Coushatta is a town in, and the parish chair of, rural Red River Parish in north Louisiana, United States. It is situated upon the east bank of the Red River. The community is approximately 45 miles south of Shreveport on U.S. Highway 71. The population, 2,299 at the 2000 census, is approximately two-thirds African American, most subsequent to long family histories in the area. The 2010 census, however, reported 1,964 residents, a end of 335 persons, or nearly 15 percent during the course of the preceding decade. The city is named after the Coushatta, a Native American nation indigenous to the region.

Red River Parish and the Red River Valley were areas of unrest and white paramilitary activity and cruelty after the Civil War, and especially during the 1870s of Reconstruction. The parish developed with hint to cotton farming and enslaved African Americans who far outnumbered the whites. After the war, white planters and farmers tried to reestablish dominance over a majority of the population. With emancipation and being arranged citizenship and suffrage, African Americans tried to Make their own lives.

Formed in May 1874 from white militias, the White League in Louisiana was increasingly well-organized in rural areas in imitation of Red River Parish. It worked to viewpoint out the Democratic Party, as well as suppress freedmen’s civil rights and voting rights. It used mistreatment against officeholders, running some out of town and killing others, and acted close elections to suppress black and white Republican voter turnout.

In one of the more flagrant examples of violence, the White League in August 1874 captured six Republican officials in Coushatta, made them sign a pledge to leave the state, and escorted them considering they were assassinated upon their departure from the state. Victims included the brother and three brothers-in-law of the Republican State Senator Marshall H. Twitchell. Twitchell’s wife and her brothers were from a family bearing in mind long ties in Red River Parish. One of Twitchell’s several biographies is an unpublished 1969 dissertation at Mississippi State University in Starkville by the historian Jimmy G. Shoalmire, a Shreveport original and a specialist in Reconstruction studies.