The Negroes themselves had no land, no mules, no presses nor cotton gins, and they could not acquire sufficient capital to obtain these things.

They were made victims of fraud in signing contracts which they could not understand and had to suffer the consequent privations and want aggravated by robbery and murder by the Ku Klux Klan.[3] The murder of Negroes was common throughout the South and especially in Louisiana.

In 1875, General Sheridan said that as many as 3,500 persons had been killed and wounded in that State, the great majority of whom being Negroes; that 1,884 were killed and wounded in 1868, and probably 1,200 between 1868 and 1875.

Frightful massacres occurred in the parishes of Bossier, Catahoula, Saint Bernard, Grant and Orleans.

As most of these murders were for political reasons, the offenders were regarded by their communities as heroes rather than as criminals.