Election riot of 1874

The White League had formed in 1874 as an insurgent, white Democratic paramilitary group in Grant Parish and nearby parishes[1] on the Red River of the South in Louisiana. The League was founded by members of the white militia who had committed the Colfax Massacre in Louisiana in 1873, killing numerous black people in order to turn out Republicans from parish offices as part of the disputed 1872 gubernatorial election. Historians such as George Rabe consider groups such as the White League and Red Shirts as a "military arm" of the Democratic Party. Their members worked openly to disrupt Republican meetings, and attacked and intimidated voters to suppress black voting. They courted press attention rather than operating secretly, as had the Ku Klux Klan.

Chapters spread to Alabama and other states in the Deep South. A similar paramilitary group was the Red Shirts, which originated in Mississippi and became active in the Carolinas. Both paramilitary groups contributed to the Democrats' regaining control in the state legislatures in the late 1870s. The Red Shirts were still active in the 1890s and were implicated in the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 in North Carolina.[2]

On election day, November 3, 1874, an Alabama chapter of the White League repeated actions taken earlier that year in Vicksburg, Mississippi. They invaded Eufaula, killing at least seven black Republicans, injuring at least 70 more, and driving off more than 1,000 unarmed Republicans from the polls.[3] The group moved on to Spring Hill, where members stormed the polling place, destroying the ballot box, and killing the 16-year-old son of a white Republican judge in their shooting.[4]

The White League refused to count any Republican votes cast. But, Republican voters reflected the black majority in the county, as well as white supporters. They outnumbered Democratic voters by a margin greater than two to one. The League declared the Democratic candidates victorious, forced Republican politicians out of office, and seized every county office in Barbour County in a kind of coup d'état.[5] Such actions were repeated in other parts of the South in the 1870s, as Democrats sought to regain political dominance in states with black majorities and numerous Republican officials. In Barbour County, the Democrats auctioned off as "slaves" (for a maximum cost of $2 per month), or otherwise silenced all Republican witnesses to the events. They were intimidated from testifying to the coup if the case went to federal court.[5]

Due to the actual and threatened violence by the White League, black voters began to stay away from the polls in Barbour County. They no longer voted in sufficient number to retain a majority of Republican officeholders. White conservative Democrats continued to intimidate black voters through the late 19th century, especially after a Populist-Republican alliance elected some Fusion candidates in the Deep South, as well as local Republican officials in many states.

In 1875, Mississippi Democrats also used widespread intimidation to control local elections, which became known as the Mississippi Plan. Such violence was adopted by chapters in other cities and counties. Democrats regained control of Alabama and other state legislatures. Reconstruction ended with the withdrawal of federal troops as part of a compromise to elect Rutherford B Hayes.

In 1901 the Democratic-dominated state legislature in Alabama, like other southern states, followed Mississippi's lead to end such election-related violence by passing a new constitution that effectively disenfranchised most black people by such measures as poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and white primaries. Poll taxes and literacy tests also disfranchised tens of thousands of poor whites in Alabama. Although the Democratic legislature had promised whites would not be affected by the new measures, politicians wanted to preclude poor whites allying with black people in Populist-Republican coalitions.[6] With disfranchisement achieved, the legislature passed laws imposing racial segregation and other elements of Jim Crow, a system that lasted well into the 1960s. At that time, the gains of the Civil Rights Movement led to Congressional passage of legislation in the mid-1960s that prohibited segregation and began to enforce the constitutional rights for minorities to suffrage and equal protection under the law.

In 1979, to commemorate the election riot, the state erected a historical marker located at the intersection of U.S. Highway 82 and Barbour County Road 49 near Comer, Alabama.

It reads:

Near here is Old Spring Hill, the site of one of the polling places for the November 3, 1874 local, state and national elections. Elias M. Keils, scalawag and Judge of the City Court of Eufaula, was United States supervisor at the Spring Hill ballot box. William, his 16 year-old son, was with him. After the polls closed, a mob broke into the building, extinguished the lights, destroyed the poll box and began shooting. During the riot, Willie Keils was mortally wounded. The resulting Congressional investigation received national attention. This bloody episode marked the end of the Republican domination in Barbour County. - Erected by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission, 1979.

• Wilentz, Sean (May 13, 2010). "Who's Buried in the History Books?". The New York Times. Retrieved May 24, 2011.
• "Historic Markers » Alabama", Historic Chattahoochee Commission