The Colfax Massacre: The Untold Story of Black Power, White Terror and the Death of Reconstruction |
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The Colfax Massacre: The Untold Story of Black Power, White Terror and the Death of Reconstruction
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by LeeAnna Keith
Sales Rank: 245852
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List Price: $24.95
$16.47
At Amazon
on 6-20-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 240 pages
Published by: Oxford University Press, USA January 28, 2008
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0195310268
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0195310269
Book Dimensions:
8.3 x 5.7 x 1 inches
Weighs: 13.6 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
It happened in Colfax, La., on Easter Sunday, 1873; when it ended, the the largest number of victims in the history of racial violence in the United States, more than one hundred and fifty African-Americans, were dead. Keith places the massacre at the center of her book, but her sharpest focus is upon white political figures and the slave-holding Calhoun family (the character Simon Legree in Uncle Tom's Cabin was based upon a Calhoun forebear), most notably William, who witnessed the violence. Keith traces the fortunes of the Calhoun family to the events leading to the massacre, then turns to the Colfax Courthouse assault and judicial aftermath that deepened the complexity of this tragic event. Three white men were convicted, not for murders but for conspiracy in one murder. These convictions were then overturned, and Reconstruction effectively ended according to Keith. Louisiana's Governor Kellogg declared no white man could be punished for killing a negro. Later memorialized by the state with a plaque celebrating the demise of 'carpetbag misrule in the South,'Â the horrific massacre has received scant attention from American historians. Keith's aim is admirable, but the execution could be bolstered with more substantive research. (Feb.)
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Product Review
"well-researched and accessible"--Library Journal
"vivid, compelling proseserious scholarship accessible to a non-academic readership."--Eric Foner, The Washington Post
"In The Colfax Massacre: The Untold Story of Black Power, White Terror, and the Death of Reconstruction, LeeAnna Keith powerfully accomplishes what she set out to do, to shed new light on a tragically under-reported but significant chapter in America's past. Meticulously researched, painstakingly recreated, and full of insight into the times, this book is a much needed and important addition to the permanent record of American history."--Lalita Tademy, author of Cane River (an Oprah Choice) and Red River
"The Colfax Massacre brings to light one of the most notorious, yet forgotten, events of the 1870s--the object of Congressional Investigations, a historic Supreme Court case, and a special address by President Ulysses S. Grant. In the decades since, the town of Colfax, Louisiana--a bastion of racism and black poverty--has struggled with the massacre's legacy. The High Court's decision in U.S. v Cruikshank takes on new meaning as Keith traces its role in the rise of Jim Crow, chronicling this true Old South drama with striking characters, heroic acts, and chilling violence."--Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center
Reader Reviews
LeeAnna Keith's book explores what was surely one of the most tragic moments in the history of Reconstruction -- a moment when the hopes of African-Americans and the anger and fear of Southern whites clashed with particular violence. This alone would make it an important story. However, the book also represents a recovery effort of sorts, because subsequent historians of the period have not given the massacre the treatment it merits. And so, an event that the white community claimed initially with pride for their own defiance has all but ceased to be part of the larger history of Reconstruction...and the massacre has almost seemed to pass in silence. The recent events in Jena, Louisiana prove that the tensions and ironies surrounding race, class and identity in the American South remain, and that they draw on an old, old symbolic and dramatic vocabulary -- a vocabulary that our history compels us to see clearly. Keith's work will help us immeasureably to see history and current events with a deeper, if painful new honesty.
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The Colfax Massacre: The Untold Story of Black Power, White Terror and the Death of Reconstruction
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Price: $16.47
Updated on 6-20-2008.
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