Louisiana Voice

THE LOUISIANA COURTHOUSE IN A GRAVEYARD

(The Aftermath of the Colfax Massacre)

By guest columnist Charles “Chick” Moore

In the aftermath of the Civil War and the emancipation of enslaved people, Louisiana entered a period of political turmoil and violence, particularly surrounding elections and the right of formerly enslaved Black citizens to vote. The election of 1872 was marked by fraud, intimidation, and violence throughout the state.

In Grant Parish, with Colfax as the parish seat, both the Republican and Democratic (Fusionist) parties claimed victory in the local election for parish offices, including sheriff and district judge. The Republican Party supported suffrage and civil rights for formerly enslaved people. The Democrats sought a return to white supremacy and the prewar social order to the extent possible.

At the center of the dispute stood the parish courthouse, the center of governmental power in the parish. Initially occupied by Democrats, the courthouse was later taken by Republicans, who relied upon judicial rulings recognizing their claim to office. Democrats then organized plans to seize the courthouse by force, but word of the planned attack spread.

Under Louisiana law, the district judge instructed the sheriff to form a militia to protect the courthouse and public records from seizure. That militia was composed predominantly of Black men.

When Democrats learned that the courthouse was being defended, calls went out to surrounding parishes for armed assistance. By Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, a heavily armed white force had gathered outside Colfax. Anticipating attack, the defenders had dug a crescent-shaped trench from which they would to fight to defend the courthouse.

The attack began around noon. Initially there was a standoff, but the defenders were eventually forced to abandon their position when a small cannon was positioned so that it could fire directly into the trench. The courthouse—a repurposed plantation stable with brick walls and a cypress shingle roof—was then set on fire.

Later during the day, those captured, their hands tied behind their back, were executed, some of whom were told to stand close to each other so one bullet would result in two kills.

Governor William Kellogg, having learned of the developing crisis, dispatched a contingent of the Louisiana National Guard to Colfax. The troops arrived two days too late.

The official report of the National Guard described the courthouse grounds as strewn with the bodies of dead Black men. Orders were given to bury many of the bodies in the defensive trench dug around the courthouse. The report stated that fifty-four Black men were buried there.  Other reports have the number higher.

Only three white men were reported killed. Estimates of Black deaths ranged from approximately eighty to as many as one hundred fifty, the latter figure appearing on a Louisiana historical marker erected in 1951.

The killings were acts of racial and political terror intended both as punishment and as a warning. Black citizens were killed for exercising civil rights newly guaranteed after the Civil War, most importantly the right to vote and participate in government. The massacre became one of the defining events of Reconstruction-era violence in the South.

From the beginning, however, the presence of bodies buried in and around the courthouse square appears to have troubled the community.

In 1878, the Colfax Chronicle urged that the remains be removed because “they are at present in the way, besides being subjected to indignity and abuse that no one approves.” The suggestion was ignored.

After the original courthouse burned, court was temporarily held in mercantile buildings pending construction of a replacement courthouse. During construction of the new courthouse in 1878, the Chronicle reported that a skull and several bones were unearthed. The newspaper observed that “it looks bad to have these ghastly relics exhibited now and then,” referring to “that grinning cranium with a round bullet hole bored clear through it.”

The discoveries continued for generations.

On April 22, 1899, the Colfax Chronicle, in an article entitled “Only a Negro’s Bones,” reported that workmen digging a hole had uncovered the skull and bones of “one of the negroes killed in the Colfax riot 26 years ago.” The article stated:

“At once an idle and gaping crowd gathered, and several little boys exhibited ghoulish glee digging and scratching out the grim remains for inspection. True, it was only a negro’s bones, but common decency prompts that they be covered out of sight, and humanity dictates that the children should not be allowed to play the role of jackal and grave digger.”

The excavation was associated with construction of an artesian well in the courthouse square. Because the water was mixed with natural gas, the well later became known as the “Famous Burning Well of Colfax,” a local tourist attraction even featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

In 1902 another courthouse was constructed on the same site. In 1923, while workers were digging a ditch and repairing curbing near the courthouse square, another skeleton was unearthed. In 1927, during installation of water pipes, additional human remains were discovered and sent to Louisiana State University.

The discoveries continued even into modern times.

In 1965, while an addition to the present courthouse was under construction, workers excavating the foundation for the addition

unearthed bones that were collected by a twelve-year-old boy and later given to LSU. The Colfax Chronicle later described the reaction of the workers:

“The discovery [of bones] was so emotional, so much so that workers refused to continue digging. Human bones were human bones, and as far as the workers were concerned, they were laying the new courthouse’s foundation in a cemetery. And technically, they were.”

To this day, the burial site of the Black victims remains unmarked at the courthouse. Nothing on the courthouse grounds acknowledges either their deaths or their burial there.

The memory of the white dead, however, has long been preserved.

When the burial site of the man who fired the cannon at the courthouse reportedly fell into disrepair, the Grant Parish Police Jury voted to move his remains to the public cemetery and place a headstone and white picket fence around the grave.

Near the fiftieth anniversary of the massacre, the Police Jury funded approximately forty percent of the cost of a twelve-foot white marble obelisk dedicated to the “three heroes … who fell in the Colfax Riot fighting for White Supremacy.”

For many years, the courthouse square also contained a Louisiana historical marker referring to the event as the “Colfax Riot.” The marker stated:

“On this site occurred the Colfax Riot in which three white men and 150 negroes were slain. This event on April 13, 1873 marked the end of carpetbag misrule in the South.”

That marker was removed in 2021 after criticism from historians and others because it described the massacre as a “riot” and endorsed white supremacist interpretations of Reconstruction history. It has not been replaced. No marker identifies the burial ground beneath and around the courthouse.

Ironically, however, a historical marker was placed commemorating the now dead “Burning Well of Colfax.”

In recent years, Rev. Avery Hamilton, the great-grandson of the first Black man killed in the massacre, and Dean Woods, a descendant of one of the white participants, worked together to create a memorial honoring the victims. Their memorial stands not at the courthouse itself, but near the Kansas City Southern railroad right-of-way, removed from the courthouse grounds. Information regarding the memorial may be found at The Colfax Memorial.

More recently, the continued use of the courthouse as the seat of the 35^th Judicial District Court has raised a modern legal issue.

Louisiana law requires that a parish provide a building for the sitting of the district court, but the statute further requires that the building be “suitable” for that purpose. The question has therefore been raised whether a courthouse constructed in and around an unmarked mass grave resulting from racial violence is a “suitable” place for the administration of justice.

The massacre occurred more than 150 years ago, and present generations bear no responsibility for the acts committed in 1873. We are responsible, however, for how we respond to the continuing aftermath of those events and for the effect that the present condition of the courthouse grounds may have upon public confidence in the judicial system.

Courts derive their authority not merely from law, but from public trust in the fairness, impartiality, and integrity of the judicial process. It is axiomatic that justice must not only be fair and impartial but must also appear to be fair and impartial.

That principle raises a difficult but important question for Louisiana today: whether a court can properly administer justice while sitting in an unmarked mass grave created by one of the bloodiest acts of racial and political violence in American history.

Charles R. Moore

If you think Louisiana politics is rife with corruption, try combining ours with the politics in neighboring Texas for a truly potent blend of underhanded dealings.

And when it involves Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton teaming up with a Louisiana district attorney to take down an opponent of the district attorney, it can lead to only one obvious outcome: an application for funding from Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund settlement of his lawsuit against the IRS.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The story actually begins long ago and far away—eleven years ago in Austin, Texas—when on April 20, 2015, Paxton issued a press release announcing the filing of a lawsuit against a Houston-based learning center that the Texas AG said was selling fraudulent high school diplomas and transcripts.

Named as co-defendants along with Parkview Home School in Houston were Christian Chesson of Lake Charles, Lilton Chesson Jr. of Houston Tara Rose Castellanos, Mindy Kay Ring, Legal Properties, LLC of Lake Charles and the Chesson Family Partnership of Lafayette. More on some of the defendants later. Castellanos and Ring both are sisters of Christian Chesson and both worked for Parkview Home School.

In his press release, Paxton said since 1994, Parkview Home School “has provided fake high school diplomas and transcripts to Texas consumers for a fee and employs no teachers, requiring little or no coursework or educational requirements on their students. Defendants claim to have provided services to 42,000 “students” and has obtained approximately $1.4 million from Texas consumers” by charging customers fees between $200 and $300 for bogus diplomas and transcripts that were “not accepted by community colleges, four-year universities, trade schools, the military, law enforcement academies or employers.”.

So, how did a Lake Charles resident become embroiled in alleged fraudulent operations of a Houston home school?

In a word, politics. Whether it was Louisiana-flavored or Texas-style politics remains something of a mystery but there seems to be no question there was collusion against Christian Chesson who was opposing the reelection of Calcasieu District Attorney John DeRosier.

Less than a month after Paxton’s announcement of the lawsuit that included Christian Chesson as a defendant, the attempted smackdown of Chesson began with a May 15, 2015, formal complaint against him with the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board’s Office of the Disciplinary Council.

That letter was written by none other than DeRosier who wrote while Chesson’s campaign reported no contributions to his campaign, “Parkview Baptist School issued Mr. Chesson a $25,000 check on August 22, 2914, right before the date of qualifying for this election, and issued him a $20,000 check on December 15, 2014. Parkview Baptist School also issued Mr. Chesson a $9,000 check on October 31, 2014. Page 15 of Mr. Chesson’s 21-page March 1, 2015, report shows that he loaned his campaign $9,000 that same day.”

His complaint asserted that the checks constituted campaign contributions that far exceeded the $2500 limit set by state law.

Derosier noted that Chesson had claimed his campaign was “totally funded” by his personal loans to his campaign and that he further publicly denied any affiliation with the school. His complaint listed Chesson’s address as 4151 S.W. Freeway, Ste. 340, in Houston but Chesson’s attorney, John Green Jr., responded in an Aug. 21 letter that his client had been in LSU Law School during the time in question and was subsequently employed as a law clerk in Lake Charles until 1996 and was not residing in Houston.

Green went to explain in his letter that Chesson did indeed receive each of the payments claimed by DeRosier and used portions of the payments to loan money to his campaign. But the payments from Parkview, he said were for reimbursement of money that Chesson had spent on mortgage notes for his home in which his father, Lilton, was residing and for improvements to the Lilton Home where Christian Chesson was residing in Lake Charles.

A reconciliation of amounts spent by both parties conducted by a CPA revealed that Lilton Chesson still owed Christian Chesson $117,473.60.

“In short,” Green wrote, “the checks were made payable to Mr. Chesson, not his campaign, and were for personal loans unrelated to Parkview.

In the end, both the complaint to the Attorney Disciplinary Board and a complaint filed with the Louisiana Board of Ethics were dismissed along with Paxton’s filing of a “nonsuit with prejudice,” dismissing Chesson as a defendant—but only after Chesson had already incurred nearly $60,000 in legal fees.

Chesson called the entire affair “a quid pro quo between Paxton and his friend John DeRosier. What DeRosier gets in return from Paxton holds not just ethical concerns but also criminal charges,” he said in his own ethics complaint filed on Sept. 15, 2016. He said in his complaint that Paxton, during a trip to Lake Charles, “dined with his friend…John DeRosier. At that dinner, according to someone in attendance, Paxton and DeRosier planned ways to cause problems for me and my family after I had the ‘audacity,’ as DeRosier told the Louisiana Bar, to run against him.

“Part of that conspiracy launched by DeRosier against me was to target my family, friends and clients,” he said.

DeRosier died last October.

Chesson pointed out correctly that both DeRosier and Paxton had their own ETHICS PROBLEMS in the past.

But Chesson may yet have the last laugh.

When Donald Trump settled his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for the establishment of a $1.8 billion slush fund to award those whom had been “persecuted” and otherwise “improperly prosecuted” by the government, it may have opened an unanticipated Pandora’s Box for Republicans.

On Saturday, May 23, Chesson drafted an application for formal submission under the “Weaponization of Federal and Interstate Governmental Process for Political Retaliation Program” established under the fund.

The “Interstate Governmental Process for Political Retaliation” is the key clause here for his being named as a defendant in Paxton’s lawsuit certainly qualified as “interstate.” He likely will not receive anything with his application but it should be sufficient to cause at least some discomfort among the Trumpians.

Perhaps another of his attorneys, Gwen Richard, said it best when she messaged Chesson to say, “Hey Chris, this is a very clever use of the Republican B.S. fund. Someone obviously wasn’t thinking ahead to the fact that it could be used against them. I don’t know anybody with the [James]Talarico campaign, but I will check around with some of my political friends and see if they can recommend a connection. As for me, I’m getting the hell out of this country.”

Talarico is the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Texas. He will face the winner to today’s Republican Primary between Paxton and incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.

Ah, Louisiana. The political fights are never dull.