Riot or Massacre? Reclaiming the History of Colfax, 1873

“Most of the men were shot to death. A few were wounded, not mortally, and by pretending to be dead were afterwards, during the night, able to make their escape. Among them was the Levi Nelson named in the indictment.

The dead bodies of the negroes killed in this affair were left unburied until Tuesday, April 15, when they were buried by a deputy marshal and an officer of the militia from New Orleans. These persons found fifty-nine dead bodies. They showed pistol-shot wounds, the great majority in the head, and most of them in the back of the head. In addition to the fifty-nine dead bodies found, some charred remains of dead bodies were discovered near the court-house. Six dead bodies were found under a warehouse, all shot in the head but one or two, which were shot in the breast.

The only white men injured from the beginning of these troubles to their close were Hadnot and Harris. The court-house and its contents were entirely consumed.

There is no evidence that anyone in the crowd of whites bore any lawful warrant for the arrest of any of the blacks. “ Ulysses S. Grant, Naury 13, 1875

Hey everyone. Welcome back. 

On Easter Sunday in 1873, an angry mob of white men marched toward the county courthouse in Colfax, Louisiana. Before the day was over, dozens of men - all but three of them black - laid dead. The courthouse sat smoldering in flames; and rumors of a race riot spread throughout the area. An event described as a race riot for over a century, the Colfax Massacre was a demonstration of brutal violence and the lengths some men were willing to go to in the name of reclaiming political power. 

Reconstruction era violence is not a new topic and is something I’ve covered before on this show, including the Memphis Massacre in 1866. Yet, the events of Colfax also deserve exploring - not just as the prime example of the Grant administration’s efforts at stomping out white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, but also for how the events were initially memorialized and what it illuminates about public history. 

So this week I am diving into the Colfax Massacre. What happened? Who was involved? And how has the historical memory of this event evolved?

Grab your cup of coffee, peeps. Let’s do this. 

Though the events in Colfax occurred over the course of a Sunday afternoon in 1873, the true starting point of our story is several months before - to November of 1872. As the nation prepared for the presidential election, the state of Louisiana was hitting a crisis point. White southerners, frustrated by what they considered preferential treatment toward newly emancipated Black Americans and angry about losing legislative power as a result of the 15th Amendment, were bound and determined to wrestle back local control and put their Black neighbors in their place. Aware of the ongoing voter intimidation and racial violence plaguing the southern half of the United States, President Grant deployed federal troops to ensure the vote was held safely. When the votes were tallied and the Republican candidate for Governor won, Democratic supporters refused to acknowledge the results, instead claiming the election was rife with fraud and insisting their candidate was the true victor. Both William Pitt Kellogg, the Republican, and John McEnery, the Democrat, claimed victory. Despite the fact that Grant Parish had a Black, republican-supporting majority, McEnery and his supporters sought to undercut the results by sending in fake certifications to the state government claiming the Democratic candidate McEnery was the true victor. As journalist Michael Harriot shared in an article about the massacre, McEnery, a former soldier for the Confederate army, heightened an already tense situation as he called on his quote “fellow race warriors to create an entirely separate state government and put confederates in charge of voting across the state,” end quote. 

Thus, on January 13, 1873 each side held competing inauguration ceremonies. What resulted was a community who chose which government and government leader they wanted to follow. Individuals who were sympathetic to the confederate cause and who believed that Black Americans were not yet ready nor deserved to fully participate in democracy, sided with McEnery. Those who believed the federally protected election was accurate, and who also happened to be overwhelmingly black, treated Kellogg as the duly elected Governor. For his part, Kellogg pleaded his case to a federal judge in New Orleans who sided with Kellogg, declaring him the Governor of Louisiana. This decision to cast doubt on the results of the election was intentional and meant to create chaos and sow discord among Louisiana residents. The attempt at splitting the government also created a volatile situation with rumors spreading and in early March, hundreds of McEnery supporters attempted to secure weapons from the state arsenal, only to be beaten back by the U.S. Army. Despite their failed coup attempt, McEneryites - as they were called - still continued to push a narrative that their side had one, with several men showing up for their quote-unquote appointed offices creating a power struggle throughout the state. This struggle extended to the small town of Colfax where McEneryites forced their way into power when Alphonse Cazabat and Christopher Columbus Nash took their seats as judge and sheriff, respectively, inside the county courthouse in January.  

Just a few weeks later on March 25th, Republican supporters seized back control of the county courthouse, ousting Cazabat and Nash. Black militiamen, worried about what the white reprisal might look like, dug trenches around the building and stood guard. Given the rhetoric surrounding the election and the palpable underlying anger about Black men voting so freely, there was concern that the situation in Colfax could escalate quickly and turn violent at a moment’s notice. These fears weren’t unfounded and just three days later on March 28th, both Alphonse Cazabat and Christopher Nash - along with several other McEnery supporters - called for whites in the area to band together and retake the courthouse. In response, several Black residents were deputized and raided the houses of several white leaders - I was unable to find in my research the exact reasoning behind the raid - but whatever the reason behind the raid, the result was an incredibly angry group of white men still clinging to the ideas of white supremacy. 

So angry were these men that they grabbed a bystander, a black man by the name of Jesse McKinney - and shot him in the head in front of his family. There is no evidence that McKinney was part of the raid or otherwise involved with trying to protect the courthouse. Like so many Black men in the months and years after the Civil War, he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are some who speculate that the men who attacked McKinney may have done so intentionally - knowing that he was unlikely to be armed - which would not be true for the militiamen who were, in their opinion, trying to act above their station. Hearing of the murder of McKinney, Black women and children joined in on the fight, showing up the next day carrying weapons and ready to protect their kin and the courthouse. 

Outnumbered, men - led by local resident William J. Cruikshank, called in reinforcements in the form of local white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and members of the White League. In his plea, Cruikshank falsely claimed that local Black men had threatened to murder all the white men in Colfax and that they planned on keeping the white women alive for the purposes of sexual assault. Meanwhile, local papers got involved in the fight, with several democratic-leaning periodicals printing uncorroborated stories of Black lawlessness, including a claim that Black men had broken into the coffin of a young child whose body then threw into the road. These papers also published stories about supposed sexual assaults committed by black men - despite the fact that there was no concrete evidence to confirm such a crime ocurred and what did exist was highly questionable at best. All of this helped contribute to an environment that painted the white insurrectionist mob as the true saviors of the people and laid the groundwork to excuse any atrocities that might occur at a later date. 

Thus, on April 13th, 1873 - Easter Sunday - more than 300 white men descended upon the Colfax courthouse to demand that the Black militiamen standing guard disperse. Led by Christopher Nash, the white mob also carried with them a steamboat cannon, ready to fire upon the courthouse should their demands not be met. These white men would rather see the courthouse - the local place of government for their town - blown to pieces than to see it populated and managed by their black neighbors. When the group protecting the courthouse refused to budge, Nash announced that women and children had 30 minutes to leave the area. Once they were gone, the fight began. The group of white men opened fire, including cannon fire, upon the courthouse. In the midst of the chaos, one of the leaders, James Hadnot, was accidentally shot by one of his own men. A bit of crowd mentality seemed to settle in amongst the men and suddenly any black man that was in the area - even if he wasn’t defending the court house - was at risk for being shot and killed by the mob. Armed with their cannon, the group fired four pound iron slugs into the courthouse. 

Those who had retreated inside the courthouse, about 60 men, indicated their desire to surrender by flying a white flag of truce. According to the white men later tried for their actions, despite the fact that the men hoisted a white flag, when the white men approached the building, the men inside opened fire. This version of events, of course, highlighted how treacherous Black men were and how they were untrustworthy and lacked valor in battle. These same men also claimed that it wasn’t their constant barrage of cannon that prompted the courthouse to catch flame, but that it was set intentionally by a local black man who they hired to set the wooden roof on fire in an effort to smoke out the perpetrators. 

When the confrontation was over, 3 white men were dead. An unknown number of black men - strewn about the grounds of the courthouse - were also gone. Estimates range from 60 to over 150 and historians of the period consider the events at Colfax to be one of the bloodiest racial confrontations during Reconstruction. It demonstrated keenly just how weak the local Republican government was in its failed attempts to protect constituents from white violence. Almost immediately after the smoke cleared, white participants in the siege on Colfax laid the blame on the Black militiamen and Governor Kellogg for inciting such violence. A steamship, the Southwestern, arrived around 8 o’clock in the evening of the 13th, just a few hours after the events. Those on board the ship described that despite the fact that it was raining, the smell of dead and burning bodies was fierce. One passenger who boarded the ship just a mile to the north told the captain that Black men had illegally seized the courthouse and had thrown out quote unquote duly elected officials only to install defeated republicans in their place. According to this same passenger, Black residents had been rampaging throughout the town, robbing homes, and announcing their intent to kill the men. Thus, the passenger claimed, the men of the town were acting valiantly - defending their and their families honor by attempting to retake the courthouse. 

The Captain of the ship, R.G. Hill wrote down everything he saw at Colfax. Included in his observations was a sympathetic tone toward the white residents who were forced to live with Black men and women. The events at Colfax, Hill hoped, would prove once and for all that Black and white people could not live together. Upon arriving in New Orleans, Hill delivered his observations to the New Orleans Times. On April 15th, the headline read War At Last. Later articles about Colfax threw blame onto Governor Kellogg who they insisted was responsible for the supposed crimes committed by Black Americans. There were also claims that Black men had sexually assaulted white women and that the white gentry of Colfax was simply responding to the ongoing reign of terror being perpetuated by black men. George W. Stafford, one of the paramilitary captains who charged the Colfax courthouse, claimed in May 1873 that quote “the negroes at Colfax shouted daily across the river to our people that they intended killing every white man and boy, keeping only the young women to raise from them a new breed,” end quote. 

Despite these claims of honor and defending the rule of law, President Grant and federal officials on the ground in Louisiana suspected something altogether different. It would take six months before anyone was arrested, but eventually 97 participants were charged under suspicion of violating the Enforcement Acts, otherwise known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. Despite securing 97 arrests, only 9 men faced charges. Lawyers pursuing the case hoped that by seeking charges of conspiracy over murder that they’d have a better chance at securing a guilty verdict and thus, those charged only faced one count of murder with the rest of the charges focused on their denying the rights of Colfax’s black residents. During the trial, the accused continued to tout that they simply acted in defense of their town and that it was really the Black residents who created the chaos. Later statements about the events at Colfax would seriously contradict the story shared by the accused, with claims that the black men who attempted to surrender while inside the courthouse did not discharge their weapons and that it wasn’t some random hired hand who lit a fire only meant to smoke the men out, but a black resident who was forced to do so under the threat of death. 

Unfortunately, the first trial ended with one acquittal and a mistrial for the other 8 defendants. When the U.S. Attorney tried again, the defendants were found guilty on sixteen charges, but the presiding judge dismissed the convictions leading to the Supreme Court case United States v. Cruikshank where the court ruled the Enforcement Acts could only be applied to state actions and could not be applied to private acts. This all but gutted the enforcement acts and sent the message that racial violence was permitted - as long as it was done by an individual and not the state. 

The events at Colfax remained lost to history until the 1920s when a monument was erected honoring the white men who died, classifying the attack as a race riot. In 1951, local officials installed a plaque honoring Colfax - again calling it a riot and claiming it quote “marked the end of carpetbag misrule in the south,” end quote. Thus, for decades anyone who happened upon the Colfax monument received an incomplete version of the events and were led to believe that the black residents had engaged in a quote unquote riot. This monument remained in place until 2021 when the descendants of two men who were at Colfax, the great-great-great grandson of Jesse McKinney - the unarmed black man shot in front of his family - and a descendant of Bedford Woods, a white man who participated in the massacre - successfully lobbied to have the monument removed. They replaced the marker in 2023 with their own memorial and established The Colfax Memorial Organization which is a nonprofit dedicated to memorializing the people who died at Colfax and promoting education and economic opportunities for Black students living in Grants Parish. 

An event that remains unknown to many, the Colfax Massacre demonstrated just how far opponents to Reconstruction were willing to go to regain control and reinstitute white supremacy. It also illustrates the power public history has in shaping our understanding of the past. Whenever you are visiting a public monument or historic marker, remember to be skeptical. It is incumbent upon us to ask questions and stay curious - and hopefully learn some new history as a result. 

And just a quick reminder before I go to make sure you have entered the Civics & Coffee 5th anniversary giveaway if you haven’t already. And stay tuned for new and exciting developments as Civics and Coffee turns five in just a few weeks. 

Thanks peeps. I will see you next week.