COLFAX MASSACRE: [1] [2] [3] [4]
    "The Redeemers who overthrew Reconstruction and established `Home Rule' in the Southern States conducted their campaign in the name of white supremacy." 

...The Strange Career of Jim Crow, C. Vann Woodward, 1974, 31.
    "Practically all relevant decisions of the United States Supreme Court Court during Reconstruction and to the end of the century nullified or curtailed rights of Negroes which many of the Reconstruction 'Radicals' thought they had written into laws and into the Constitution. Some of these decisions are still generally accepted"

 ... The Betrayal of the Negro From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson,  Rayford W. Logan, 1965
Bush vs. Gore
U.S. v. Reese, 1876;  92US214
U.S. v. Cruikshank, 1876; 92US542
}Is there some way to be a conservative without being a Confederate?~ -Clarence Thomas,
Supreme Discomfort, The Washington Post Magazine,Sunday, August 4, 2002; Page 08.
Black Louisianians gathering their dead and wounded after the Colfax massacre.
 (Harpers's Weekly, May 10, 1873)		 Blacks hinding in the Louisiana swamps to escape the perpetrators of the Colfax massacre.
 (Harpers's Weekly, May 10, 1873)

The Colfax Louisiana Massacre - April 13, 1873
On Easter Sunday, terrorist racist forces broke up a black political rally,cannonading blacks who had barricaded themselves into the Colfax courthouse for protection.  Sixty-one blacks were cut down by artillery fire, and thirty-seven more were captured and executed. When some little effort was made to prosecute those who were responsible for the massacre, the "conservative" press of the state insisted that the blacks had only gotten what was coming to them.

 

 










 


The Louisiana Murders

  The 1872 state election results in Louisiana were disputed between the regular Republicans and a coalition of Liberal Republicans and Democrats, with each side inaugurating their own governor and legislature. A federal district judge ruled that the regular Republicans were the victors, so newly-reelected President Ulysses S. Grant sent federal troops to ensure compliance with the judicial decree.

  Many whites in Louisiana refused to accept that decision. They established a shadow government and used paramilitary units known as the White League to intimidate and attack blacks and white Republicans.

  The worst incident of violence was the Colfax Massacre of April 13, 1873. The fighting left two white men and 70 black men dead, with half of the latter killed after they surrendered. Federal officials arrested and indicted over 100 white men. They were later freed, however, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the basis for their prosecution (part of the 1870 enforcement act) was unconstitutional.

 










 
 
 
 
 


Centennial  Redemption 1876 

U.S. v. Cruikshank, 92U.S. 542

     This case arose from the Colfax massacre, the bloodiest single act of carnage in all of Reconstruction. Indictments were brought under the Enforcement Act of 1870, alleging a conspiracy to deprive the victims of their civil rights. On the grounds that the wording 'failed to specify race as the rioters' motivation, the Supreme Court overturned the only three convictions the government had managed to obtain. More, however, was at stake than faulty language, for the Court went on to argue that the postwar amendments only empowered the federal government to prohibit violations of black rights by states; the responsibility for punishing crimes by individuals rested where it always had with local and state authorities.  ... . In the name of federalism, the decision rendered national prosecution of crimes committed against blacks virtually impossible, and gave a green light to acts of terror where local officials either could not or would not enforce the law.

"Reconstruction : America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877"by Eric Foner(1988)
 












U.S. v. Reese, 92 U.S. 214, 1876

   Not content with having thus knocked the props out from under the amendments, the Court went on to strike yet another blow at black rights in this crucial election year. In U.S. v. Reese it threw out the indictment of a Kentucky official who had refused to count a black's vote. The Fifteenth Amendment did not bestow upon U.S. citizens any right to vote for U.S. officials but merely prohibited the states from restricting that privilege on racial grounds, the Court expressly held. Even though in this case an official of the state was the culprit, the Court held the indictment to be invalid because the CRA of 1870 was itself invalid, having failed to limit itself expressly to state action that was racially motivated. Once again, Southern blacks stood defenseless before their former masters.
  Whatever reasons the republic as a whole may have had to celebrate its centennial that year, these two decisions by the highest court in the land occasioned a vast amount of celebration in the semiautonomous region of the country that had dedicated itself to white rule and apartheid.
  The hard-won Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Bill of Rights were still in the U.S. Constitution, but the statutes designed to enforce them had been largely wiped out. Black rights as dead letters were something the South's white supremacists could live with.   

"After Appomattox : How the South Won the War" by Stetson Kennedy(1995)










 



 
 


 

Colfax Courthouse Historic Marker Colfax Town Cemetery
COLFAX RIOT
On this site occurred the Colfax 
Riot in which three white men 
and 150 negroes were slain. 
This event on April 13, 1873 
marked the end of carpetbag 
misrule in the South.

Erected by the Louisiana Department
  of Commerce and Industry 1950

 IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE 
ERECTED TO THE, MEMORY OF
THE HEROES 
STEPHEN DECATUR PARISH 
JAMES WEST HADNOT
SIDNEY HARRIS
WHO FELL IN THE COLFAX 
RIOT FIGHTING FOR 
WHITE SUPREMACY 
APRIL 13, 1873

 
 
 




 
   


 
 
 
 
 








 
 
 

 


  On Easter Sunday in 1873, more than one hundred black men were gunned down in Grant Parish, Louisiana, for daring to assert their right to vote. Several months earlier, in Lexington, Kentucky, another black man was denied the right to vote for simply failing to pay a poll tax. Both events typified the intense opposition to the federal guarantee of black voting rights. Both events led to landmark Supreme Court decisions. ....
  Goldman deftly highlights the cases of United States v. Reese and United States v. Cruikshank within the context of an ongoing power struggle between state and federal authorities and the realities of being black in postwar America. Focusing especially on the so-called Reconstruction Amendments and Enforcement Acts, he argues that the decisions in Reese and Cruikshank signaled an enormous gap between guaranteed and enforced rights. The Court's decisions denied the very existence of any such guarantee and, further, conferred upon the states the right to determine who may vote and under what circumstances.

 
















 
 
 


 
 

 
 
 
 
 





 












 
 














 
 
 
IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE 
ERECTED TO THE, MEMORY OF
THE HEROES 
STEPHEN DECATUR PARISH 
JAMES WEST HADNOT
SIDNEY HARRIS
WHO FELL IN THE COLFAX 
RIOT FIGHTING FOR 
WHITE SUPREMACY 
APRIL 13, 1873