- Feb 12, 2007
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150 years ago, Democrats killed African Americans to suppress the vote.
Remember - they are the KKK.
The vigilante groups were so widespread that they often included nearly every white man in the region. One Democratic newspaper editor estimated that more than 3,000 men belonged to the Knights of the White Camellia of St. Landry Parish—an area that included only 13,776 white people in total, including women and children.
With the approach of the presidential elections in November, the tension only increased. On September 13, the Republicans held a meeting in the town of Washington, not far from Opelousas, and found streets lined with armed Seymour Knights. A misfired rifle nearly caused a riot to break out, but in the end, everyone departed peacefully—though the Democrats threatened Bentley if he failed to publish an “honest” account of the event in the St. Landry Progress. Sure enough, they used Bentley’s account, in which he wrote the men had been intimidating the Republicans, to instigate a wave of violence on September 28, 1868.
www.smithsonianmag.com
Remember - they are the KKK.
The vigilante groups were so widespread that they often included nearly every white man in the region. One Democratic newspaper editor estimated that more than 3,000 men belonged to the Knights of the White Camellia of St. Landry Parish—an area that included only 13,776 white people in total, including women and children.
With the approach of the presidential elections in November, the tension only increased. On September 13, the Republicans held a meeting in the town of Washington, not far from Opelousas, and found streets lined with armed Seymour Knights. A misfired rifle nearly caused a riot to break out, but in the end, everyone departed peacefully—though the Democrats threatened Bentley if he failed to publish an “honest” account of the event in the St. Landry Progress. Sure enough, they used Bentley’s account, in which he wrote the men had been intimidating the Republicans, to instigate a wave of violence on September 28, 1868.
The Deadliest Massacre in Reconstruction-Era Louisiana Happened 150 Years Ago
In September 1868, Southern white Democrats hunted down around 200 African-Americans in an effort to suppress voter turnout
www.smithsonianmag.com
