The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction

The untold story of the massacre of a Southern town's freedmen and a white lawyer's battle to bring the killers to justice: "Riveting." —The New York Times Book Review

Following the Civil War, Colfax, Louisiana, was a town, like many, where African Americans and whites mingled uneasily. But on April 13, 1873, a small army of white ex–Confederate soldiers, enraged after attempts by freedmen to assert their new rights, killed more than sixty African Americans who had occupied a courthouse. Wi...