Dec 13 (Reuters) - Racial violence in or near Catahoula and Concordia parishes continued for decades after the Civil War:
1873: Black residents made a stand at the Colfax courthouse, some 50 miles from Catahoula. They worried that white militias would seize it in an effort to undermine state elections. Estimates indicate between 62 and more than 100 Black people were killed. Few arrests were made. A book about the Colfax massacre made clear why: After a Black man reportedly spoke with a deputy U.S. marshal, white men hacked off the Black man’s hands and feet, disemboweled him, poured kerosene on his body and set it aflame. Then they weighted down the “hollowed-out body” with stones and threw it into a bayou.
1889: A Black man named Ed Gray was accused of killing several mules on a white man’s plantation in Concordia. “About a dozen persons, who were masked” and armed, showed up at the jail and seized Gray. The mob “strung him up and quietly rode off,” the Daily Picayune reported.
1908: Three Black men were hanged in Catahoula Parish after reports that one had called for a cotton gin to be burned. “All is now quiet in Catahoula Parish,” reported The Weekly Town Talk. (Reporting By Tom Lasseter)
