The Colfax Massacre-BOMA Minute

On this date April 13, 1873, the Colfax Massacre erupted in Grant Parish Courthouse in Colfax, Louisiana.

The White League, a paramilitary group intent on securing White rule in Louisiana, clashed with the almost all-Black state militia on Easter Sunday. The result left 150 families missing a loved one. Of the 150 black men that were slain, more than half of them were slaughtered in cold blood while just 3 members of the White League were killed. It should be duly noted that the League was a Democratic organization and noted again that the Democrats have not always been liberal supporters of Black causes.

Two laws that Southern Democrats hated were the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to Blacks and declared that no state was to deprive them of "life, liberty, or property." The Fifteenth Amendment prevented a state from denying the vote to any person because of their race. Together, these laws guaranteed Blacks equal citizenship and the good people of Colfax just weren’t having it on Easter Sunday of 1873.

After the Colfax Massacre the federal government convicted three whites for the murders. But as fate would have it, they were freed when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that they had been convicted unconstitutionally.

This has been an educational Breath of My Ancestors Minute brought to you by the Institute of Radical Reconciliation… #WeMustNeverForget