Colfax, population 1,659, is the seat of Grant Parish; both were created in 1869, the latter being carved out of Rapides and Winn Parishes and named by northern Republicans (sometimes called "carpetbaggers") and local Republicans (sometimes called "scalawags"). The parish is named for the Civil War general and our eighteenth President, its seat for his Vice President, Schuyler Colfax.
Logging was long the main industry here, but nowadays 34 percent of the parish is untouchable federal forest preserve, and most of the rest has been cleared. Consequently, there isn't much work to be had in Grant Parish. Ninety percent of its work force commutes to jobs elsewhere (most in Alexandria or Pineville, twin cities in neighboring Rapides Parish, about half an hour away). The combined population of Colfax and Grant Parish's other towns—Dry Prong, Georgetown, Montgomery, and Pollock—is about 3,500; the rest of Grant's residents, some 15,000 people, live, as the locals say, "in the woods." Colfax itself is mostly one street—Main Street—with a railroad crossing, a small supermarket, a gas station, an alcohol-and-drug-abuse clinic, a modern library shaped like a cog, and a modern courthouse shaped like a concrete box. As I pulled into the courthouse's parking lot for the first time, I noticed two young black men hosing down a van. Later I learned that the two were in fact prisoners—trusties, incarcerated in the jail behind the courthouse—who would wash any car, inside and out, for five dollars. For fifteen they'd add a coat of wax.
I spent that afternoon and much of the evening doing genealogical research (don't ask), first in the courthouse and later in the library; by the time I decided to quit for the day, the sun had long since set. I stumbled out of the library, tired and half dazed from hours spent poring over marriage licenses and census records, and lurched across the courthouse parking lot toward my car; the car-washing trusties had returned to their cells. Colfax was dark and quiet—deserted, really. For a moment, as I gazed across the courthouse's front lawn, I thought I spotted a human figure in the far corner, standing under a magnolia tree; but looking closer, I realized that it was actually a historic marker. I walked over to read it.
COLFAX RIOT
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.
Erected by the Louisiana Department of Commerce and Industry 1950
Some time later I was sitting at a table in a genealogy library in nearby Alexandria when I found myself eavesdropping on a conversation between what appeared to be two friends: a stocky, balding man in his forties, wearing an ID badge from a local power company, and a skinny, somewhat older man sporting a Caterpillar cap and a white brush moustache. "I found another wife in Ouachita, ten years later," the former said animatedly, pointing to some notes on a legal pad. "This one's even younger. He sure got around." The older man smiled back, nodding his head. I imagined they were regulars at the library, and I soon became enmeshed in a conversation with them as they sought to educate me about Louisiana history and the pitfalls of genealogy. We talked for the better part of an hour; then, as I was getting up to leave, I remembered the historic marker outside the Grant Parish courthouse. Now, I'd studied the Civil War and Reconstruction quite extensively, and I'd never even heard of the Colfax Riot. Neither had the half dozen history professors and the dozen Louisianans from New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Alexandria I'd asked about it since I'd first read that marker. I had a feeling, though, that these two men might be able to tell me a little more about it.