripped the newly freed black population of nearly all their rights.
In 1868, this new law allowed for a biracial coalition to elect a majority Republican state legislature in Louisiana.
Which is an amazing victory, but we began to see resentment build.
From April to November of 1868, over 1,000 political murders terrorized Louisiana Republicans.
Almost all of them black.
The president’s response?
He tried his best to prevent Louisiana’s Governor from using state militias or US forces to stop groups like the Knights of the White Camelia, a terrorist group closely associated with the Ku Klux Klan.
Colfax was in Grant Parish.
Black men came to cast their votes, despite threats, and and moving ballot boxes.
The Republicans won overwhelmingly, and the white community responded by throwing the ballot box in the river, and arresting William Calhoun.
He was a former slave owner with a common law black wife, and turned into a fighter for black political equality.
Black Republican, and election commissioner Hal Frazier was shot by the white mob.
President Grant in 1869 tried to change the dynamic going on in the south.
He lobbied for the fifteenth amendment guaranteeing black people full citizenship and the right to vote.
This led to redoubled efforts by the KKK, and other terrorist groups.
In 1871, congress passed a number of laws to use the army to suppress the Klan from terrorizing black communities.
In 1872, the Republican governor of Louisiana began to oppose reconstruction, and demand that former Confederates get to vote again.
Through him, a coalition of anti-reconstruction Republicans and Democrats conspired to take over the government, and put white supremacists into key political positions.
The 1872 election resulted in the state having two governments, one for rebuilding a free south, and one demanding white supremacy.
This did not result in house floor debates.
Those favoring white supremacy took the government by force, using a paramilitary group to overwhelm the state militia.
For three days they occupied New Orleans, until federal troops could force them to surrender.
In Colfax, the black citizens literally dug in to def end the Republican government in the courthouse from Democrat-allied paramilitary groups.
On March 28th, white supremacists in the parish called for white citizens to reinstate a Democratic government, by force.
The black defenders refused to give in to threats by the white mob that came to take away their rights.
The mob acquired cannons, and brought in Confederate veterans and Klan members.
On Easter Sunday, 300 white men with rifles and horses marched on the Colfax courthouse.
Their leader asked the women and children to leave, and after 30 minutes began firing on them.
Some tried to flee, and the mob gunned them down where they stood.
The other defenders surrendered, but it fell on deaf ears.
The white paramilitary mob massacred the black defenders of the courthouse, dumping their bodies in a river.
About 50 were taken prisoner, and killed that night.
Only one black man survived.
It showed how far people would go to defend white supremacy, and the black population would remember this event for years to come.
The state militia managed to find and indict about 100 of them.
Many ran away and hid out west.
Historians consider it the bloodiest incident in the history of Reconstruction.
Their cases went as high as the supreme court, and none of them were prosecuted.
This ruling encouraged the rise of white paramilitary groups in the south.
They used violence to terrorize black leaders, and white Republicans, as well as suppress black voters.
It was this that put the governments of the south back in the hands of the Democrats, and ensured white supremacy would rule there for nearly 100 years.
To put salt on this wound, in 1950, the state of Louisiana made a highway marker that called it the “Colfax riot” and called it the “end of carpetbag misrule in the south”.
Only recently is the massacre moving out of the realm of obscure local history, and historians are uncovering its key role in the story of Reconstruction and race relations.
In 2016, I also think we should pause to know that violence in politics can very easily escalate, and take us to dark places.
Please down in the comments, talk about how we can use historical events like the Colfax massacre to decry violence whenever it rears its head.
And I’ll see you all in 2 weeks for another Step Back.