From slavery to freedom to Reconstruction — after centuries of terror, blacks in America were told they would get their rights. What they got was draft riots and lynchings. Much has been written about this period of the late nineteenth century, but little is known about an event that claimed the lives of nearly every black man in a small Louisiana town: the Colfax Massacre of 1873. Lalita Tademy, author of the highly acclaimed debut novel Cane River, brings this tragedy to life in Red River, a detailed and horrifying exploration of betrayal and renewal, of the massacre and its devastating impact on her father’s people.
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