“The Creatures Do Not Respect Their Creator”: The Unifying Power of Violent White Supremacy in Northwest Louisiana

Violence, derived from the fine-tuned racial hatred of blacks, took the place of mastery as a means to control, subjugate, and subdue freedpeople in the Red River region. Former slaveholders and non-slaveholders kept the violent, dehumanized, brutal elements of slavery intact and redressed it in visible, unapologetic, viscerally violent garb that empowered whites of all classes to kill blacks with alacrity and without impunity. This paper focuses on the overwhelming, constant violence in northwest Louisiana in order to explore how violence was used to control the movement, labor, and political involvement of freedpeople. Using the Colfax Massacre to highlight the central role of vigilante violence and White Leagues, it will examine how white supremacy not only controlled freedpeople but how the legacy of mastery informed and codified racial hierarchies. In the Red River region, white men were unified in their commitment to racial power and they used white supremacy to institutionalize power and privilege. Regional violence crescendos with the Colfax Massacre, and the Supreme Court case that resulted from that massacre validated Red River vigilante actions while also setting the tenor and path for black political involvement in and racial power in the Jim Crow South. Bloodshed was a cold, calculated response to political involvement, black voting, economic and social factors, but also arose without provocation and in the Red River region, paramilitary organizing was an effective and tangible method to reassert white control with visual, undeniable results.