Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008 - (Page 69)

On Easter Sunday 1873, in the tiny hamlet of Colfax, Louisiana, more than 150 members of an all-black Republican militia, defending the town’s courthouse,were slain by an armed force of rampaging white supremacists.The most deadly incident of racial violence of the Reconstruction era,the Colfax massacre unleashed a reign of terror that all but extinguished the campaign for racial equality. Editor’s Note: Reconstruction government in post-Civil War Louisiana was an intense and occasionally violent partisan contest between “Radical Republicans,” who favored incorporating freed slaves into the political process, and Democratic party opponents who fought for white supremacy. Colfax is the seat of Grant Parish, one of a number of parishes created after the Civil War by the Reconstruction-era Republican government in an effort to build local support. In 1873, the parish had a narrow majority of 2,400 freedmen, who mostly voted Republican, and 2,200 whites, mostly Democrats. Statewide political tensions were reflected in the rumors going around each ethnic community, often about fears of attacks or outrages, adding to local tensions. During the first days of April, 1873, following a disputed election for sheriff and judge that split along racial lines, white militias began gathering a few miles outside Colfax. After a mob murdered a freedman in the area on April 5, many local black citizens went to the Colfax courthouse for safety. Militia captain Wiliam Ward, a veteran of the U.S. Colored Troops, mustered his company in Colfax and took them to the courthouse where a siege unfolded. he Republican faction in control of the courthouse was prepared for trouble, but Jesse McKinney was not. McKinney tried to stay out of trouble — a goal that required a black man to steer clear of politics in general and to keep away from the town of Colfax in particular, after the seizure of the courthouse initiated its militarization. In the two weeks before his death, McKinney had observed the passage of armed men of both races from his home near the ferry crossing on Bayou Darrow. He stuck close to his wife and six young children. The family was watching on April 5, 1873 when the white men shot him in the head. Republican commentators in Louisiana would later deplore the killing of a man at work, as they said, “peaceably building a fence around his property.” In fact, in the charged environment of post-Civil War Louisiana, where black ownership seemed to threaten T left: Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper of May 3, 1873 featured a cover illustration of the seige at the Colfax courthouse. inset: A controversially worded historic marker marks the site to this day. the social and economic order, the act of building a fence approximated a kind of defiance. McKinney had money. Like his father and brother, he acknowledged almost $500 in personal property in the 1870 census. Late in the season, his corn crib and pantries were fully stocked. The white men who killed him were far from home. They needed food for their horses and water and provisions for their growing ranks. After they shot McKinney, they dismounted and “danced like mad” for two hours, then settled in to feed their horses out of his supply. Jesse McKinney did not die instantly, but lingered for six or eight hours. Assisted by another woman, Eliza Smith, his wife Laurinda loaded him and the children into a wagon while the whites in the yard mocked them. Laurinda McKinney drove to her stepfather’s house and laid her husband’s body on the floor. At sundown, when he died, his wife found her way to Mirabeau Plantation to ask for a coffin and a safe place to sleep. All other neighbors had fled. The body remained unburied, attracting so many turkey vultures by the end of the week that the roof of the house was covered with birds. The raiding party at McKinney’s farm brought together an unlikely handful of area whites. Among participants later identified by the widow and other eyewitnesses, representatives from distant parishes made up the party that pulled the trigger. Denis Lemoine, a rollicking Creole from 60 miles away in Avoyelles Parish, joined his cousins from the extensive Natchitoches clan of Lemoines. On April 5, Lemoine was riding with Bill Irwin, a poor farmer from the Rapides section of Grant Parish. Their unlikely company suggested the reach and strategy of the white supremacist organizations that planned the attack on the Colfax courthouse. In fact, the Knights of the White Camellia and a group calling itself the “Old Time Ku Klux Klan” played a major organizational role. Acting as scouts, Lemoine, Irwin, and their associates secured a site to feed and water the horses of a growing contingent of armed men. They would visit the abandoned McKinney house on patrol and make liaisons there until supplies ran out. Like many who would join their ranks in the area around Colfax, Irwin and Lemoine were Confederate veterans. Apart from the killing of civilians and other excesses, white preparations betrayed a jaunty military spirit. Where former officers such as George Stafford and David Paul took the lead, volunteers formed “companies” and even designated ranks. Rapides Parishes offered three such units, under Captains Stafford, Paul, and Joseph W. Texada, all prominent planters and former slaveholders. Contingents from Catahoula, Concordia, and Winn Parishes traveled long distances under similar leadership. Others, such as Denis Lemoine, arrived as individuals or in small groups. Local residents offered directions and hospitality, putting up out-of-towners and providing meals as possible. Veterans figured prominently in the mix, but a significant number of young men joined in, including many, such as Stafford, who had lost older brothers and other relatives in the Civil War. The talk around their campfires was of genocide. Many expressed the strong conviction that the seizure of the Winter 2008-09/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 69

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008 Contents Friends Editor's Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Prospect.1 New Orleans The Historic New Orleans Collection The Enduring Performance of Michael P. Smith Jazz Notes Louisiana Foodways Birds of a Feather: Windfowl Carvings in Southeast Louisiana Louisiana Association of Museums Louisiana Architecture O. Winston Link in Louisiana The Ogden Museum of Southern Art The Colfax Massacre Louisiana State Museum Unlocking the History of Greek Key Architecture Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008

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