The Day Freedom Died

By Charles Lane,

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

Book description

"Absorbing . . . Riveting . . . A legal thriller."―Kevin Boyle, 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…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Day Freedom Died as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

In this superbly written account, Lane, a senior editor at The Washington Post, has drilled down into one of the most pivotal events that marked the waning days of Reconstruction: the massacre of perhaps as many as one hundred freedmen by an overwhelming force of heavily armed whites in rural Louisiana.

What took place at Colfax was a de facto coup. The mostly unarmed dead were citizens attempting to protect their democratically elected local Black town government; their killers were vengeful whites, many of whom were battle-tried Confederate veterans. Apart from the pounding account of the battle and massacre, I…

From Fergus' list on the bloody history of Reconstruction.

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