Resources
Brandwein, Pamela. “A Judicial Abandonment of Blacks? Rethinking the ‘State Action’ Cases of the Waite Court.” Law & Society Review 41, no. 2 (2007): 343–86. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4623380.
Brandwein questions the popular view that Waite Court decisions contributed to the end of reconstruction.
“Condition of the South,” Report Number 261, in Reports of Committees of the House of Representatives for the Second Session of the Forty-Third Congress (Washington D.C.: U.S. Printing Office, 1875), pp. 11–Fourteenth, https://goo.gl/fsC5mu
Primary source. Report from Congress on the condidtions of Black people as citizens in the South during Reconstruction.
Committee of 70, “History of The Riot at Colfax, Grant Parish, Louisiana, April 13th, 1873: With a Brief Sketch of the Trial of The Grant Parish Prisoners In The Circuit Court Of The United States” (New Orleans: Clark & Hofeline, 1874), 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10–11, 12, 13.
Primary Source. Southern Democratic view of the Colfax Massacre and the following trial.
Foner, Eric. The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution. 1st Edition. W. W. Norton & Company, 2020.
Scholarly analysis of the Reconstruction and its legislation, with a focus on the failure of the government to fulfill its promise of equal protection for Black Southerners.
Harper’s Weekly. The Louisiana Murders—Gathering The Dead And Wounded. May 10, 1873.
Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ColfaxMassacre.jpg.
Primary Source. Artistic representation of the moments following the Colfax Massacre.
Justia Law. “United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875),” n.d. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/92/542/.
Text of the Case.
Lane, Charles. “Not Far from Tulsa, a Quieter but Consequential Correction of the Historical
Record.” Washington Post, June 9, 2021.
A brief overview of the history of the Colfax Massacre and report on the recent removal of the commemorative
plaque.
McCluskey, Martha T. “Facing the Ghost of Cruikshank in Constitutional Law.” Journal of Legal Education 65, no. 2 (2015): 278–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26453460.
Scholarly analysis of the Cruikshank case, with an effort to assert its significance during the Black Lives Matter movement.
New York Evangelist. “The Colfax Tragedy.” ProQuest American Periodicals, May 1, 1873.
Primary Source. Northern reaction to the Colfax Massacre.
TeachingAmericanHistory.org. “Colfax Massacre Reports.” Teaching American History, July 8,
2022. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/colfax-massacre-reports-2/.
Brief overview of the history of the Colfax Massacre and the historical context, followed by selected primary sources reporting on the Massacre from both the Democrat and Republican perspective.