The March on Washington, 50 years ago this past week, is often viewed as the zenith of the American Civil Rights Movement. During that same week in Louisiana, however, violence in a Mississippi River town marked something closer to its nadir, at least regionally.
By 1963, three years after the sit-ins on Canal Street and the initial integration of public schools, activists in lower Louisiana shifted their focus to voting rights. Toward this end the Congress of Racial Equality had been conducting voter registration drives in Baton Rouge, and arrived to the nearby town of Plaquemine on word that officials had gerrymandered black precincts out of city elections.