home — about caddo forward — newsletter signup — f.a.q. — contact |
Historical Context of Monument’s Construction1860s – 1920s in Caddo Parish
Nevertheless, these reforms were met with harsh and often violent resistance from some whites in Caddo Parish. There were 566 homicides in Caddo in the decade following the Civil War, giving the parish its nickname, “Bloody Caddo.” Violence towards African-Americans was highly-organized and often occurred en masse; about forty percent of white men in Caddo between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were involved in these murders. “Caddo Parish Bulldozers,” those who participated in violently intimidating blacks and Republicans, lynched at least twenty-one blacks in Caddo from 1900 to 1923. This violence was encouraged in The Shreveport Times, the most widely circulated newspaper in the area, which urged white citizens in Caddo to participate in violence against Republicans and African-Americans leading up to the 1868 election. In the months before the election, almost 200 blacks were killed.
It was within this period of deep and widespread resistance to the political and civil advancement of African-Americans that the Caddo Parish Policy Jury voted on June 18th, 1903 to allow the United Daughters of the Confederacy to erect a Confederate monument in a plot of land outside the Caddo Parish courthouse.
|