The sun rose slowly over Grant Parish, Louisiana, on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, casting a humid, golden light over the muddy banks of the Red River. By nightfall, that soil would be soaked with the blood of more than a hundred Black men—many of them murdered after surrendering to an armed white paramilitary force. The Colfax Massacre, as it came to be known, stands as one of the most brutal acts of racial and political violence in American history. It marked the moment when the federal promise of Reconstruction—full citizenship and protection for formerly enslaved people—was dealt a fatal blow by white supremacist violence and judicial indifference.
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The conflict had roots in the post-Civil War political chaos of Louisiana. In 1872, the gubernatorial election between Republican William Pitt Kellogg and Democrat John McEnery devolved into crisis. Both candidates declared victory. Both held inaugural ceremonies and appointed local officials. The federal government recognized Kellogg, but white Democrats across the state rejected his legitimacy. They began forming “dual governments” and backing them with armed support.
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Grant Parish was a flashpoint in that crisis. It had been created by Republicans in 1869 to provide stronger representation for freedmen in the region, who comprised a majority of the voting population. After the 1872 elections, both Republicans and Democrats claimed to have won the local offices of sheriff and judge. The Republican officeholders—who included several Black leaders—took control of the small courthouse in Colfax in March 1873. They believed they had the law on their side, backed by Kellogg’s certification.
Christopher Columbus Nash, a Confederate veteran and the Democratic claimant for sheriff, disputed that authority. In response to the Republican occupation of the courthouse, Nash began rallying armed white men from surrounding parishes. These men included former Confederate soldiers, members of the Ku Klux Klan, and the newly formed White League—a paramilitary organization committed to restoring white rule in Louisiana. Tensions escalated quickly. Local newspapers in New Orleans circulated false and inflammatory stories accusing the Black militia of plotting to massacre whites. While such claims were unfounded, they helped justify the mobilization of a large armed force.
In early April, gunfire was exchanged between Black and white groups near Colfax. Both sides made preparations for conflict. The Black militia, led by Captain William Ward—a former Union Army soldier and now head of the local state militia unit—fortified the courthouse with trenches and patrols. White leaders called for a mass mobilization on April 13.
That morning, a force of more than 300 white men arrived at the courthouse. After ordering women and children to leave, they attacked. The defenders were vastly outgunned. A cannon was brought to bear on the building. When white flags were raised from inside—one made from a shirt, another from a Bible page—some fighting ceased. But what followed was not an orderly surrender. Eyewitnesses and federal reports confirm that many of the Black defenders were captured and then executed. Some were shot on the spot. Others were held for hours before being taken in pairs and murdered. Estimates of the death toll vary. U.S. marshals reported burying at least 62 bodies. Military investigators later identified over 80 known victims by name and estimated a total of at least 105. Some historians believe the number may have reached 150. Only three white men died in the confrontation.
Governor Kellogg dispatched officers and state militia to Colfax to restore order and arrest the attackers. Of more than ninety men implicated, only nine were indicted under the federal Enforcement Act of 1870. The prosecutors avoided murder charges, fearing acquittals in local courts. Instead, they charged the defendants with conspiring to violate the civil rights of Black citizens under federal law.
“Cruikshank did not merely exonerate murderers—it erased federal authority to protect Black lives.”
Brennan Center for Justice, It’s Not About Federalism #18
Three of the accused were convicted. But in 1876, the United States Supreme Court overturned the verdict in United States v. Cruikshank. The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to actions taken by state governments, not to private individuals or mobs. This ruling sharply limited the federal government’s ability to prosecute racial violence. No state charges were brought, and the remaining defendants were never punished.
The Court’s decision in Cruikshank had far-reaching consequences. It effectively nullified the federal government’s capacity to intervene in cases of white supremacist terrorism. Scholars widely agree that this ruling marked a pivotal moment in the collapse of Reconstruction. With no legal mechanism to enforce civil rights protections, southern Black communities were left vulnerable to violence, intimidation, and voter suppression. In the years that followed, the White League and similar groups became fixtures of Louisiana politics, enforcing their will through threats and bloodshed.
The massacre itself quickly faded from national attention. But in Colfax, it was commemorated with a twisted narrative. In 1921, local leaders erected a monument praising the three white men who died in the attack, calling them “heroes” who fell “fighting for white supremacy.” A historical marker installed in 1951 referred to the massacre as the “Colfax Riot,” and celebrated it as the end of “carpetbag misrule.” Neither the monument nor the marker acknowledged the deaths of over one hundred Black citizens. This erasure of fact in favor of myth persisted for decades.
In recent years, that narrative has been challenged. Reverend Avery Hamilton, a descendant of Jesse McKinney—the first man killed in the massacre—joined with Dean Woods, a white descendant of one of the attackers, to found the Colfax Memorial Organization. In 2021, after persistent advocacy, the offensive marker was removed. On April 13, 2023, the 150th anniversary of the massacre, a new memorial was unveiled in Colfax, listing the names of the known victims and presenting an accurate historical account. That monument stands today as both a remembrance and a rebuke.
The Colfax Massacre was not an isolated episode. It was part of a broader campaign of racial and political violence aimed at reversing the gains of Reconstruction. Its lessons remain urgent. The judicial logic of Cruikshank—that private actors cannot be held accountable under civil rights legislation—has echoed through later court decisions. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court again cited federalism to limit the scope of the Voting Rights Act. As legal scholar and commentator Garrett Epps noted, Cruikshank remains “alive and unrepentant” in American constitutional law.
The massacre also reveals the limitations of democracy in the absence of enforcement. The men killed at Colfax were defending what they believed was a legitimate government. They had voted. They had organized. They had acted within the law. And still, they were slaughtered—and no one was held responsible. That is not simply a tragedy. It is a failure of the American system.
Memory has a long arc. It bends slowly, and sometimes in silence. But it does not disappear. The story of Colfax was buried for generations, but it was not lost. The trenches around the courthouse are gone. The courthouse itself is gone. But the story remains—etched now in stone, and in the conscience of those willing to look clearly at what was done, and what was denied.
Certainly. Below is a list of Chicago-style citations (notes and bibliography format) for the sources used in your article “Reconstruction’s Bloody Reckoning: The Colfax Massacre of 1873.” Each entry corresponds to a major source consulted and referenced throughout the narrative.
Bibliography
- Britannica. Colfax Massacre. Last modified March 27, 2025. https://www.britannica.com/event/Colfax-Massacre.
- “American Experience | Ulysses S. Grant | People & Events | The Colfax Massacre.” PBS. Accessed April 12, 2025. https://web.archive.org/web/20040421091642/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/grant/peopleevents/e_colfax.html.
- Lewis, Danny. “What Was the Colfax Massacre?” Smithsonian Magazine, April 13, 2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1873-colfax-massacre-crippled-reconstruction-180958746/.
- History.com Editors. “The Colfax Massacre.” History.com, April 5, 2023. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-13/colfax-massacre-louisiana.
- Brennan Center for Justice. It’s Not About Federalism #18: The Colfax Massacre. New York: NYU School of Law, 2021. https://www.brennancenter.org.
- “Force Acts.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Last modified April 16, 2018. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Force-Acts.
- “Ku Klux Klan.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Accessed April 12, 2025. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ku-Klux-Klan.
- Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
- Lane, Charles. The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2008.
- Wikipedia contributors. “Colfax Massacre.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Last modified April 10, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_massacre.
- Colfax Memorial Organization. “About.” Colfax Memorial. Accessed April 12, 2025. https://www.colfaxmemorial.org/about.
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