Colfax, LA

Colfax is the parish-seat town of Grant Parish, founded in 1869 on the northeast side of the Red River. Before the town took its present name, the landing was known as Calhoun's Landing after cotton and sugar planter Meredith Calhoun. The river made Colfax a working port and tied it to the farms and plantations of central Louisiana. Grant Parish was created during Reconstruction, and the courthouse became the center of a violent struggle over who would hold political power.

On Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, an armed white militia attacked Black freedmen and Republican officials defending the Colfax courthouse. More than a hundred Black people were killed; contemporary military records named 105 Black victims and identified another group whose names were not recorded. The event is remembered as the Colfax Massacre, and the Colfax Memorial Organization now works to honor the victims and support Black students in Grant Parish. The 2020 census counted 1,428 residents. Colfax's Red River setting and its Reconstruction history remain inseparable from the town's name.