You want to really increase support for gun control? Let a bunch of Black folk start quoting this stuff as the reason they are second amendment activists.
To Keep and Bear Arms
By Charles Lane
Saturday, March 22, 2008; A13
Nearly 135 years ago, the United States experienced what may have been the worst one-day slaughter of blacks by whites in its history. On April 13, 1873, in the tiny village of Colfax, La., white paramilitaries attacked a lightly armed force of freedmen assembled in a local courthouse. By the time the Colfax Massacre was over, more than 60 African American men lay shot, burned or stabbed to death. Most were killed after they had surrendered.
Though it caused a national sensation in post-Civil War America, this horrible incident has been largely overlooked by historians. It deserves fresh study today not only to illuminate the human cost of Reconstruction's defeat but also to enrich our understanding of constitutional history. Some of the most relevant lessons relate to the issue at the heart of District of Columbia v. Heller, the case on the D.C. gun control law currently before the Supreme Court: whether the Constitution guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Newsvine
Furl
Google
Yahoo
"Undying Hatred"
Colfax, Louisiana Massacre of 1873
Testimony of a white witness and participant before U.S. Congress:
It seemed that there were two factions of negroes in the court house; one, mostly young darkies who had wished to surrender earlier, but had been prevented by some older negroes who were filled with undying hatred for the white race. These latter were under the command of Alex Tilman. Mr. Hadnot, Sidney Harris, A. I. Hopkins, C. A. Duplissey and several others, seeing the flag of truce and being desirous of making terms of capitulation as quickly as possible and letting the negroes escape from the burning building, rushed up to the court house. When they reached the door a volley was fired at them by the Tilman faction, mortally wounding Mr. Hadnot, and Mr. Harris who fell in the doorway.
Infuriated at this cowardly and treacherous murder of their comrades who had been thus lured to their death by the false flag of truce, the whites slaughtered many of the negroes as they rushed from the burning building, and many were ridden down in the open fields and shot without mercy. Those lying wounded on the court house square were pinned to the ground by bayonets. By four o'clock all firing had ceased and about forty of the fleeing "black sons of Canon," as the Rev. Smith called them, were put under a guard and taken to an "old garden surrounded by a picket fence, ostensibly to bring them to Alexandria to jail."
Late that afternoon, said Mr. Duplissey, "Captain Dave Paul and Mr. Yawn came walking by me and says, "We got most of them, but the man which we want. We don't see him among the dead." I says, "examine them carefully, maybe you can find him there (in the garden). We walked down the line and there was a negro with his hat pulled down over his eyes. Jim Yawn was laying for the man who killed Jeff (in 1871). Yawn lifted his hat up and grabbed him by the coat and says, 'I got you,' and took him about twenty steps and shot him."