What the states could not accomplish by law, they were more than willing to achieve by violence. The wholesale slaughter of African Americans in Colfax, Louisiana (1873), Wilmington, North Carolina (1898), and Ocoee, Florida (1920), resulted in the loss of hundreds of lives simply because whites were enraged that black people had voted.64 As states encouraged or winked at the murders, as killers stepped over the bodies and gobbled up the stolen land and property, black political power evaporated in a hail of gunfire and flames.
