The Colfax Massacre: The Killing That Rewrote Constitutional Law

Grant Parish, Louisiana, was one of the parishes created specifically under Reconstruction to give Black voters political representation. In the disputed 1872 governor's race, both Republican William Pitt Kellogg and Democrat John McEnery claimed victory and each installed his own set of local officials. In Grant Parish, Republican William Ward — a Black Union Army veteran — held the sheriff's post. Democrats claimed the seat for their own man.

In March 1873, Black Republicans and freedmen armed themselves and occupied the Colfax courthouse, the center of local government. They had reason to fear. The pattern of white Democratic violence against Black officeholders was already established across Louisiana. Ward and his allies fortified the building and dug earthworks around it. They were defending a legal, democratically-elected government. They held the courthouse for three weeks.

On Easter Sunday, a force of approximately 150 white men — former Confederates, members of the White League and other Democratic paramilitary groups — surrounded the courthouse under the command of Christopher Columbus Nash, a former Confederate officer. They were armed with rifles, shotguns, and a small cannon mounted on a boat in the Red River.

The attackers used the cannon to drive defenders from their earthworks. When approximately 60 Black men raised a white flag and surrendered, the killing did not stop — it intensified. The courthouse roof was set on fire. Men inside faced the choice of burning or running into armed attackers waiting outside. Those who ran were shot down in the surrounding fields.

An unknown number of men were held overnight and executed the following morning. Bodies were left in the field for days. The total death toll remains disputed — official estimates range from 62 to over 150 Black men killed. Three white attackers died, one from friendly fire.

U.S. Attorney J.R. Beckwith prosecuted the case under the Enforcement Act of 1870, which made it a federal crime to conspire to deprive citizens of their constitutional rights. Three men were ultimately convicted. They appealed. In 1876, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the convictions in United States v. Cruikshank.

Chief Justice Morrison Waite's opinion held that the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause only prohibited discriminatory state action — not violence by private individuals. The federal government, the Court ruled, had no power to punish private citizens for violating other citizens' constitutional rights. Only states could do that. In Louisiana in 1876, the state had no interest in punishing the Colfax killers. They were celebrated as heroes.

For nearly a century, the state of Louisiana commemorated the Colfax Massacre with a historical marker that read: "On this site occurred the Colfax Riot in which three white men and 150 negroes were slaughtered. This event on April 13, 1873 marked the end of carpetbagger misrule in the South." The marker celebrated the massacre as liberation. It described men defending a legally-constituted government as the problem, and the men who killed them as the solution.

The marker was not removed until 2021. The names of the men killed at Colfax — over a hundred of them — were never recorded in any official document. The attackers are buried in marked graves. A granite obelisk in the Colfax cemetery honors Christopher Columbus Nash and the other white men who died. It was erected in 1921.

The Equal Justice Initiative and local historians have worked to document the victims' names in the decades since. The effort is ongoing. Most names are still unknown.