Coushatta Massacre

Massacre victims

The Coushatta Massacre (1874) was the result of an attack by the White League, a paramilitary organization composed of white Southern Democrats, on Republican officeholders and freedmen in Coushatta, the parish seat of Red River Parish, Louisiana. They assassinated six white Republicans and five to 20 freedmen who were witnesses.

The White League had organized to drive out Republicans from Louisiana, disrupt their political organizing, and intimidate or murder freedmen to restore white supremacy. Like the Red Shirts and other "White Line" organizations, they were described as "the military arm of the Democratic Party."

In the period after the American Civil War, Marshall H. Twitchell, a Union veteran from Vermont who had led United States Colored Troops, came to Red River Parish, Louisiana to become an agent for the Freedmen's Bureau, having passed the administrative examination. He married Adele Coleman, a young local woman. Her family taught him about cotton farming. In 1870, Twitchell was elected as a Republican to the Louisiana State Senate. He appointed his brother and three brothers-in-law (the latter natives of the parish) to local positions, including sheriff, tax assessor and clerk of court. Twitchell worked to promote education and to extend public representation and civil rights to the former slaves, known as freedmen.