[3] The plantation economy was based on cotton cultivation, highly dependent on enslaved African labor before the American Civil War.

Because of the mechanization of agriculture, many blacks left the parish during the mid-20th century Great Migration to seek better job opportunities elsewhere.

The state legislature during Reconstruction created the parish in 1871, one of a number established to develop Republican Party strength.

He was elected in 1870 as a Republican to the state legislature and filled four local offices with his brother and three brothers-in-law, the latter native to the parish.

[5]: 550  The extended agricultural depression and poor economy of the late 19th century aggravated social tensions, as both freedmen and whites struggled to survive and to manage new labor arrangements.

[5]: 551  The White League also killed five to twenty freedmen who had accompanied the Twitchell relatives and were witnesses to the vigilante acts.

The murders contributed to Republican Governor William Pitt Kellogg's request to President Grant for more Federal troops to help control the state.

Ordinary Southerners wrote to President Grant at the White House describing the terrible conditions of violence and fear they lived under during these times.

[4] In 1898 the state achieved disfranchisement of most blacks and many poor whites through a new constitution that created numerous barriers to voter registration.

[8] To seek better opportunities and escape the oppression of segregation, underfunded education, and disfranchisement, thousands of African Americans left Red River and other rural parishes in the Great Migration north and west.

At this time many African Americans from Louisiana went to California, where the defense industry associated with World War II was growing and workers were needed.

As in other southern states, recent decades have brought a realignment in politics in Presidential elections, with the conservative white majority of the parish voting for Republican U.S. President George W. Bush in his 2004 reelection.

Red River was one of only three parishes that did not vote for the Republican gubernatorial candidate, U.S. Representative Bobby Jindal in the October 20, 2007, jungle primary.

By the 2020 United States census, there were 7,620 people, 3,372 households, and 1,984 families residing in the parish, and its racial makeup was predominantly non-Hispanic white and Black or African American.

[24] Red River Parish is represented in the Louisiana State Senate by Republican Louie Bernard of District 31.

[27] Coushatta is the home of C Troop 2-108th Cavalry Squadron, a unit dating back to the Confederate Army during the Civil War under the nickname "the Wildbunch".