Members of an Alabama chapter of the White League, a paramilitary group supporting the Democratic Party's drive to regain political power in the county and state, used firearms to ambush black Republicans at the polls.
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.
[6][7] 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.
[9] 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.
White 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.
Historian Dan T. Carter concludes that "the triumph of white supremacy came at great cost, not only to the defeated Republican Party, but to the processes of government.
Violence, already endemic in southern society, became institutionalized, and community leaders transformed the willful corruption and manipulation of elections into a patriotic virtue.
[12] With disfranchisement achieved, the legislature passed laws imposing racial segregation and other elements of Jim Crow, a system that lasted well into the 1960s.
The marker effectively blurred events – and their significance – in which the 1874 election supervisor Elias Kiels was assaulted and his son, Willie, was murdered while they were counting votes.
And three decades later, Braxton Bragg Comer, would benefit from the exclusion of Black voters in Jim Crow Alabama, being elected governor of the state.
[13] The "historical" marker reads: The 1874 election massacre is not mentioned in the Alabama state history curriculum, so the population does not widely remember the event.