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#OnThisDay Over 100 Black people were murdered in the Colfax Massacre in Louisiana. Black people were killed as white people attacked them during a political meeting in Grant Parish, LA. This led to the devastating SCOTUS ruling in US v. Cruikshank.
"The Colfax massacre was precipitated by the hotly contested 1872 Louisiana gubernatorial election. During the Reconstruction era, as many newly-emancipated Black ppl began mobilizing + participating in politics, white communities = terrorizing Black ppl through violence."
"After the 1872 election, when a federal judge declared William Kellogg the winner, he began making appointments to fill local parish offices. Meanwhile, Kellogg’s white supremacist opponent John McEnery and his supporters declared McEnery the winner of the election."
"In the ensuing unrest, Black voters who supported Kellogg staged a peaceful occupation, surrounding the Grant Parish courthouse and other municipal buildings in Colfax to prevent McEnery's supporters from taking them over."
"In response, 300+ armed white men attacked the courthouse building to forcefully remove Kellogg's Black supporters. As the white mob aimed a cannon to fire on the courthouse, some of the 60 Black defenders fled; others surrendered then, + more gave up when the courthouse = fire.
Many surrendering, unarmed Black men were nevertheless shot and killed by the white mob—some while fleeing. After the massacre, the federal government indicted over 100 members of the white mob under the Enforcement Act of 1870.
"The law was specifically enacted during Reconstruction to protect newly freed Black voters from the terrorist threats of the Ku Klux Klan and other disgruntled white southerners. Only three members of the mob were convicted, and they appealed."
"On March 27, 1876, in US v. Cruikshank, SCOTUS dismissed charges against the3 white men + held the 14th Amendment ONLY protected states, not individuals. It did NOT empower the federal government to punish the acts of one citizen towards another not clearly motivated by racism."
In the eyes of the SCOTUS, racialized political violence did not qualify. This was a devastating decision. It limited the federal government's authority to legally enforce Black civil rights and protect Black citizens from racial terror at the hands of mobs.
As a result of the decision, white terrorist like the KKK were free to violate Black ppls’ rights through voter suppression and acts of terror and violence. TO THIS DAY, the historical marker on the site of the Colfax massacre = "end of carpetbag misrule in the South."
A "carpetbagger" was a negative term ascribed to northerners who went to the south during Reconstruction to build schools and establish businesses mostly for Black people.
