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The Sociology of Racial Violence

The topic of racial violence can barely be gleaned in this short essay. It is designed to

show that the topic for my dissertation has merit, and that I have a sufficient command of

sociological methodologies necessary to write a dissertation proposal. I will begin with a case

study of the Colfax Massacre in 1873, which will serve as a touchstone for my dissertation. Next,

I will summarize current sociological studies that analyze lynching and identify causes and

changes over time. Finally, I will look at the role of the press in constructing social ideologies

both for and against racial violence. For this essay, lynching is defined according to NAACP

standards as described by Bailey and Tolnay in Lynched: The Victims of Southern Mob Violence:

“(1) there was evidence that a person was killed, (2) the person was killed illegally, (3) a group

of at least three individuals was responsible for the death, and (4) the group acted under the

pretext of service to justice or tradition” (3).

Case Study: The Colfax Massacre

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As of Inauguration Day 1873, only two of the eleven states that had once made up the

Confederacy—black-majority South Carolina and Mississippi—remained under firm

Republican control. Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia had long since

been “redeemed” thanks in part to Klan violence. Republicans governed Alabama, but

Democrats had conceded the statehouse under pressure from U.S. troops sent by Grant.

In Texas and Florida, Democrats controlled all or part of the state legislatures and were

harassing Republican governors. Arkansas’s Republican Party had split in two. And

Louisiana was in chaos (emphasis Lane).

Charles Lane, The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, The Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction

Agricultural losses due to the Civil War devastated Louisiana. In The Colfax Massacre:

The Untold Story of Black Power, White Terror, and the Death of Reconstruction, Lee Anna

Keith says livestock losses made lifting, plowing, and timbering nearly impossible for Parish

inhabitants. Louisiana sugar plantations lost $190 million out of $200 million in assets, and

floods during 1866 and 1867 destroyed tens of thousands of acres of cotton (46). Big planters

had to secure the labor of former slaves, and most whites feared they would not work without

the whip. Few freedmen could buy land, but they rented and sharecropped growing high-yield,

nutritious sweet potatoes further angering sugar and cotton planters who regarded independent

black farmers as a serious threat (48).

Kentucky Whig, Henry Clay Warmoth was elected governor of Louisiana in 1868 on the

fusion ticket. In “From the Barrel of a Gun: The Politics of Murder in Grant Parish,” Joel M.

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Sipress says Warmoth hoped to reestablish the state’s agricultural and commercial prosperity by

helping whites and newly freed slaves cooperate under a promise of equal civil and political

rights (307). Warmoth attempted to create a biracial Louisiana State Militia, and enlisted rebel

officers to make it more palatable to whites, but he was unable to stop violence across Louisiana.

Under siege, he threw support to Democrat John D. McEnery in the next election (312, 316).

The 1872 election was so bogged down in fraud and corruption that Democrat McEnery

and Republican William Pitt Kellogg both claimed victory and tried to run the state. Also, both

the Democrats and the Republicans appointed officeholders to Grant Parish, the site of the

Colfax massacre. Kellogg was begged to name Christopher Columbus Nash as sheriff of Grant

Parish, but he refused. (317). Nash was a poor white who had risen to the level of junior officer

in the 2nd Louisiana Infantry during the war and widely respected in the community.

Sipress writes, “On the evening of March 31,1873, word was spread that conservative

planter and reputed Klan leader James Hadnot was mustering men with the intention of attacking

Colfax” (317). In The Day Freedom Died, Charles Lane says Hadnot headed to Colfax on April

1st with an armed party of fifteen men wearing his red sash around his waist and his rosette

pinned to his breast (72). These badges of Rebel honor were powerful symbols that the Civil War

had not ended in Louisiana—it had morphed into racial conflict led by Rebel leaders.

Hadnot sent messengers to nearby communities to ask for reinforcements, and Nash

organized many of the same men who had served under him in the war into the White League at

Colfax (318). The habits of military actions were still in force in the south. All around Grant

Parish white men and white militias gathered forces. Lane spoke to the joyous excitement that

men coming from 60 to 70 miles away expressed in their eagerness to deal with William Ward, a

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Virginia slave who had run away to join the Union Army and risen to sergeant (320). Ward

moved to grant Parish in 1870 as a captain in the Louisiana State Militia and befriended a group

of black carpetbaggers who promoted militant black politics. Sipress says that since he was not

from Grant Parish, Ward had no relationship with the plantation elite and did not shy away from

confrontation (310). A group of 165 marched to Colfax from an old sugar mill on the Calhoun

plantation. Another 140, with Nash in the lead, marched along the Red River like soldiers

preparing for battle (Lane, 89).

On Monday, April 7, 400 African American men, women, and children were encamped

at the courthouse digging trenches. The next day, African American farmer, Jesse McKinney,

was murdered in front of his house sparking a panic. Sipress calls the inevitable clash a conflict

between former masters and former slaves (Sipress, 319). On Easter morning, April 13, more

than 300 white men surrounded the courthouse. Lane says, “The force advanced 50 yards at a

time, beginning about 450 yards away from the Negros’s trench line. Once the skirmishers had

made it safely to 300 yards of the defenders, they called for the cannon” (Lane, 96).

By Lane’s account, even with the cannon, the whites did little damage for two hours.

Finally, they flanked the Negros and came across the levee. Mayhem broke out and black men

were shot running into the courthouse and gleefully chased down if they ran into the woods. By

3:00 p.m., Nash had what was left of the Negro posse surrounded. He didn’t want a long siege,

so his men set the courthouse on fire. African Americans were shot down waiving handkerchiefs

in surrender. Colfax was littered with dead black bodies (98-103).

Lane recounts that a light evening rain cooled what was left of the fire, and men from

surrounding parishes began to head home. Nash had taken a group of prisoners and found

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himself in the unlikely position of saving them from an unruly mob. About 10:00 p.m. Nash left

the prisoners with William Cruikshank who marched them into the night and made sport of

killing them. Cruikshank lined them up so he could kill two with one bullet. The next morning

whites taunted Negro women searching for dead kin (Lane, 104-108).

In Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution Eric Foner calls the racial violence that

took place in Colfax, Louisiana on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873 “the bloodiest single instance

of racial carnage in the Reconstruction era” (437). Eventually, 80 members of the mob were

arrested, 17 were brought to trial, and four were found guilty, not of murder, but of depriving

Negros of their civil rights. In 1874 Justice Joseph Bradley granted the motion to stay the guilty

verdict and sent the Cruikshank case to the Supreme Court. All the white men were acquitted.

Reports in the press varied but the tragedy was largely called a riot in the South. Five

days after the Colfax Massacre of April 13, 1873, the Boston Daily Advertiser ran: “A statement

by Colored men—how the difficulty originated.” The report signed by five men, claimed the

public had been misinformed and must be “informed of the facts.” They claim that with forces

surrounding the town, communication was cut off, which allowed the white democrats to

disseminate false reports of their own wanton and criminal acts,” and blame the violence on a

black mob at the courthouse.

This is but one example of the racial violence that permeated the South during

Reconstruction from 1863 to 1877. In Southern Horrors, Ida B. Wells estimates that African

Americans suffered at least 10,000 acts of violence between the emancipation of the slaves and

1900. To this day, Colfax has two monuments commemorating the bloody events. Neither is an

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apology nor an acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Racial inequalities and confrontations

continue to plague the nation.

Methodological Approaches

In A Festival of Violence published in 1992, researchers Stewart E. Tolnay and E. M.

Beck identified more than 2,500 African American victims of lynch mobs during what is called

the Lynching Era from 1882 to 1930 in ten southern states. They allow that it “vastly understates

the total volume of violence aimed at African American citizens in the South (iv), because it is

difficult to find and verify information. They acknowledge that the case study method, as

demonstrated in the Colfax example, offers striking evidence with rich detail that is useful to

understanding mob violence. Their methodology, however, compiles a database and makes a

statistical analysis to examine geographic, demographic, and temporal causes of racial violence.

They outline four functions mob violence served southern society: to eradicate perceived

criminals, to maintain leverage over African Americans, to eliminate competition, and to

symbolically assert white supremacy (50). Using the geographies of the Deep South and the

Border South, they compare white class structure and alternative political measures against

prevailing theories that mob violence was due to popular justice, economic instabilities,

perceived conduct violations, and status threats. They chart lynching victims by race and gender

according to states and dates of occurrences before running their statistical analysis.

Their evidence suggests that lynching did not occur because of weaknesses in the criminal

justice system but as control mechanisms for maintaining the same control over freedman whites

once had over slaves. Blacks were in more danger during times of economic stress and safer

when prosperous whites benefited from cheap labor or when communities had strong African-

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American political organizations. Economic forces helped stem the tide of violence when black

workers were needed in the 1920s and 1930s, although at no time were they entirely safe. Their

results shed light on the social forces that shaped the tragedy of lynching and verify claims

previously made by Walter White and W. Fitzhugh Brundage (111).

Amy Kate Bailey and Tolnay released a new study in 2015 called, Lynched: The

Victims of Southern Mob Violence. Their central issue was to bridge the gap between the case

study and methodological approaches in lynching studies by identifying the victims and restoring

their humanity. Calling it “forensic social science,” they attempt to “connect more that 2,400

lynch victims from the Tolnay and Beck inventory with their census records” (34). By setting up

a database using a record linkage process that added data from newspaper accounts and NAACP

records to census reports and the inventory of 2,483 victims from Tolany and Beck, they created

“the first-ever profile of victims of southern mob violence” for 900 of the victims (xv).

The researchers insist that history matters because modern day phenomenon can be tied

to the history of lynching, but they add that social scientists “have struggled to account for

mechanisms through which the history of mob violence operates” (30). By looking at the victims

they identify, they try to ascertain why victims were chosen through an analysis of rough justice

verses legal execution, economic conditions, locations, politics, and population demographics to

understand the reasons for lynching (12-20). They also consider the role of the pulpit, the press,

and anti-lynching organizations in both supporting and suppressing mob violence (35).

Although more than 50 percent of the victims lived on farms, home and farm ownership

ran respectively at 17.9 and 17.7 percent, statistics consistent with the theory that more

successful, higher-status blacks were targeted (81). Statistics by occupation, however, showed

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the opposite, that 46 percent of the victims were lower-status blacks and 37 percent held higher-

status occupations (83). All in all, they found that most lynch victims were “older adolescents or

younger adults living in rural areas and were engaged in unskilled work, generally in the

agricultural sector (88). They maintain that the evidence raises important questions, but their

findings indicate that most victims were respectively from the lowest strata or the highest strata

with very few being non-black males (89).

After elaborating on many of the 900 individual case studies, they conclude that social

marginality placed black men at higher risk for racial violence. When they had community

support, especially by the church or higher-status whites, they were safer. Most were unmarried

men considered outsiders in the community. In regards to the Colfax Massacre case study, big

planters and small farmers had been threatened by African American farmers, and William

Ward, as a newcomer or stranger, had been considered particularly untrustworthy and hated.

In conclusion, they realize census data is limited in scope but feel the biographical details

“coupled with statistical analysis” restores a portion of the victim’s identities and their humanity

(216). One of their hopes is to continue their work by analyzing data about thwarted lynchings,

pointing out that E. M. Beck has an inventory of derailed lynchings that indicate at least 50

percent more black men would have fallen to mob violence if law enforcement and concerned

white citizens had not intervened (217). They argue that this additional information is essential

for understanding the lynching phenomenon.

***

In Doing Violence, Making Race, Mattias Smângs “broadens the scope of social scientific

lynching research” by moving beyond intergroup relations and economic competition to analyze

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lynching in terms of cultural territories or “broad social situations contexts, and strictures” to

understand the cultural significance of race and racial violence (7). He uses large amounts of

lynching data from Tolnay and Beck to look at the ways group narratives and symbolic

boundaries work in social interaction, reactions and institutions” (15). Lynching in the New

South by W. Fitzhugh Brundage and Rough Justice by Michael J. Pfiefer are heavily relied upon

for evidence. His analysis of racial boundaries in terms of legal institutions, especially Jim Crow

Laws and Plessy vs Ferguson, is important to my own agenda to analyze myths, symbols, and

rituals that accompany the legal and literary rhetoric of lynching.

Smângs analyzes “symbolic group boundaries and group narratives,” the “cultural

territories embedded in making meaning,” the “transformation of symbolic into social

boundaries”, the “generation of collective identity”, and the “accomplishment of collective

identity” (7-12). Social identities involve action, so the performance of white identity is also

enforced and maintained by mythology and ritual. Racial boundaries in various eras are drawn

and symbolically encoded (16).

In his view, after 1890, extremist white supremacy replaced conservative white

supremacy. Public lynchings rose steeply as the antebellum slave patrol that required all able-

bodied men to patrol for runaway slaves morphed into the posse that required all able-bodied

men to join together for the common good to apprehend perceived criminals, most of whom were

African American (60). The fear of attacks on white women by black beasts was one of the

myths that supported ritualized spectacle lynchings around 1900. Extremists tended to

ritualistically torture and mutilate the black body in a public place, and the reason was typically

an accusation of rape (61).

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Public exhibitions of violence were fostered by widespread newspaper coverage and kept

African Americans in their place as much as it solidified the white collective across the class

divide. He argues that “extremist white identity relied importantly on racial violence,” which

occurred more frequently during economically, politically, or socially unsettled times (49).

Ritualized violence against African Americans, he says, “forge[d] the symbolic and social

boundaries and social and collective identities upon which the Jim Crow order rested” (49).

Enforced segregation controlled the performance of white and black citizens.

Myths and rituals are powerful not just in creating identity and social boundaries but in

creating public memory. Smângs argues that the long-term consequences of lynching persist in

contemporary society. His scientific analysis is necessarily “hot topic, cold prose,” but, in the

final chapter, he comments on the emotional, gut-wrenching aspect to the study of lynching,

saying:

And by proposing that and how the violent practices of past racial domination impart

directionality to the beliefs and practices through which contemporary racial conflicts are

understood and played our on the local as well as the national level, this book gives truth

to the observation that “the past can never be erased and the ugliest human actions cast

the longest shadows” (McFelly, 1997; 318, Smângs. 147).

***

Ira B. Wasserman analyzes the role of the press in How the American Media Packaged

Lynching (1850-1940: Constructing the Meaning of Social Events. He examines the historical

and cultural changes that influenced lynching rates. Before the Civil War, the South regarded

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blacks as sub-humans unable to govern themselves. Racial tensions escalated when the freed

slaves got the right to vote. The Spanish-American War introduced the rhetoric of the colonizer

into political speeches and newspaper articles. Wasserman points out that whites coalesced

around American imperialism, which strengthened southern racial prejudices against blacks and

immigrants. WWI brought a wave of African Americans to northern cities that led to competition

for jobs and housing, which moved discrimination out of the South and nationalized it (10-11).

Wasserman argues that demographic factors such as high birth rates in both white and

black populations from Reconstruction to the Great Depression influenced lynching activity (12).

Enforced segregation from Jim Crow laws, meant new generations of blacks and whites rarely

intermingled and did not know each other. He argues that racial distrust among a large younger

generation led to white male youths to panic at the accusation that young black men were

interested in white women, and says, “The few cases of inter-racial rape and sexual assaults were

blown out of all proportion, and sensationalized by the white southern press that flourished at

this time period (12). Intra-regional migration in the 19th century also caused problems because

blacks who moved to different counties in the South were highly distrusted by whites.

Another factor Wasserman considers were changes to the criminal justice system. Tolnay

and Beck found an insignificant statistical correlation between rough justice and criminal justice,

but Wasserman contends that when small towns in the 19th century South had to wait for law

enforcement officials to arrive, the perceived black criminal was more likely to be lynched (15).

Once power shifted from the county to the state in the early 20th century and fewer posses were

organized to deal with criminal activity, lynching decreased.

12

Newspapers spread lynching mythologies by using terms like “black beasts” (51). In the

19th century, editors published local news to please elites, romanticizing the Civil War and

touting lynching as necessary to keep the local peace (58). With the growth of the AP wire

service, the news became more homogenized, advertising made copy prices drop, and

investigative journalism strived for more accuracy. The need to sell advertising, however, led

them to sensationalize stories, including black on white crime. Wasserman notes that the press

developed powerful symbols, in vocabulary and in the form of cartoons (65).

The press he argues, developed a set of media packages to frame issues, such as the

working poor frame, the welfare freeloaders frame, and the black criminal frame (74). News

reports developed a set of metaphors and catch phrases considered to have cultural resonance and

sponsor appeal (77). Using a constructionist model, Wasserman proposes three media packages

that framed lynching: the western vigilante lynching, the southern and border state lynching, and

the non-southern, non-border state lynching (80). In the South, lynchings were framed to appeal

to the status honor concerns of southerners.

Much of the book deals with modern radio and television audiences, but this essay will

limit the analysis to lynching era newspapers and periodicals. Wasserman says of the 1890s,

“southern newspapers came to define rape and sexual assault as ‘the usual crime,’” suggesting

lynching as the cure” (177). Political cartoons were especially inflammatory and ridden with

symbols that justified lynching Although the media had multiple frames for interpreting

violence, protecting the economic interests of the community remained strong in the South,

unless a vigilante group took a prisoner from the law, which the press framed as unruly,

undesirable behavior (178). If the lynchers formed a mob and damaged property, it was called

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bad for the reputation of the community (179). Atrocities tended to garner national attention and

the press voiced shock and outrage that actually helped reduce racial violence (181).

Wasserman found that the media responded to institutional forces. When the southern

agrarians cried rape to regain white supremacy, the southern press threw in their support. They

responded when economic institutions opposed lynching for the loss of cheap labor due to

migration. Political institutions worked to curb criminal activity, but the courts supported mob

activity in US v. Cruikshank, which validated racial violence and made it nearly impossible to

convict on civil rights violations, and in Plessy v. Ferguson, which validated racial segregation.

He found that religious institutions had long justified slavery in the antebellum South as good for

the whites and good for the slaves. Even up to 1920, the clergy did little to curtail mob violence,

however, in the 1930s and 1940s, the church began to openly oppose racial violence (257).

In conclusion “one can only imagine the influence of these lynching on the black

community” (Wasserman, 260). Structures of legitimation, once strong in the South, arguably

remain strong today. The work of historians and sociologists to understand the phenomenon

speak to its relevance in 21st century American discourse. Path-dependence carries the attitudes

that makes violence possible to each new generation. Lynching is a practice that is largely

carried through language. To stop passing down racial hatred, we must stop it in the language of

the media and all of our social institutions.

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Supplemental Materials

12 Foot Stone ObeliskCemetery Marker

1921

“ERECTEDTO THE MEMORY OF

THE HEROES,STEPHEN DECATUR PARISH

JAMES WEST HADNOTSIDNEY HARRIS

WHO FELL IN THE COLFAXRIOT FIGHTING FORWHITE SUPREMACY

APRIL 13, 1873

Louisiana State Wayside Marker1950

Clearly places blame for the “Colfax Riot” on Northern

carpetbag misrule

15

https://gettysburgcompiler.org/2015/03/27/tributes-to-terror-the-mis-monumentation-of-the-

colfax-massacr

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Collfax Massacre

IT TOOK TWO YEARS TO COMPILE A LIST OF THE DEAD

Headquarters Post of Colfax, LA.May 29, 1875

Second Lieutenant Geo. D. Wallace,Acting Assistant Adjutant-General, District of Upper Red River, Shreveport, La:

Sir: I have the honor to submit herewith the list of persons killed and wounded in the parish of Grant, Louisiana, and comprising a few names of those killed in this vicinity, in the contiguous parish of Rapides. These names comprise those furnished in my report in February last; the same were also furnished to Major G. A. Forsyth, A. D. C. to the Lieutenant-General, commanding Division of the Missouri. It was impossible to procure the names at an earlier date, as I was compelled to rely on persons over whom I had not control, and was obliged to wait their pleasure and convenience. I am unable to procure data from the upper portion of the parish, as those persons on whom I could rely for such information are afraid to trust to the perils of travel in the "pine woods."

No./Name/Date/Place/Remarks/1/Jessie McKenzie, colored/April, 1873/2 Ž miles from Just before Colfax, La./riot.2/More Reed, colored/April 12, 1873/"/"/Colfax riot.3/William Williams/"/"/"/"/"4/H. M. Elzy/"/"/"/"/"5/Meredity Elsy/"/"/"/"/"6/Frank Jones/"/"/"/"/"7/Jack Nely/"/"/"/"/"8/John Carter/"/"/"/"/"9/Mack Brown/"/"/"/"/"10/Shuck White/"/"/"/"/"11/Burney Brandon/"/"/"/"/"12/Kit Smith/"/"/"/"/"13/Alex. Tilman/"/"/"/"/"14/Lank Pitman/"/"/"/"/"15/Kendray Nelson/"/"/"/"/"16/Guymo Nelson/"/"/"/"/"17/Sam Samuel/"/"/"/"/"18/Bully Ellis/"/"/"/"/"/19/Clay Murphy/"/"/"/"/"20/Tody Hunter/"/"/"/"/"21/Adam Kimball/"/"/"/"/"22/Philip Harrison/"/"/"/"/"23/Alex. Randolph/"/"/"/"/"24/Warren Bullit/"/"/"/"/"

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25/October White/"/"/"/"/"26/Dun Wilkins/"/"/"/"/"27/Jim Bazzo/"/"/"/"/"28 /Elias Johnson/"/"/"/"/"29/Ashel White/"/"/"/"/"30/Eli Jones/"/"/"/"/"31/Tom Forster/"/"/"/"/"32/Murphy Forster/"/"/"/"/"33/Isaac McCullough/"/"/"/"/"34/Eli McCullough/"/"/"/"/"35/Spencer McCullough/"/"/"/"/"36/Washington Madison/"/"/"/"/"37/John Hall/"/"/"/"/"38/Charles Embry/"/"/"/"/"39/Lewis Palmer/"/"/"/"/"40/Toby Shelden/"/"/"/"/"41/John Randolph/"/"/"/"/"42/Ocu Ruben/"/"/"/"/"43/Henry Mathews/"/"/"/"/"/44/Mathew Irwin/"/"/"/"/"45/John Simmons/"/"/"/"/"46/George Clay/"/"/"/"/"47/Clinton Real/"/"/"/"/"48/Jesse Brown/"/"/"/"/"49/Sam Kane/"/"/"/"/"50/Sam Howard/"/"/"/"/"51/Charles Simpson/"/"/"/"/"52/Philip Feals/"/"/"/"/"53/Nick Cotton/"/"/"/"/"54/Peter Jackson/"/"/"/"/"55/Dick Doe/"/"/"/"/"56/Jerry Grow/"/"/"/"/"57/William Sacks/"/"/"/"/"58/Henry Swan/"/"/"/"/"59/Henry Clap/"/"/"/"/"60/William McClawn/"/"/"/"/"61/Henry McClawn/"/"/"/"/"62/Wall. Maxton/"/"/"/"/"63/Jerry Clark/"/"/"/"/"64/Matt. Parker/"/ "/"/"/"65/Joy Hemp/"/"/"/"/"66/Jerry Washington/"/"/"/"/"67/Shadwick Johnson/"/"/"/"/"68/Isaac White/"/"/"/"/"69/Robert Dudley/"/"/"/"/"70/Harry Williams/"/"/"/"/"71/Jerry Taylor/"/"/"/"/"72/Cuffe Laines/"/"/"/"/"73/Carry Johnson/"/April 8, 1873/"/Hadnot Settlement/Incident to/Colfax riot.74/Charles Sumpter/April 13, 1873/Colfax, La./Colfax riot.75/Henry Blaine/"/"/"/"/"76/Andrew James/"/"/"/"/"77/Robert Love/"/"/"/"/"

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78/William Brown/"/"/"/"/"79/Adam White/"/"/"/"/"80/Dick Peterson/"/"/"/"/"81/Warren Williams/April_, 1873/Rapides Parish, La./Incident to riot82/Charles Russell/April 13, 1873/Colfax, La./Colfax riot.83/Peter Palmer/April, 1873/Grant Parish in/John Luer's/Ringwood/plantation.84/Joe White/1872/Grant Parish/Three miles/from Colfax.85/Jeff. Roper/April, 1873/Rapides Parish/Opposite /Colfax86/George Barnes/1872/"/"/Near Cotilo.87/George Shorter/1873/"/"/"/"88/Hamp. Bullitt/October 1873/Near Colfax, La./On Bayou/Dara.89/Fountain Shaw/April, 1873/Grant Parish Piny Woods90/John Bonner/April 13, 1873/Colfax, La./Riot; mortally/wounded.91/Sam Love/1874/Grant Parish,/Between Piny woods./Montgomery/and Colfax.92/Edware Ware/1873/Grant Parish/No reason /known.93/Mil. Robinson/April 1, 1873/"/"/Oh his way to Colfax.94/Tony Williams/Nov., 1873/"/"/}For95/Charles Vincent/Nov., 1873/"/"/}alleged rape96/Tom Milton/Nov., 1873/"/"/}of97/Hamp Harrison/Nov., 1873/"/"/}Miss LaCour98/Van Moses/Nov., 1873/"/"/}while in99/Alex. Randolph/Nov., 1873/"/"/}custody of/ / the sheriff./100/Alfred Frazier/Dec., 1868/"/"/101/_____ Jack/"/"/"/"102/D. W. White**/Oct., 1871/Colfax, La./103/Volsam Cox/1871/Grant Parish104/Andy Johnson/1871/"/"105/Jeff Yawn**/Nov., 1873/Colfax, La./Killed by colored militia106/Frank Forster/Aug., 1874/Grant Parish Piny /woods/107/Jim Cox/"/"/"/"/"108/Needham Waters**/Oct., 1874/Grant Parish/18 Unknown colored/April 13, 1873/Colfax, La. riot/Bodies buried//not identified/15-20 Unidentified/"/"/"/Colfax, La. riot/Between 15-//20 were shot /on the banks /of the river /and their//bodies thrown//in the river;//not included /in the names./______ Harris**/"/"/"/Colfax, La. riot/______ Hadnot**/"/"/"/"/"/"/Salis Parris**/"/"/"/"/"/"

List of Wounded1/Flam Williams/April 13, 1873/Colfax, La./Colfax riot.2/William Brown/"/"/"/"/"/"/"3/Joe McFeel/"/"/"/"/"/"/"4/Curry Webb/"/"/"/"/"/"/"5/Jesse Curry/"/"/"/"/"/"/"6/Sam M/cKinkley/"/"/"/"/"/"/"7/Jules Clark/"/"/"/"/"/"/"8/Fred Clark/"/"/"/"/"/"/"9/Sam Smorthy/"/"/"/"/"/"/"10/Kay Irends/"/"/"/"/"/"/"

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11/Charles Williams/"/"/"/"/"/"/"12/Dan Gordon/"/"/"/"/"/"/"13/Frank Forster/"/"/"/"/"/"/"14/Ben Brimmer/"/"/"/"/"/"/"15/Levi Nelson/"/"/"/"/"/"/"16/Abe Mitchell/"/"/"/"/"/"/"17/Buttice Elsey/"/"/"/"/"/"/"18/Henderson Draw/"/"/"/"/"/"/"19/Makin White/"/"/"/"/"/"/"20/Richard Reed/"/"/"/"/"/"/"21/Wood. Gubeville/"/"/"/"/"/"/"22/Martin Jones/"/"/"/"/"/"/"23/Cuffe White/"/"/"/"/"/"/"24/Charles Field/"/"/"/"/"/"/"25/Gilbert Noble/"/"/"/"/"/"/"26/Henry Spotville/"/"/"/"/"/"/"27/Buttice Mills/"/"/"/"/"/"/"28/Oshum Buttice/"/"/"/"/"/"/"29/Henry Taylor/"/"/"/"/"/"/"30/Mole Suter/"/"/"/"/"/"/"31/Dan McCullum/"/"/"/"/"/"/"32/John Adams/"/"/"/"/"/"/"33/Henry Williams/"/"/"/"/"/"/"34/Flem Peters/"/"/"/"/"/"/"35/_____ Moses**/"/"/"/"/"/"/"36/About 10-12 whites/"/"/"/"/"/"/"46/William Ward/Nov. 7, 1873/"/"/"/"47/Charles Morse/**/"/"/"/"/"/"/"

**= whiteIt will be seen that at least one hundred and five (105) colored and three (3)whites were killed in the Colfax riot, or in connection therewith, in April,1873, and about forty-five (45) wounded. This does not include those saidto have been thrown into the river. 

Respectfully submitted.Ed. L. GodfreyFirst Lieutenant Seventh Cavlary, Commanding Post.

(http://www.libertychapelcemetery.org/files/colfax2.html)

20

President Grant’s Response to US vs. Cruikshank

On January 13, 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant wrote a letter to the Senate in response to a

resolution asking for information about U.S. military interference in the proceedings of the

general assembly of the State of Louisiana. According to Grant, “lawlessness, turbulence, and

bloodshed” had characterized the State and the contested elections of 1868 and 1872 had both

led to riots (3). The President considered it his duty to enforce legislation passed in May 1870

and amended in 1871 to prevent the denial or abridgement of suffrage to citizens on account of

race, color, or previous condition of servitude (4). He called the butchery in Colfax barbaric and

said it was lamentable that the acts had gone unpunished. In December, 1874, Governor William

P. Kellogg had telegraphed the President that the” White League intended to make another attack

upon the State-house” (13). Grant asserted that congress had given him the power to prevent the

Ku Klux Klan, White League, or any other association from using violence to govern any part of

the country, and that is why he had sent federal troops (14).

Numerous letters to President Grant are included in the document, some praising the decision,

some condemning it, and some threatening his life. David H. Pannill, Pittsylvania County wrote

from the Court House in Virginia that "the white people of Louisiana, representing the

intelligence, property, civilization, & refinement of the state cannot and will not submit to be

ruled by former slaves . . . and to be governed by negroes would be a worse condition than ever

been imposed by the most cruel conqueror” (26). The feelings represented by such letters speak

to the political, social, and economic turmoil that existed in Louisiana and the nation.

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Cruikshank in A Fool’s Errand

The outcome of US vs. Cruikshank was a boon to State’s Rights and a federal avowal to

step aside and let the South deal with the Ku Klux Klan as it chose. Tourgée wrote A Fool’s

Errand in 1879, four years after the landmark decision. The novel form provided Judge Tourgée

with a platform to express his disapproval in plain black and white. He would go on to argue

against the Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890 in Plessy vs. Fergusson. Once again, Louisiana

led the legal battlefield against social equality.

Squire Hyman tells Metta Servosse that southern whites consider slavery “a divinely

appointed and ordained institution . . . They regard the abolition of slavery only as a temporary

triumph of fanaticism over divine truth. They do not believe the negro intended or designed for

any other sphere in life” (86-87). The southern viewpoint is repeatedly stated to set the

background for Tourgée’s introduction of a new institution—the Ku Klux Klan. He attacks the

northern press for its amused apathy to the Klan: “It was at first regarded as farcical and the

newspapers of the North unwittingly accustomed their readers to regard it as a piece of the

broadest and most ridiculous fun” (181). Tourgée makes it clear that the press and the “Wise

Men” are as responsible for racial violence as Southern attitudes.

After the brutal lynching of Uncle Jerry by southern elites on good horses, Servosse writes

to the “Wise Men” asking them to secure the liberty of the freedmen. They respectfully respond

that the States are fully restored sovereign republics and the fact that they fail to punish offenses

is not” remediable by national legislation.” They leave it to the colored people to show that they

can self-govern and take care of themselves, and write. “If people are killed by the Ku-Klux,

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why do they not kill the Ku-Klux?” (234, 235). Servosse cannot make them understand that

whites are better armed and that State power has been recreated without being reconstructed:

Leaving out of sight that this is a contest of poverty, ignorance, and inexperience,

against intelligence, wealth, and skill, —the struggle of a race yet servile in its

characteristics with one that has excelled in domination, —you will perceive that the

ideal of retaliation, would be futile and absurd. / As to the State authorities: the courts,

you have seen, are powerless” (329).

In Chapter XXXVIII, “And All the World Was In A Sea,” Servosse blames the press, the

pulpit, and the law for allowing and even justifying widespread racial violence. He was

especially horrified at the acquittal of the Klan. He most certainly referenced US vs. Cruikshank

when the Fool sardonically says,

Never was the horror which attended this secret organization so fully realized. Even

those who had suffered the most were moved to pity. Now that the law, stern and

inexorable, was about to lay its hands upon them, the cry for charity and mercy came up

from every corner. The beauty of peace and reconciliation was heralded throughout the

land (317),

It is Tourgée, the voice behind Servosse, who is obviously incensed by the law’s pardon

and amnesty and what he calls the “whole-sale forgiveness of the ‘Ku-Klux-Klan,’ the

‘Invisible Empire’” (317). Tourgée looks back on the Cruikshank decision from 1879,

knowing full well that the KKK had been licensed to continue its bloody domination without

fear of prosecution. He goes on to point out that the “Policy of Suppression” would allow

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the South to assert white supremacy and act out the hate and contempt they felt for an entire

race to maintain antebellum relations of status and control.

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25

Works Cited

Bailey, Amy Kate and Stewart E. Tolnay. Lynched: The Victims of Southern Mob Violence,

U of North Carolina P, 2015.

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, Harper & Row, 1988.

“Grant Parish, after the Fight.” Georgia Weekly Telegraph and Georgia Journal & Messenger,

issue 2, June 27, 1873.

Grant, Ulysses S. “Letter to the Senate.” The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Volume 26:1875.

Edited by John Y. Simon, Southern Illinois UP, 2008.

Keith, LeeAnna. The Colfax Massacre: The Untold Story of Black Power, White Terror, and the

Death of Reconstruction, Oxford UP, 2008.

Lane, Charles. The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the

Betrayal of Reconstruction, Henry Holt & Co., 2008.

Perloff, Richard M. “The Press and Lynchings of African Americans.” Journal of Black

Studies 30, no. 3 (2000): 315-30.

Sipress, Joel M. “From the Barrel of a Gun: The Politics of Murder in Grant Parish.” Louisiana

History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, vol. 42, no. 3, 2001, pp.

303-321. 

Smångs, M. Doing Violence, Making Race: Lynching and White Racial Group Formation

in the U.S. South, 1882-1930: Taylor & Francis, 2017.

“The Massacre of the Blacks.” Boston Daily Advertiser, issue 92, Friday April 18, 1873.

Tolnay, Stewart E. and E. M. Beck. A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern

Lynchings,1882-1930, U of Illinois P, 1995.

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Tourgée, Albion. A Fool’s Errand, ed. John Hope Franklin, Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1961.

Wasserman, Ira M. How the American Media Packaged Lynching (1850-1940: Constructing the

Meaning of Social Events, The Edwin Mellon Press, 2006.

Images

“Colfax Riot.” Wikipedia.org.

“Colfax Gravestone.” Wikipedia.org.

"In Self-Defense." Harpers Weekly, cartoonist J.B. Frost, October 28, 1876.

“The Colfax Massacre.” Wikiedia.org.

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