The Reconstruction era was a period in United States history and Southern United States history that followed the American Civil War and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the abolition of slavery and the reintegration of the eleven former Confederate States of America into the United States. During this period, three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant citizenship and equal civil rights to the newly freed slaves. To circumvent these legal achievements, the former Confederate states imposed poll taxes and literacy tests and engaged in terrorism to intimidate and control people of color and to discourage or prevent them from voting.
Red River Parish is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 7,620, making it the fourth-least populous parish in Louisiana. The parish seat and most populous municipality is Coushatta. It is one of the newer parishes, created in 1871 by the state legislature from parts of Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Desoto and Natchitoches Parishes under Reconstruction. The plantation economy was based on cotton cultivation, highly dependent on enslaved African labor before the American Civil War.
Grant Parish is a parish located in the North Central portion of the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 22,169. The parish seat is Colfax. The parish was founded in 1869 during the Reconstruction era.
Colfax is a town in, and the parish seat of, Grant Parish, Louisiana, United States, founded in 1869. Colfax is part of the Alexandria, Louisiana metropolitan area. The largely African American population of Colfax counted 1,558 at the 2010 census.
Coushatta is a town in, and the parish seat of, rural Red River Parish in north Louisiana, United States. It is situated on the east bank of the Red River. The community is approximately 45 miles south of Shreveport on U.S. Highway 71. The population, 2,299 at the 2000 census, is nearly two-thirds African American, most with long family histories in the area. The 2010 census, however, reported 1,964 residents, a decline of 335 persons, or nearly 15 percent during the course of the preceding decade. In 2020, its population was 1,752. The city is named after the Coushatta, a Native American nation indigenous to the region.
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court ruling that the U.S. Bill of Rights did not limit the power of private actors or state governments despite the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. It reversed the federal criminal convictions for the civil rights violations committed in aid of anti-Reconstruction murders. Decided during the Reconstruction Era, the case represented a major defeat for federal efforts to protect the civil rights of African Americans.
The Knights of the White Camelia was an American white supremacist organization that operated in the Southern United States in the late 19th century. Similar to and associated with the Ku Klux Klan, it opposed freedmen's rights.
The Colfax massacre, sometimes referred to as the Colfax riot, occurred on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, the parish seat of Grant Parish. An estimated 62–153 Black militia men were murdered while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the Ku Klux Klan. Three White men also died during the confrontation.
The Redeemers were a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction Era that followed the American Civil War. Redeemers were the Southern wing of the Democratic Party. They sought to regain their political power and enforce white supremacy. Their policy of Redemption was intended to oust the Radical Republicans, a coalition of freedmen, "carpetbaggers", and "scalawags". They were typically led by White yeomen and dominated Southern politics in most areas from the 1870s to 1910.
The Mississippi Plan of 1874–1875 was developed by white Southern Democrats as part of the white insurgency during the Reconstruction era in the Southern United States. It was devised by the Democratic Party in that state to overthrow the Republican Party in Mississippi by means of organized threats of violence and voter suppression against African American citizens and white Republican supporters. Democrats sought to regain political control of the state legislature and governor's office 'peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.' Their justifications were articulated on a basis of discontent with governor Adelbert Ames' Republican administration, including spurious charges of corruption and high taxes. However, the violence that followed was centred on the desire to return white supremacy to the state. The success of the campaign led to similar plans being adopted by white Democrats in South Carolina and other majority-black states across the South.
The Coushatta massacre (1874) was an attack by members of the White League, a white supremacist paramilitary organization composed of white Southern Democrats, on Republican officeholders and freedmen in Coushatta, the parish seat of Red River Parish, Louisiana. They assassinated six white Republicans and five to 20 freedmen who were witnesses.
The New Orleans massacre of 1866 occurred on July 30, when a peaceful demonstration of mostly Black Freedmen was set upon by a mob of white rioters, many of whom had been soldiers of the recently defeated Confederate States of America, leading to a full-scale massacre. The violence erupted outside the Mechanics Institute, site of a reconvened Louisiana Constitutional Convention. According to the official report, a total of 38 were killed and 146 wounded, of whom 34 dead and 119 wounded were Black Freedmen. Unofficial estimates were higher. Gilles Vandal estimated 40 to 50 Black Americans were killed and more than 150 Black Americans wounded. Others have claimed nearly 200 were killed. In addition, three white convention attendees were killed, as was one white protester.
The nadir of American race relations was the period in African-American history and the history of the United States from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the early 20th century, when racism in the country, and particularly anti-black racism, was more open and pronounced than it had ever been during any other period in the nation's history. During this period, African Americans lost access to many of the civil rights which they had gained during Reconstruction. Anti-Black violence, lynchings, segregation, legalized racial discrimination, and expressions of white supremacy all increased. Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans were also not spared from such sentiments.
William Pitt Kellogg was an American lawyer and Republican Party politician who served as the governor of Louisiana from 1873 to 1877 and twice served as a United States senator during the Reconstruction era.
John McEnery was a Louisiana Democratic politician and lawyer who was considered by Democrats to be the winner of the highly contested 1872 election for Governor of Louisiana. After extended controversy over election results, the Republican candidate William Pitt Kellogg was certified. McEnery, who had been an officer in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, was not allowed to take office following a weighing in by the federal government and local Republicans loyal to President Ulysses S. Grant.
The Wheeler Compromise, sometimes known as the Wheeler Adjustment, was the settlement of the disputed gubernatorial election of 1872 in the U.S. state of Louisiana, and negotiation to organize the state's legislature in January 1875. It was negotiated by, and named after, William A. Wheeler, Congressman from New York and a member of the U.S. House Committee on Southern Affairs. He later was elected as Vice President of the United States.
The Battle of Liberty Place, or Battle of Canal Street, was an attempted insurrection by the Crescent City White League against the Reconstruction Era Louisiana Republican state government on September 14, 1874, in New Orleans, which was the capital of Louisiana at the time. Five thousand members of the White League, a paramilitary organization made up largely of Confederate veterans, fought against the outnumbered racially integrated New Orleans Metropolitan Police and state militia. The insurgents held the statehouse, armory, and downtown for three days, retreating before arrival of federal troops that restored the elected government. At least 32 people, including at least 21 members of the White League, were killed in the fighting. No insurgents were charged in the action.
Alexandre Etienne de Clouet, also known as Alexandre Etienne de Clouet, Sr., was an American politician and sugar planter who was active in Louisiana politics both before and after the Civil War. During Reconstruction, he violently opposed Black suffrage, becoming a leader of the violent White League that attacked freedmen who attempted to vote.
Jean Maximilien Alcibiades Derneville DeBlanc was a lawyer and state legislator in Louisiana. He served as a colonel for the Confederate army during the American Civil War. Afterward, he founded the Knights of the White Camelia, a white insurgent militia that operated from 1867–1869 to suppress freedmen's voting, disrupt Republican Party political organizing and try to regain political control of the state government in the 1868 election. A Congressional investigation overturned 1868 election results in Louisiana.
The Battle of Liberty Place Monument is a stone obelisk on an inscribed plinth, formerly on display in New Orleans, in the U.S. state of Louisiana, commemorating the "Battle of Liberty Place", an 1874 attempt by Democratic White League paramilitary organizations to take control of the government of Louisiana from its Reconstruction Era Republican leadership after a disputed gubernatorial election.
