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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello, Welcome to This Day and History Class,

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Speaker 1: where we desk off a little piece of history every day.

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Speaker 1: Today is April nineteen. The day was April eighteen seventy three.

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Speaker 1: On Easter Sunday in Colefax, Louisiana, a massacre broke out

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Speaker 1: in the aftermath of a controversial election for the governor

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Speaker 1: of the state. The conflict had started months before as

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Speaker 1: a battle between white Southern Democrats who wanted to keep

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Speaker 1: restricting the rights of formerly enslaved people, and Republicans who

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Speaker 1: advocated for reconciliation and black emancipation. But on April the

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Speaker 1: class turned into a bloody tragedy. As many as one

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty black people were killed, while three white

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Speaker 1: folks died. It was one of the deadliest incidents of

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Speaker 1: racial and political violence during the Reconstruction Era, or the

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Speaker 1: period in American history right after the Civil War. Though

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Speaker 1: the Reconstruction Era was generally a tumultuous period, the massacre

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Speaker 1: led to the Supreme Court case United States Versus Crookshank

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Speaker 1: and encouraged the institution of the Jim Crow system. The

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Speaker 1: Reconstruction era was fraught with violent racial incidents and domestic

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Speaker 1: terrorism from white supremacy adherents. People who wanted to hold

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Speaker 1: onto the values of the Old South and others who

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Speaker 1: wanted to move forward with reconstruction were it odds, and

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Speaker 1: this was evident in the eighteen seventy two election for

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Speaker 1: Louisiana's governor, William Pitt Kellogg, the Republican candidate, went up

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Speaker 1: against John mcinnery, who was nominated by a so called

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Speaker 1: fusionist coalition of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. The result

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Speaker 1: of the election were widely disputed, and each side claimed

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Speaker 1: to have the legitimate governor. President Ulysses S. Grant supported

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Speaker 1: Kellogg and the reconstructionist Republicans by sending federal troops to Louisiana,

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Speaker 1: but the fight over who had political control continued. In

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Speaker 1: Grant Parish, there were about two hundred formerly enslaved people

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Speaker 1: who mainly voted Republican, and there were about hundred mostly

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Speaker 1: Democratic white people. There was debate over control of the

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Speaker 1: courthouse at Colfax and Grant Parish, but the Reconstructionist Republicans

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Speaker 1: ended up seizing it, so just in case the Democrats

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Speaker 1: decided to take back the regional government and all black

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Speaker 1: militia set up at the Colfax Courthouse on the other

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Speaker 1: side of the aisle, White Democrats organized a militia to

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Speaker 1: take the courthouse. On April one, fusionist James w. Had

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Speaker 1: Not went to the courthouse with about fourteen men, but

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Speaker 1: they realized they couldn't take on the militia that was there.

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Speaker 1: The Republicans responded by raiding their rivals homes. News of

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Speaker 1: the raids spread and by the next day battles had erupted.

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Speaker 1: The fighting continued for several days until it came to

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Speaker 1: a head on April thirteen, eighteen seventy three. Somewhere around

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Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty white people, including ones from white

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Speaker 1: supremacist groups like the Knights of White Camellia and the

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Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan, surrounded the courthouse. About one hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty black men ended up fighting on the Republican side,

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Speaker 1: led by a Civil War veteran named William Ward, but

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Speaker 1: their weapons were no match for the rifles, shotguns, pistols,

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Speaker 1: and hunting knives that the white folks had. Some of

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Speaker 1: the black militia men fled while others surrendered. The white

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Speaker 1: people fired a cannon on the black people and eventually

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Speaker 1: set the courthouse on fire. The black man surrendered, but

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Speaker 1: the white mob wasn't done. They captured, be shot and

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Speaker 1: hanged a lot of the black militia men. By the

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Speaker 1: end of the night, anywhere from sixty two to d

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Speaker 1: and fifty three people have been killed. Three of those

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Speaker 1: people were white, but it's not clear exactly how many

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Speaker 1: black people died. News of the massacre soon made its

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Speaker 1: way around the country. In the end, white people who

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Speaker 1: had committed the massacre were indicted, but only three were

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Speaker 1: found guilty. Nine were charged with violating the Enforcement Acts

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Speaker 1: of eighteen seventy and eighteen seventy one. The Enforcement Acts,

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Speaker 1: also known as the Ku Klux Klan Acts, were meant

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Speaker 1: to protect the rights of black people under the fourteenth

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Speaker 1: and fifteenth amendments to the U s Constitution. Lawyers thought

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Speaker 1: it would be better to get the defendants on conspiracy

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Speaker 1: to commit what we now consider hate crimes rather than murder.

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Speaker 1: But in United States versus Crookshank, the Supreme Court ruled

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Speaker 1: that the due process in equal protection clauses only applied

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Speaker 1: to actions of the state, not individuals. It also said

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Speaker 1: that racist intent had to be explicitly alleged for it

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Speaker 1: to be actionable at law, and that the federal government

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Speaker 1: could not prosecute people for violating black folks civil rights.

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Speaker 1: Soon enough, segregation would start to become law. On April thirteenth, nine,

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Speaker 1: a memorial to the white people who had died in

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Speaker 1: the massacre was unveiled at Colfax Cemetery. An inscription on

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Speaker 1: the monument read erected to the memory of the heroes

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Speaker 1: Stephen Decatur Parish James West had not Sidney Harris, who

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Speaker 1: fell in the coal Fax riot fighting for white supremacy

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Speaker 1: April thirteenth, eighteen seventy three. I'm Eaves Deathcote, and hopefully

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Speaker 1: you know a little more about history today than you

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Speaker 1: did yesterday. If there are any upcoming days in history

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Speaker 1: that you'd really like me to cover on the show,

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Speaker 1: give us a out on social media at t d

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Speaker 1: I h C Podcast. We'll see you here in the

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Speaker 1: same place tomorrow. H