Editing Washington, Louisiana (section)

==History==
Washington was founded in 1720 as  a French trading post. In 1774 the first church, ''La Iglesia paroquial de la Immaculada Conception del Puesto de Opelousas'' was started and the post became known as Church Landing. In 1835 the town was incorporated under the current name. It is the third oldest town in Louisiana.
<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |date= |title=Town of Washington, LA |url=https://townofwashingtonla.net/our-history |access-date=January 15, 2025 |website=town of Washington |language=en-US}}</ref>

In the early 1800s smaller steamboats started traveling up [[Bayou Teche]] to the Opelousas River, renamed [[Bayou Courtableau]], at Barre’s Landing (named after Alexander Charles Barré) that became [[Port Barre, Louisiana|Port Barre]], then to Washington where there was a bottleneck as the steamboats could not turn around. In 1848 Captain George W. Haygood completed a steamboat turnaround and Washington became an inland port.<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |date= |title=Bayou Courtableau Steamboat Turnaround |url=https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=114285 |access-date=January 15, 2025 |website=HMdb.org |language=en-US}}</ref>

The [[Grimble Bell School]] was located in Washington and was the first African American school in the parish when it opened in the 1830s; it was forced closed by white vigilantes in 1860.<ref name="HartleyCarola">{{Cite web |last=Hartley |first=Carola Lillie |date=February 22, 2020 |title=Parlons Opelousas: History of African American education in Opelousas |url=https://www.dailyworld.com/story/news/2020/02/22/african-american-education-opelousas/4843340002/ |access-date=February 19, 2024 |website=[[Daily World (Opelousas)|Daily World]] |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Dormon |first=James H. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=97exa6i6TmQC&pg=PA79 |title=Creoles of Color of the Gulf South |date=1996 |publisher=University of Tennessee Press |isbn=978-0-87049-917-3 |pages=79}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Neidenbach |first=Elizabeth Clark |date=April 28, 2011 |title=Free People of Color from the Early American Period through the Civil War |url=https://64parishes.org/entry/free-people-of-color-from-the-early-american-period-through-the-civil-war-adaptation |access-date=February 19, 2024 |website=[[64 Parishes]]}}</ref>

During the [[American Civil War]], some of [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]] [[General]] [[Nathaniel P. Banks]]' forces occupied several towns in the region, including Washington, which was then larger than the parish seat of [[Opelousas, Louisiana|Opelousas]].<ref>[[John D. Winters]], ''The Civil War in Louisiana'', [[Baton Rouge]]: [[Louisiana State University Press]], 1963, {{ISBN|0-8071-0834-0}}, p. 233</ref> Banks' men stripped the towns of supplies of all kinds, including food, livestock, cotton, and other trade goods; the total value of the goods was estimated at more than ten million dollars.<ref>Winters, p. 237</ref>

After the war, there was extensive white resistance to the emancipation and enfranchisement of former slaves or [[freedmen]]. Some insurgents based in Opelousas formed the Seymour Knights, a unit of the [[Knights of the White Camellia]]. In the fall of 1868 before the election, white Democrats in Washington rejected African Americans who sought to join their political party, and the Seymour Knights physically drove the blacks out of the city.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}

A series of events followed in which blacks marched on Opelousas and 29 men were captured. All but two were executed without trial, and whites rampaged against blacks in the parish seat and surrounding area, killing an estimated 50 to 200-300 African Americans, in what is known as the [[Opelousas Massacre]].