Grant Parish

We're going to go get Red River Parish.

And we're going to go get Grant Parish.

And so we tested over a couple of months and I went out to every parish and spoke and explained what was going to happen and scheduled everybody to come in.

And that was a huge win.

There was violence, as I mentioned, there were calls, hang him, that happened on the streets of New Orleans.

And then outside of New Orleans, elsewhere in Louisiana, in Grant Parish, named for Ulysses S.

Grant, the then president, there was a massacre.

The Colfax Massacre and that trying to find justice for the 150 black men who were killed in cold blood.

just a story of violence.

It's a story of betrayal, silence, and the slow suffocation of a promise called Reconstruction.

In Grant Parish, Louisiana, a place carved out to be majority black, these rights weren't just theory, they were law.

In the years following the U.S. Civil War, a number of freedmen and white candidates sympathetic to the cause of racial equality weren't elected to office across the South, creating tensions that would explode.

And it comes out of one of the most notorious, heinous acts of this era.

There is a dispute over who has won these local elections in Grant Parish in Louisiana.

And, hmm, the Republicans, which is the party of Black people in the region, and they are the majority in that region, they get their commissions from the governor and they take the courthouse.

They basically occupy it in order to be able to occupied the offices they have won.

amazing yeah yeah well what how did you get involved in all this

well i've worked for the red river waterway commission for 16 years and again we're a local government entity but we cover the seven parishes that the red river runs through in louisiana caddo Natchitoches, Red River, Grant, Avoyles, and Rapides.

And so we cover a large area.

And we typically build, we have 22 recreation areas on the river and two RV parks, one in Natchitoches and one in Colfax.

So what happened at Colfax? Louisiana's 1872 governor's race ended with two rival governments, each claiming their power.

In Grant Parish, an armed black militia unit occupied the courthouse in the town of Colfax.

They were there to keep the elected local government from being overthrown.

On Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, about 300 armed white men attacked roughly 60 black defenders.

The task force's underlying plan calls for identifying unnecessary expenditures and directing any recovered funds toward lasting teacher pay increases.

Grant Parish and neighboring districts, where officials say property tax rates are at or near the top of the statewide range, have spent multiple years cutting costs.

Schools have closed and staffing has been reduced annually.

Grant Parish Superintendent Dr. Aaron Stokes said the district is focused entirely on maintaining financial stability, with staff pay raises not currently an option.

The task force's completed report is due to legislators before the new year.

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