#thibodaux massacre

[a-dark-time]

The Thibodaux Massacre

The Thibodaux Massacre was nothing less than an act of violent racism that ended the lives of up to 60 African Americans.

"On November 23, 1887, a mass shooting of African-American farm workers in Louisiana left some 60 dead. Bodies were dumped in unmarked graves while the white press cheered a victory against a fledgling black union."

This information taken from the Smithsonian Magazine highlights the extremity of the situation as a whole.

Picture taken from the Nicholls library database.

"Murder, foul murder has been committed, and the victims were inoffensive, law-abiding Negroes. Assassins more cruel, more desperate, more desperate than any who had hitherto practiced their nefarious business in Louisiana have been shooting down, like so many cattle, the negroes in and around Thibodaux, Lafourche parish, La."

Quote taken from African American Newspaper.

This was a tragic part of history, and it should be learned about, a way to bring awareness to the horrible situation that African Americans used to live in. The massacre was a result of a labor strike blown out of proportion by the white officials in charge. It should never be forgotten that innocent people were killed that day as a result of wanton racism and power hungry officials.

[lboogie1906]

The Thibodaux Massacre took place in Thibodaux, Louisiana on November 23, 1887. Black sugar cane workers, determined to unionize for a living wage, chose to combine their minimal power during the crucial harvest season. Their actions sparked a massacre.

The cane workers protested the harsh working conditions, long hours, and starvation wages. They were fed subsistence meals and paid as little as 42 cents a day with scrip which could only be used in plantation stores.

The Knights of Labor encouraged the sugar cutters to demand better treatment and $1.25 a day in cash. They tried unsuccessfully to organize the workers in 1874, 1880, and 1883. In 1887, they waited until the rolling season was almost underway to propose making a stand. The planters were unable to attract enough strikebreakers from out of the area because of the low pay they offered. Junius Bailey, a schoolteacher and the president of the Terrebonne chapter of the Knights of Labor went to the growers with the sugar cutter’s demands.

The growers refused to negotiate and fired the union members on November 22, the strike was called and for the next three weeks, an estimated 10,000 workers went on strike.

White vigilantes locked down Thibodaux and went door to door attempting to identify strikers and demanding passes from any Blacks going in and out of town. As morning broke on November 23 two white guards were injured, and the massacre began.

The planters persuaded Governor Samuel D. McEnery, a Democrat and former sugar planter, to unleash several units of the all-white state militia. The militia brought a .45 caliber Gatling gun while the paramilitary groups set up outside of the Thibodaux courthouse. Both the militia and white vigilantes went door to door shooting suspected strikers and those unlucky enough to cross their path.

The indiscriminate killing left approximately 60 people dead. The bodies of many of the strikers were dumped in unmarked graves. Those who survived hid in the woods and swamps as the killings spread to other plantations. It was one of the deadliest episodes in US labor history. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[ausetkmt]

"Forgotten Slave Cemetery Uncovered After a Century of Neglect | Shell Convent Refinery"

CONVENT, La. (AP) — A major oil company is taking steps to honor once-forgotten slaves buried on its land west of New Orleans in an area where sugar plantations once abounded, an effort that some hope will grow into a larger movement to recognize and protect such cemeteries around the country.

The Shell Oil Company marked, blocked off and spruced up the tracts near its Convent refinery west of New Orleans and held dedication ceremonies in March, about five years after archaeologists confirmed the presence of slave burial grounds in 2013. The company also has been working with the nearby River Road African American Museum to arrange commemorative events and accommodate visitors.

It's the latest example of the South's decades-long path to acknowledging unsavory aspects of its history.

For Kathe Hambrick, the director of the River Road museum, the work is the culmination of years of efforts to ensure that Shell honored and remembered those buried on what used to be the Monroe and Bruslie sugar plantations, just two of many plantations that once abounded along the road. Hambrick said there are likely hundreds more such graveyards between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Some of the restored plantations are themselves undergoing a rediscovery, moving away from their romanticized "Gone With the Wind" portrayals of the past to offer a more realistic look at the South's history of human bondage. One, the Whitney Plantation in the town of Wallace, opened in 2015 as a full-fledged museum with an unvarnished look at the cruelties of slavery.

"We ought to work together to figure out how ... to evaluate the things that we want to preserve, protect and teach about in terms of how this country was really developed," said A.P. Tureaud Jr., the son of a revered New Orleans civil rights lawyer who counts slaves and slaveowners among his ancestors.

Tureaud, who traveled from his current home in New York to attend March dedication ceremonies for the Monroe and Bruslie sites, has joined with Hambrick in an effort to give slave gravesites federal protection. The two have brought their idea to the attention of U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, whose district includes most of New Orleans.

Vincent deForest, a civil rights activist who helped preserve two slave cemeteries in Washington, D.C., said he and others are urging the Congressional Black Caucus to get involved. DeForest would like to see the National Parks Service undertake a study to identify ways to preserve such sites in every state.

"The wholeness of the living is diminished when the ancestors are not honored," deForest said, quoting one of his favorite epitaphs.

Sandra Arnold, a fellow at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University, is leading a project to compile a database of slave burial grounds, but notes there is a dearth of records.

"It's as if their humanity is erased," Arnold said.

Thurston Hahn, an archaeologist with Baton Rouge-based Coastal Environments Inc., said it's reasonable to believe many of the slave graveyards along the River Road have been farmed over or covered by levees or petrochemical plants.

"The problem with the slave cemeteries — we just do not know where they are," he said.

It's a problem researchers working farther south, in the Louisiana city of Thibodaux, can relate to.

Anthropologists and geophysics experts from Tulane University are among those using radar and soil samples in hopes of discovering the burial sites of dozens of African-American victims of Reconstruction-era racial violence that came to be known as the Thibodaux Massacre.

The descendants of massacre victims and Confederate plantation owners have formed a committee to honor the victims of that violence and, if possible, find a mass grave. If a grave is eventually discovered, they want any remains exhumed and reburied on consecrated ground.

No such grave has yet been discovered.

The Monroe and Bruslie sites were found during land surveys commissioned by Shell as it prepared for a construction project that has since been abandoned for economic reasons not related to the cemetery discoveries.

Ground-penetrating radar and the careful scraping away of topsoil exposed variations of color and texture in the dirt, indicating the presence of graves, Hahn said. The remains of the slaves were not uncovered and the number of graves could only be estimated.

"We don't want to disturb them at all," Hahn said. "We are just looking for a shaft that the gravedigger dug to put the burial in."

Hugues Bourgogne, general manager of the Convent refinery, said Shell wants to honor and respect those buried at the sites. In addition to protecting, preserving and marking the cemeteries, Shell has installed iron benches where visitors can sit, reflect and pay their respects.

Visitation opportunities are limited, however. One day a year will be set aside for planned activities at the sites and Shell will work with descendants and other interested groups to arrange safe access at other times, he said.

Malaika Favorite, an artist and lifelong area resident, says she knows she has ancestors who were enslaved and buried at plantations, but hasn't been able to isolate the burial sites. Now she feels a little closer to doing that.

"Just making this step with the graves here is a step forward," she said. "And we need more of that."

[dr-archeville]

News reporters and anchors have repeatedly referred to the recent tragedy in Las Vegas as the “worst mass shooting in U.S. history.”  Like all things that are constantly repeated, the proclamation has become fact.

In 2013 a report by the Congressional Research Service defined a public mass shooting (pdf) this way:

incidents occurring in relatively public places, involving four or more deaths — not including the shooter(s) — and gunmen who select victims somewhat indiscriminately.  The violence in these cases is not a means to an end such as robbery or terrorism.

So, according to that broad definition, we wondered: Is 64-year-old Stephen Paddock the worst mass shooter in the long history of America?  Does the Las Vegas incident qualify as the “deadliest” mass-shooting incident?

Only if you don’t count black people.

On Monday, The Root 100 honoree and data scientist Samuel Sinyangwe tweeted this:

Las Vegas shooting isn't deadliest mass shooting in US history. The deadliest mass shootings were acts of white supremacist terrorism. (1/x)

— Samuel Sinyangwe (@samswey)

October 2, 2017

He is right.  The nearsightedness of America’s historical vision is not only hyperbolic, but that vision often has a blind spot when it comes to people of color.  There are countless incidents in which black and brown people were killed in incidents far worse than what happened in Vegas.  Here are some of them:

The Bombing of Black Wall Street

On June 1, 1921, white rioters looted and burned the black area of Tulsa, Okla., known as Black Wall Street.  Angry at the economic success of blacks in the area (the area became known as “Black Wall Street” because of the number of successful businesses and wealthy black inhabitants), white Tulsans accused a black man of raping a girl and attacked the area.

While white citizens used dynamite and planes to bomb the city, leaving more than 8,000 people homeless, eyewitness accounts charge that the vast majority of the people killed (estimates range from 80 to 300) died because the city’s law-enforcement officers deputized every able-bodied white man and handed out weapons from the city’s armory.

Historian Scott Greensworth describes it this way:

Shortly after the fighting had broken out at the courthouse, a large number of whites -- many of whom had only a little while earlier been members of the would-be lynch mob — gathered outside of police headquarters on Second Street.  There, perhaps as many as five-hundred white men and boys were sworn-in by police officers as “Special Deputies.”  Some were provided with badges or ribbons indicating their new status.  Many, it appears, also were given specific instructions.  According to Laurel G. Buck, a white bricklayer who was sworn-in as one of these ‘Special Deputies”, a police officer bluntly told him to “Get a gun and get a nigger.”

Shortly thereafter, whites began breaking into downtown sporting goods stores, pawnshops, and hardware stores, stealing — or “borrowing” as some would later claim — guns and ammunition ... a Tulsa police officer helped to dole out the guns that were taken from his store.

More bloodshed soon followed, as whites began gunning down any African Americans that they discovered downtown.

There is no official death toll, but most historians agree that the count was around 250, because many African Americans were buried in mass graves, while others fled the city.  No one was ever convicted of a single crime.

Bloody Island Massacre

In the mid-1800s, Charles Stone and Andre Kelsey began enslaving the Native American Pomo of Clearlake, Calif.  They forced the Pomo to bring them their daughters for sexual pleasure.  They killed the Pomo for trying to escape.  They only “paid them” 4 cups of wheat per day.  One day, two of the Pomo, Shuk and Xasis, went to look for more food, borrowing Stone and Kelsey’s horses.  When it became apparent that they wouldn’t find food, the men knew that Stone and Kelsey would kill them if they found out that they had used their horses, so they killed Stone and Kelsey instead.

Capt. Nathaniel Lyon was searching for the men to punish them and brought soldiers and white civilians.  When they found members of the Pomo tribe hiding on Bloody Island, near Clearlake, they slaughtered 60 of the island’s 400 inhabitants.  On their way back, they killed another 75 on the Russia River for good measure.

Lyon was never disciplined.

Colfax Massacre

On April 13, 1873, black people in Colfax, La., began gathering at the courthouse and digging trenches.  They were afraid that whites, disgruntled by Republican rule and a court decision that allowed blacks to vote, were about to attack.  A civilian militia of angry white men surrounded the courthouse and convinced the blacks to hand in their weapons and surrender.  The black citizens complied.

And that’s when the massacre started.

As many as 40 times more blacks were killed than whites.  They invaded the courthouse and killed unarmed men.  They hunted down women and children trying to hide in the surrounding woods.  They dumped bodies in the river.  They took 50 prisoners but later summarily killed them one by one.  Historian Eric Foner called it “the bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the Reconstruction era ... ”

At least 150 black citizens were killed.  Three white men died.  No one was ever convicted of a crime.

Thibodaux Massacre

In 1887 nearly 100,000 black sugar-plantation workers in Thibodaux, La., decided to protest their unfair treatment, low wages and the holding of workers’ wages until the end of the season, forcing them into a kind of indentured servitude.

In response, Judge Taylor Beattie, who owned a sugar plantation, declared martial law and paid a 300-man private militia to keep the peace.  The militia ordered every black person in the city to show a pass or leave.  The blacks who didn’t were rounded up with their families and executed.  In all, between 35 and 100 blacks were killed.  The count is not official because some bodies were burned.

No one was ever ... do I have to keep saying this?

The Elaine Massacre

In 1919, black sharecroppers gathered outside of Elaine, Ark., to listen to Robert L. Hill explain how sharecropping was unfair and to advocate for voting rights.  The meeting was guarded by Union troops, but when white men showed up at the meeting, shots were exchanged.  The sheriff then called for a posse to find the people responsible.

Five hundred to 1,000 white men rushed in from across the country to hunt down the killers and quell the “Negro insurrection.”  When it was over, 237 black people were dead.  Then all-white juries charged and sentenced 12 blacks to death.  Another 36 pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, and 67 were convicted of other crimes.

Three white people died.

Others

We will not count the 1864 Fort Pillow massacre in Tennessee, when Confederate troops mowed down 164 black soldiers who were surrendering, because that is officially a war crime.  The same goes for the 1864 Saltville Massacre in Virginia.  The Achulet Massacre of Native Americans in California in 1854 doesn’t count, either, because they were killed for their land, so technically that is a robbery.  Some say as many as 150 were killed in Rosewood, Fla., in 1923, but the official count is six.

The mass deaths at Philadelphia’s MOVE headquarters in 1985 don’t make the list because law-enforcement officers bombed the men, women and children living there.  And the time whites nearly wiped out the Wiyot Native American tribe in 1860 doesn’t belong on this list because the Wiyot were killed with knives and hatchets as well as guns.

While all loss of life is tragic, on the scale of white people killing people of color, Paddock wouldn’t even make the all-star team.  But, like all mediocre white guys, regardless of historical facts, he will be thought of as “great.”

Many additional massacres mentioned in the comments sections.

Speaking of, from the comments section: “The depressing thing is that you can easily make a legitimate argument that America has an extensive and textured enough history with these sorts of massacres that breaking them up into multiple categories provides meaningful context.“

[thibodauxmassacre]

The Knights of Labor tried to organize the workers in 1874, 1880, and in 1883 but were blocked all three times. Then, in 1887, the Knights urged workers to wait until the rolling season was close to propose a stand. This left a narrow window for growers to operate. Growers refused to negotiate and fired the union members on November 22: the strike was called. An estimated 10,000 workers went on strike, affecting four parishes, Lafourche, Terrebonne, St. Mary, and Assumption.

This is when, on November 23rd, white vigilantes locked down Thibodaux, going door to door to identify strikers and demanding passes from any blacks going in and out. As morning came, shots rang out, and two white guards were injured.

The resulting massacre left approximately 30-60 people dead. The bodies of many of the strikers were dumped in unmarked graves, and remain missing to this day.

[yasbxxgie]

On November 23, 1887, a mass shooting of African-American farm workers in Louisiana left some 60 dead. Bodies were dumped in unmarked graves while the white press cheered a victory against a fledgling black union. It was one of the bloodiest days in United States labor history, and while statues went up and public places were named for some of those involved, there is no marker of the Thibodaux Massacre.

Days after, a local planter widow Mary Pugh wrote, “I think this will settle the question of who is to rule the nigger or the white man for the next fifty years.” It was a far-sighted comment— black farm workers in the South wouldn’t have the opportunity to unionize for generations.

Years after the Thirteenth Amendment brought freedom, cane cutters’ working lives were already “barely distinguishable” from slavery, argues journalist and author John DeSantis. (His book, The Thibodaux Massacre: Racial Violence and the 1887 Sugar Cane Labor Strike, is an excellent and compelling account of the massacre.) With no land to own or rent, workers and their families lived in old slave cabins. They toiled in gangs, just like their ancestors had for nearly a century. Growers gave workers meals but paid famine wages of as little as 42 cents a day (91 cents per hour in today’s money, for a 12-hour shift).

Instead of cash, workers got scrip that bought basics at high prices at plantation stores.

But they had advantages that their counterparts in cotton areas lacked. Planters needed their labor, and growers living on thin margins failed to attract migrant laborers to replace local workers, especially in the crucial rolling season when the sugarcane needed to be cut and pressed in short order.

In the sugar parishes arcing through the southern part of the state from Berwick Bay to the Mississippi River, African-American men voted. The Republican Party, which supported black civil rights, was stronger in sugar country than anywhere else in the state. By the late 1860s, African-Americans became legislators or sheriffs, and black volunteer militias drilled, despite living and working conditions still bearing the marks of slavery.

In 1874, nine years after slavery ended in the United States, cane cutters demanded a second emancipation. They wanted a living wage, or at least the chance to rent on shares. Planters wanted to cut wages after the lean harvest of 1873-74 coincided with an economic recession, and while Louisiana growers produced 95 percent of the nation’s domestic sugar and molasses, they were losing market share to cheaper foreign sugars.

Sensing they were in a strong bargaining position, workers banded together in several sugar parishes, including St. Mary, Iberia, Terrebonne, and Lafourche, demanding cash wages of $1.25 per day, or $1.00 if meals were included.

But the growers refused, upset that African-American workers were demanding an end to their paternalistic work regime. So African-American leaders like Hamp Keys, a former Terrebonne Parish legislator, called a strike.

Keys led a march from Houma to Southdown Plantation in Terrebonne, rallying workers with a fiery speech. The sight of black protesters riled growers, and acting with their interests in mind, the parish’s African-American sheriff formed a posse of whites to face down strikers. Surprised at the opposition, Keys’s marchers retreated.

In the state capital of New Orleans (relocated to Baton Rouge in 1882), Republican Governor William Pitt Kellogg also backed growers. But he was under siege from the Louisiana White League, a paramilitary white supremacist group formed in 1874 to intimidate Republicans and keep African-Americans from voting. Despite Kellogg’s being a pro-growth moderate who favored low taxes, White Leaguers tried to oust him in a violent coup. The Battle of Liberty Place, as it was called, pitted white militiamen against federal troops and metropolitan police. Governor Kellogg was temporarily forced out of New Orleans. He returned under guard but would be Louisiana’s last Republican governor for more than 100 years.

America was retreating from Republican-led Reconstruction and abandoning civil rights. African-Americans in sugar regions kept the right to vote, but their influence in state elections was waning. As W. E. B. Du Bois put it in Black Reconstruction in America, “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again into slavery.”

Sugar workers attempted another strike in 1880, and both growers and workers resorted to sporadic violence. But time was on the growers’ side. African-Americans were being disarmed and thrown out of office, and some were leased out to hard labor for petty and trumped-up crimes. With few options available by 1887, Terrebonne sugar workers reached out to the Knights of Labor.

The Knights was the biggest and most powerful union in America. It began organizing African-American workers in 1883 in separate locals (a local is a bargaining unit of a broader union). Despite segregation, the Knights organized women and farm workers. And it made strides against Jim Crow. At the Knights’ 1886 national convention in Richmond, Virginia, leaders risked violence by insisting that a black delegate introduce Virginia’s segregationist governor.

Across the states of the former Confederacy, whites viewed organized labor as agitation that threatened the emerging Jim Crow order. Even in the North and Midwest, the Knights fought an uphill battle against authorities who sided with railroad and mine owners. Several states called out militias to break strikes during the late nineteenth century, but the Knights was at its peak of popularity in the 1880s.

In Louisiana, the Knights organized sugar workers into seven locals of 100 to 150 members each. Hamp Keys joined former black leaders like ex-sheriff William Kennedy. In August of 1887, the Knights met with the St. Mary branch of the Louisiana Sugar Planters Association asking for improved wages. And again the growers refused.

So the Knights raised the stakes in October of 1887 as the rolling season approached. Junius Bailey, a 29-year-old schoolteacher, served as local president in Terrebonne. His office sent a communique all over the region asking for $1.25 a day cash wages, and local workers’ committees followed up, going directly to growers with the same demand.

But instead of bargaining, growers fired union members. Planters like future Supreme Court Chief Justice Edward Douglass White kicked workers off the land, ordering any who stayed arrested. Siding with growers, Democratic newspapers circulated false reports of black-on-white violence. “The most vicious and unruly set of negroes,” were at the Rienzi Plantation near Thibodaux, the New Orleans Daily Picayune reported. “The leader of them said to-day that no power on earth could remove them unless they were moved as corpses.”

As the cane ripened, growers called on the governor to use muscle against the strikers. And Samuel D. McEnery, Democratic governor and former planter, obliged, calling for the assistance of several all-white Louisiana militias under the command of ex-Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard. One group toted a .45 caliber Gatling gun--a hand-cranked machine gun--around two parishes before parking it in front of the Thibodaux courthouse. An army cannon was set up in front of the jail.

Then the killings started. In St. Mary, the Attakapas Rangers joined a sheriff’s posse facing down a group of black strikers. When one of the workers reached into a pocket, posse members opened fire on the crowd, “and four men were shot dead where they stood,” a newspaper reported. Terror broke the strike in St. Mary Parish.

In neighboring Terrebonne, some small growers came to the bargaining table, but larger planters hired strike-breakers from Vicksburg, Mississippi, 200 miles to the north, promising high wages and bringing them down on trains. The replacement workers were also African Americans, but they lacked experience in the canebrakes. As they arrived, militiamen evicted strikers.

And Thibodaux, in Lafourche Parish, was becoming a refuge for displaced workers. Some moved into vacant houses in town, while others camped along bayous and roadsides. Reports circulated of African-American women gossiping about a planned riot. Violence broke out in nearby Lockport on Bayou Lafourche when Moses Pugh, a black worker, shot and wounded Richard Foret, a planter, in self-defense. A militia unit arrived and mounted a bayonet charge on gathered workers, firing a volley in the air.

But the strike was gaining national attention. “Do the workingmen of the country understand the significance of this movement?” asked Washington D.C.’s National Republican, pointing out that sugar workers were “forced to work at starvation wages, in the richest spot under the American flag.” If forced back to the fields at gun point, no wage worker was safe from employer intimidation.

In Thibodaux, Lafourche Parish District Judge Taylor Beattie declared martial law. Despite being a Republican, Beattie was an ex-Confederate and White League member. He authorized local white vigilantes to barricade the town, identifying strikers and demanding passes from any African-American coming or going. And before dawn on Wednesday, the 23rd of November, pistol shots coming from a cornfield injured two white guards.

The response was a massacre. “There were several companies of white men and they went around night and day shooting colored men who took part in the strike,” said Reverend T. Jefferson Rhodes of the Moses Baptist Church in Thibodaux. Going from house to house, gunmen ordered Jack Conrad (a Union Civil War Veteran), his son Grant, and his brother-in-law Marcelin out of their house. Marcelin protested he was not a striker but was shot and killed anyway. As recounted in John DeSantis' book, Clarisse Conrad watched as her brother Grant “got behind a barrel and the white men got behind the house and shot him dead.” Jack Conrad was shot several times in the arms and chest. He lived and later identified one of the attackers as his employer.

One strike leader found in an attic was taken to the town common, told to run, and shot to pieces by a firing squad. An eyewitness told a newspaper that “no less than thirty-five negroes were killed outright,” including old and young, men and women. “The negroes offered no resistance; they could not, as the killing was unexpected.” Survivors took to the woods and swamps. Killings continued on plantations, and bodies were dumped in a site that became a landfill.

Workers returned to the fields on growers’ terms while whites cheered a Jim Crow victory. The Daily Picayune blamed black unionizers for the violence, saying that they provoked white citizens, suggesting the strikers “would burn the town and end the lives of the white women and children with their cane knives.” Flipping the narrative, the paper argued, “It was no longer a question of against labor, but one of law-abiding citizens against assassins.”

The union died with the strikers, and the assassins went unpunished. There was no federal inquiry, and even the coroner’s inquest refused to point a finger at the murderers. Sugar planter Andrew Price was among the attackers that morning. He won a seat in Congress the next year.

The massacre helped keep unions out of the South at just the moment it was industrializing. Textile manufacturers were moving out of New England, chasing low wages. And after textile factories closed in the 20th century, auto, manufacturing, and energy companies opened in southern states in part for the non-union workforce.

Southern black farm workers would not attempt to unionize again, until the 1930s when the Southern Tenant Farmers Union attracted both white and African American members. But it too was met by a violent racist backlash. The struggle for southern unions continued into the Civil Rights era. On the night before he was assassinated in Memphis, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech supporting striking sanitation workers. He urged his audience “to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. ...You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.”

Editor's Note, December 4, 2017: This story has been updated to further highlight the exceptional research conducted by author John DeSantis in his book. It has also been edited to remove the reference to Jack Conrad being a labor organizer. Due to an editing error, the photo caption incorrectly listed Laurel Valley as a place of refuge for African-American planters. [h/t]

[thethibodauxmassacre]

The Thibodaux Massacre occurred on November 23, 1887, after black cane workers unionize for a living wage during the coming frost and a crucial harvest season.  Only a generation removed from the bonds of slavery, many black workers in Louisiana found themselves in similar straits, with poor working conditions, poorer food, and "paid as little as 42 cents a day with scrip which could only be used in plantation stores" (Washington).

The Knights of Labor tried to organize the workers in 1874, 1880, and in 1883 but were blocked all three times. Then, in 1887, the Knights urged workers to wait until the rolling season was close to propose a stand. This left a narrow window for growers to operate. Growers refused to negotiate and fired the union members on November 22: the strike was called. An estimated 10,000 workers went on strike, affecting four parishes, Lafourche, Terrebonne, St. Mary, and Assumption.

This is when, on November 23rd, white vigilantes locked down Thibodaux, going door to door to identify strikers and demanding passes from any blacks going in and out. As morning came, shots rang out, and two white guards were injured.

With encouragement from planters, Governor Samuel D. McEnery, a Democrat and also a former sugar planter, unleashed units of the all-white state militia. Commanded by ex-Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, the ,militia brought a .45 caliber Gatling gun with them as well.

The resulting massacre left approximately 30-60 people dead. The bodies of many of the strikers were dumped in unmarked graves, and remain missing to this day in 2019.

Now recognized as one of the deadliest episodes in United States labor history, the Southern white press at the time haralded the action of the militia. Sugar planter Andrew Price, who participated in the attacks, won a seat in Congress in 1888. Statues were erected and public areas named after many involved in the unlawful killings. Black farm workers wouldn’t attempt to unionize in earnest again until the 1930s.

Historian John DeSantis chronicled his uncovering of the historical tragedy in his book The Thibodaux Massacre: Racial Violence and The 1887 Sugar Cane Labor Strike, and also in his article, "Tracing an Atrocity: How an Obscure Affidavit in the National Archives Unraveled a Historical Mystery." His research within Nicholls Archive and in the local community sparked national interest, and has since helped draw attention to the the Louisiana 1887 Memorial Committee, who strive to relocate the bodies of those lost in the massacre. His research has also helped local families find closure, and opened a voice in Lafourche Parish's African American community, long silenced with this story, which had been passed down several generations. The massacre has helped the community grow from its long-standing relationship with the Civil War and Jim Crow-era horrors, as stated from Wiletta Ferdinand, a great-great granddaughter of Jack Conrad, who was injured in the massacre and watched his own son die. "We do not feel you are dredging up the past, but putting a shining light on our history that otherwise we would not have known."

For more information about The Thibodaux Massacre:

​

The Thibodaux Massacre: Racial Violence and the 1887 Sugar Cane Labor Strike by John DeSantis (History Press, 2016).

“The Thibodaux massacre, 1887” a 2007 article on Libcom.org by Stephen Kliebert.

“The Thibodaux Massacre Left 60 African-Americans Dead and Spelled the End of Unionized Farm Labor in the South for Decades” a November 2017 Smithsonian Magazine article by Calvin Schermerhorn.

Louisiana 1887 Memorial Committee Works Cited: Washington, K. (2019, March 11) The Thibodaux Massacre (November 23, 1887). Retrieved from https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/the-thibodaux-massacre-november-23-1887/ ​ Desantis, John. “Tracing An Atrocity: How an Obscure Affidavit in the National Archives Unraveled a Historical Mystery.” Prologue, vol. 49, no. 2, Summer 2017, pp. 42–52. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=vth&AN=123893538&site=eds-live

[timetunnelcollective]

The Thibodaux massacre was a racial attack mounted by white paramilitary groups in Thibodaux, Louisiana in November 1887. It followed a three-week strike during the critical harvest season by an estimated 10,000 workers against sugar cane plantations. The strike was the largest in the industry and the first conducted by a formal labor organization, the Knights of Labor. The state sent in militia to protect strikebreakers, and work resumed on some plantations. Tensions broke out in violence on November 23, 1887, and the local white paramilitary forces attacked black workers and their families in Thibodaux. At least 35-50 black people were killed in the next three days and as many as 300 wounded or missing, making it one of the most violent labor disputes in U.S. history. Victims reportedly included elders, women and children. All those killed were African American.  The massacre, and passage by white Democrats of discriminatory state legislation, including disenfranchisement of most blacks, ended the organizing of sugar workers for decades, until the 1940s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thibodaux_massacre Illustrated by Or Yogev This piece is now part of our ongoing exhibition at Hansen House in Jerusalem. You are welcome to visit it. the show closes on July 30th 2019.

[deadassdiaspore]

On this day in 1887, an all-white Louisiana militia massacred 60 striking Black sugarcane workers and 2 strike leaders, destroying Black unionized farm labor in the American South for decades.

Years after US "officially ended" Black slavery with the 13th Amendment, Black sugarcane workers conditions were largely unchanged from slavery. They engaged in back-breaking labor for meager pay while living in old slave cabins.

To improve their situation, Black sugarcane workers reached out to Knights of Labor, who helped them strike for a living wage paid in cash every two weeks. But instead of bargaining, growers fired union members.

Louisiana’s governor called in all-white militias under the command of ex-Confederate General to break the strike. In Thibodaux, a judge authorized local white vigilantes to barricade the town, identifying strikers & demanding passes from any African-American coming or going.

A report of 2 white militia men being attacked sparked the massacre. White vigilantes rode through the neighborhood firing their weapons rounding up and killing striker’s family members. Killings continued on plantations, and bodies were dumped in a landfill.

The assassins went unpunished. There was no federal inquiry, and even the coroner’s inquest refused to point a finger at the perpetrators. Sugar planter Andrew Price was among the attackers that morning. He won a seat in Congress the next year.

Southern Black farm workers would not attempt to unionize again, until the 1930s when the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. But it too was met by a violent racist backlash. The struggle for southern unions continued into the Civil Rights era.

SOURCE: Friendly Neighborhood Comrade @SpiritofLenin

[delux2222]

On 23 Nov 1887, Black Louisiana sugarcane workers, in cooperation with the racially integrated Knights of Labor, had gone on strike at the beginning of November in 1887 over their meager pay issued in scrip, not cash. The scrip was redeemable only at the company store where excessive prices were charged. Years after the Thirteenth Amendment brought freedom, cane cutters’ working lives were already “barely distinguishable” from slavery, argues journalist and author John DeSantis. With no land to own or rent, workers and their families lived in old slave cabins. They toiled in gangs, just like their ancestors had for nearly a century. Growers gave workers meals but paid famine wages of as little as 42 cents a day (91 cents per hour in today’s money, for a 12-hour shift). On November 23, a brutal response to the strike was led by the Louisiana Militia, aided by bands of “prominent citizens.” They shot and killed 30 to 60 unarmed Black sugar workers and lynched two strike leaders in what became known as the Thibodaux Massacre

[unknown-songs]

BLACK LIVES MATTER

A list with black artists who have a song in the Unknown Songs That Should Be Known-playlist (Can be a black artist in a band or just solo-artist) (no specific genre)

Bull’s Eye - Blacknuss, Prince Prime - Funk Aftershow - Joe Fox - Alternative Hip-hop Strangers in the Night - Ben L’Oncle Soul - Soul Explore - Mack Wilds - R&B Something To Do - IGBO - Funk

Down With The Trumpets - Rizzle Kicks - Pop Dans ta ville - Dub Inc. - Reggae Dance or Die - Brooklyn Funk Essentials - Funk FACELESS - The PLAYlist, Glenn Lewis - R&B Tell Me Father - Jeangu Macrooy - Soul

Southern Boy - John The Conquerer - Blues Hard Rock Savannah Grass - Kes - Dancehall Dr. Funk - The Main Squeeze - Funk Seems I’m Never Tired of Loving You - Lizz Wright - Jazz Out of My Hands - TheColorGrey, Oddisee - Hip-Hop/Pop

Raised Up in Arkansas - Michael Burks - Blues Black Times - Sean Kuti, Egypt 80, Carlos Santana - Afrobeat Cornerstone - Benjamin Clementine - Indie Shine On - R.I.O., Madcon - Electronic Pop Bass On The Line - Bernie Worrell - Funk

When We Love - Jhené Aiko - R&B Need Your Love - Curtis Harding - Soul Too Dry to Cry - Willis Earl Beal - Folk Your House - Steel Pulse - Reggae Power - Moon Boots, Black Gatsby - Deep House

Vinyl Is My Bible - Brother Strut - Funk Diamond - Izzy Biu - R&B Elusive - blackwave., David Ngyah - Hip-hop Don’t Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down - Heritage Blues Orchestra - Blues Sastanàqqàm - Tinariwen - Psychedelic Rock

Disco To Go - Brides of Funkenstein - Funk/Soul Circles - Durand Jones & The Indications - Retro Pop Cheesin’ - Cautious Clay, Remi Wolf, sophie meiers - R&B Changes - Charles Bradley - Soul The Sweetest Sin - RAEVE - House

Gyae Su - Pat Thomas, Kwashibu Area Band - Funk What Am I to Do - Ezra Collective, Loyle Carner - Hip-hop Get Your Groove On - Cedric Burnside - Blues Old Enough To Know Better - Steffen Morrisson - Soul Wassiye - Habib Koité - Khassonke musique

Dance Floor - Zapp - Funk Wake Up - Brass Against, Sophia Urista - Brass Hard-Rock BIG LOVE - Black Eyed Peas - Pop The Greatest - Raleigh Ritchie - R&B DYSFUNCTIONAL - KAYTRANADA, VanJess - Soul

See You Leave - RJD2, STS, Khari Mateen - Hip-hop Sing A Simple Song - Maceo Parker - Jazz/Funk Have Mercy - Eryn Allen Kane - Soul Homenage - Brownout - Latin Funk Can’t Sleep - Gary Clark Jr. - Blues Rock

Toast - Koffee - Dancehall Freedom - Ester Dean - R&B Iskaba - Wande Coal, DJ Tunez - Afropop High Road - Anthony Riley - Alternative Christian Sunny Days - Sabrina Starke - Soul

The Talking Fish - Ibibio Sound Machine - Funk Paralyzed - KWAYE - Indie Purple Heart Blvd - Sebastian Kole - Pop WORSHIP - The Knocks, MNEK - Deep House BMO - Ari Lennox - R&B

Promises - Myles Sanko - Soul .img - Brother Theodore - Funk Singing the Blues - Ruthie Foster, Meshell Ndegeocello - Blues Nobody Like You - Amartey, SBMG, The Livingtons - Hip-hop Starship - Afriquoi, Shabaka Hutchings, Moussa Dembele - Deep House

Lay My Troubles Down - Aaron Taylor - Funk  Bloodstream - Tokio Myers - Classic Sticky - Ravyn Lenae - R&B Why I Try - Jalen N’Gonda - Soul Motivation - Benjamin Booker - Folk

quand c’est - Stromae - Pop Let Me Down (Shy FX Remix) - Jorja Smith, Stormzy, SHY FX - Reggae Funny - Gerald Levert - R&B Salt in my Wounds - Shemekia Copeland - Blues Our Love - Samm Henshaw - Soul

Make You Feel That Way - Blackalicious - Jazz Hip-hop Knock Me Out - Vintage Trouble - Funk Take the Time - Ronald Bruner, Jr., Thundercat - Alternative Thru The Night - Phonte, Eric Roberson - R&B Keep Marchin’ - Raphael Saadiq - Soul

Shake Me In Your Arms - Taj Mahal, Keb’ Mo’ - Blues Meet Me In The Middle - Jodie Abascus - Pop Raise Hell - Sir the Baptist, ChurchPpl - Gospel Pop Mogoya - Oumou Sangaré - Wassoulou Where’s Yesterday - Slakah The Beatchild - Hip-hop

Lose My Cool - Amber Mark - R&B New Funk - Big Sam’s Funky Nation - Funk I Got Love - Nate Dogg - Hip-hop Nothing’s Real But Love - Rebecca Ferguson - Soul Crazy Race - The RH Factor - Jazz

Spies Are Watching Me - Voilaaa, Sir Jean - Funk The Leaders - Boka de Banjul - Afrobeat Fast Lane - Rationale - House Conundrum - Hak Baker - Folk Don’t Make It Harder On Me - Chloe x Halle - R&B

Plastic Hamburgers - Fantastic Negrito - Hardrock Beyond - Leon Bridges - Pop God Knows - Dornik - Soul Soleil de volt - Baloji - Afrofunk Do You Remember - Darryl Williams, Michael Lington - Jazz Get Back - McClenney - Alternative Three Words - Aaron Marcellus - Soul

Spotify playlist 

In memory of:

Aaron Bailey Adam Addie Mae Collins Ahmaud Arbery Aiyana Stanley Jones Akai Gurley Alberta Odell Jones Alexia Christian Alfonso Ferguson Alteria Woods Alton Sterling Amadou Diallo Amos Miller Anarcha Westcott Anton de Kom Anthony Hill Antonio Martin Antronie Scott Antwon Rose Jr. Arthur St. Clair Atatiana Jefferson Aubrey Pollard Aura Rosser Bennie Simons Berry Washington Bert Dennis Bettie Jones Betsey Billy Ray Davis Bobby Russ Botham Jean Brandon Jones Breffu Brendon Glenn Breonna Taylor Bud Johnson Bussa

Calin Roquemore Calvin McDowell Calvin Mike and his family Carl Cooper Carlos Carson Carlotta Lucumi Carol Denise McNair Carol Jenkins Carole Robertson Charles Curry Charles Ferguson Charles Lewis Charles Wright Charly Leundeu Keunang Chime Riley Christian Taylor Christopher Sheels Claude Neal Clementa Pickney Clifford Glover Clifton Walker Clinton Briggs Clinton R. Allen Cordella Stevenson Corey Carter Corey Jones Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd Cynthia Wesley

Daniel L. Simmons Danny Bryant Darius Randell Robinson Darius Tarver Darrien Hunt Darrius Stewart David Felix David Joseph David McAtee David Walker and his family Deandre Brunston Deborah Danner Delano Herman Middleton Demarcus Semer Demetrius DuBose Depayne Middleton-Doctor Dion Johnson Dominique Clayton Dontre Hamilton Dred Scott

Edmund Scott Ejaz Choudry Elbert Williams Eleanor Bumpurs Elias Clayton Elijah McClain Eliza Woods Elizabeth Lawrence Elliot Brooks Ellis Hudson Elmer Jackson Elmore Bolling Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr. Emmett Till Eric Garner Eric Harris Eric Reason Ernest Lacy Ernest Thomas Ervin Jones Eugene Rice Eugene Williams Ethel Lee Lance Ezell Ford

Felix Kumi Frank Livingston Frank Morris Frank Smart Frazier B. Baker Fred Hampton Fred Rochelle Fred Temple Freddie Carlos Gray Jr.

George Floyd George Grant George Junius Stinney Jr. George Meadows George Waddell George Washington Lee Gregory Gunn

Harriette Vyda Simms Moore Harry Tyson Moore Hazel “Hayes” Turner Henry Ezekial Smith Henry Lowery Henry Ruffin Henry Scott Hosea W. Allen

India Kager Isaac McGhie Isadore Banks Italia Marie Kelly

Jack Turner Jamar Clark Jamel Floyd James Byrd Jr. James Craig Anderson James Earl Chaney James Powell James Ramseur James Tolliver James T. Scott Janet Wilson Jason Harrison Javier Ambler J.C. Farmer Jemel Roberson Jerame Reid Jesse Thornton Jessie Jefferson Jim Eastman Joe Nathan Roberts John Cecil Jones John Crawford III John J. Gilbert John Ruffin John Taylor Johnny Robinson Jonathan Ferrell Jonathan Sanders Jordan Edwards Joseph Mann Julia Baker Julius Jones July Perry Junior Prosper

Kalief Browder Karvas Gamble Jr. Keith Childress, Jr. Kelly Gist Kelso Benjamin Cochrane Kendrick Johnson Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. Kenny Long Kevin Hicks Kevin Matthews Kiwane Albert Carrington

Lacy Mitchell Lamar Smith Laquan McDonald Laura Nelson Laura Wood L.B. Reed L.D. Nelson Lemuel Penn Lemuel Walters Leonard Deadwyler Leroy Foley Levi Harrington Lila Bella Carter Lloyd Clay Louis Allen Lucy

M.A. Santa Cruz Maceo Snipes Malcom X Malice Green Malissa Williams Manuel Ellis Marcus Deon Smith Marcus Foster Marielle Franco Mark Clark Maria Martin Lee Anderson Martin Luther King Jr. Matthew Avery Mary Dennis Mary Turner Matthew Ajibade May Noyes Mckenzie Adams Medgar Wiley Evers Michael Brown Michael Donald Michael Griffith Michael Lee Marshall Michael Lorenzo Dean Michael Noel Michael Sabbie Michael Stewart Michelle Cusseaux Miles Hall Moses Green Mya Hall Myra Thompson

Nathaniel Harris Pickett Jr. Natasha McKenna Nicey Brown Nicholas Heyward Jr.

O’Day Short family Orion Anderson Oscar Grant III Otis Newsom

Pamela Turner Paterson Brown Jr. Patrick Dorismond Philando Castile Phillip Pannell Phillip White Phinizee Summerour

Quaco

Ramarley Graham Randy Nelson Raymond Couser Raymond Gunn Regis Korchinski-Paquet Rekia Boyd Renisha McBride Riah Milton Robert Hicks Robert Mallard Robert Truett Rodney King Roe Nathan Roberts Roger Malcolm and his wife Roger Owensby Jr. Ronell Foster Roy Cyril Brooks Rumain Brisbon Ryan Matthew Smith

Sam Carter Sam McFadden Samuel DuBose Samuel Ephesians Hammond Jr. Samuel Hammond Jr. Samuel Leamon Younge Jr. Sandra Bland Sean Bell Shali Tilson Sharonda Coleman-Singleton Shukri Abdi Simon Schuman Slab Pitts Stella Young Stephon Clark Susie Jackson

T.A. Allen Tamir Rice Tamla Horsford Tanisha Anderson Timothy Caughman Timothy Hood Timothy Russell Timothy Stansbury Jr. Timothy Thomas Terrence Crutcher Terrill Thomas Tom Jones Tom Moss Tony McDade Tony Terrell Robinson Jr. Trayvon Martin Troy Hodge Troy Robinson Tula Tyler Gerth Tyre King Tywanza Sanders

Victor Duffy Jr. Victor White III

Walter Lamar Scott Wayne Arnold Jones Wesley Thomas Wilbert Cohen Wilbur Bundley Will Brown Will Head Will Stanley Will Stewart Will Thompson Willie James Howard Willie Johnson Willie McCoy Willie Palmer Willie Turks William Brooks William Butler William Daniels William Fambro William Green William L. Chapman II William Miller William Pittman Wyatt Outlaw

Yusef Kirriem Hawkins

The victims of LaLaurie (1830s) The black victims of the Opelousas massacre (1868) The black victims of the Thibodaux massacre (1887) The black victims of the Wilmington insurrection (1898) The black victims of the Johnson-Jeffries riots (1910) The black victims of the Red summer (1919) The black victims of the Elaine massacre (1919) The black victims of the Ocoee massacre (1920) The victims of the MOVE bombing (1985)

All the people who died during the Atlantic slave trade, be it due to abuse or disease.

All the unnamed victims of mass-incarceration, who were put into jail without the committing of a crime and died while in jail or died after due to mental illness. 

All the unnamed victims of racial violence and discrimination. 

...

My apologies for all the people missing on this list. Feel free to add more names and stories. 

Listen, learn and read about discrimination, racism and black history: (feel free to add more)  Documentaries: 13th (Netflix) The Innocence Files (Netflix) Who Killed Malcolm X? (Netflix) Time: The Kalief Browder Story (Netflix) I Am Not Your Negro

YouTube videos: We Cannot Stay Silent about George Floyd Waarom ook Nederlanders de straat op gaan tegen racisme (Dutch) Wit is ook een kleur (Dutch) (documentaire)

Books: Biased by Jennifer Eberhardt Don’t Touch My Hair by Emma Dabiri Freedom Is A Constant Struggle by Angela Davis How To Be An Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo They Can’t Kill Us All by Wesley Lowery White Fragility by Robin Deangelo Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge Woman, Race and Class by Angela Davis

Websites: https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/ https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/ https://archive.org/details/thirtyyearsoflyn00nati/page/n11/mode/2up https://lab.nos.nl/projects/slavernij/index-english.html https://blacklivesmatter.com/ https://www.zinnedproject.org/

[mybeingthere]

Jammie Holmes is a self-taught painter from Thibodaux, Louisiana, whose work tells the story of contemporary life for many black families in the Deep South. Through portraiture and tableaux, Holmes depicts stories of the celebrations and struggles of everyday life, with particular attention paid to a profound sense of place. Growing up 20 minutes from the Mississippi River, Holmes was surrounded by the social and economic consequences of America’s dark past, situated within a deep pocket of the Sun Belt, where reminders of slavery exist alongside labor union conflicts that have fluctuated in intensity since the Thibodaux Massacre of 1887. His work is a counterpoint to the romantic mythology of Louisiana as a hub of charming hospitality, an idea that has perpetuated in order to hide the deep scars of poverty and racism that have structured life in the state for centuries. 

Despite the circumstances of its setting, Holmes’ work is characterized by the moments he captures where family, ritual, and tradition are celebrated. His presentation of simple moments of togetherness and joy within the black population that nurtures the culture of Louisiana has made him an advocate for this community. Holmes’ paintings fall somewhere between realistic depiction and raw abstraction, incorporating text, symbols, and objects rendered in an uncut style that mirrors a short transition from memory to canvas. He often references photographs from home, but also draws heavily on his own recollection of moments and scenes and works quickly to translate his emotions to paint.

https://www.jammieholmes.com/about

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jammie_Holmes

[omgthatdress]

Along with the Tulsa Massacre, don’t forget:

1829 Cincinnati Riots

1831 Nat Turner Rebellion

1866 New Orleans Massacre

1866 Memphis Riots

1868 St. Bernard Parish Massacre

1868 Opelousas Massacre

1871 Meridian Race Riot

1873 Colfax Massacre

1874 Vicksburg Massacre

1874 Choushatta Massacre

1875 Clinton Riot

1876 Ellenton Riot

1887 Thibodaux Massacre

1898 Wilmington Insurrection

1906 Atlanta Riot

1908 Springfield Riot

1917 East St. Louis Riots

The Red Summer of 1919

1920 Ocoee Massacre

1923 Rosewood Massacre

1943 Detroit Race Riot

[the-sayuri-rin]

A small list of things I didn’t learn in school:

Rock Springs massacre 

Atlanta massacre of 1906

Thibodaux massacre

Spring Valley race riot of 1895

Springfield race riot of 1908

Phoenix election riot

Wilmington insurrection of 1898

Pana riot

Robert Charles riots

Evansville race riot

Johnson–Jeffries riots

1912 racial conflict in Forsyth County, Georgia

1917 Chester race riot

 East St. Louis riots

 Elaine massacre

Red Summer

Chicago race riot of 1919

Ocoee massacre

Perry massacre

Rosewood massacre

Note: The first one is about Chinese immigrants that came to the US and worked as miners

[angerinthenation]

Black Massacres: America’s Shameful Past

A commentary by Idris Salaam

- 1863 New York: New York City Draft riots.  - 1866 Memphis - 1866 New Orleans - 1868 St. Bernard Parrish - 1868 Camila, GA - 1868 Opelousas, LA: In 1868, Republicans won the overall election. This was due to the votes of recently freed black men. With this, the Democratic Party was losing its power in politics whether they be at the local or state level. The anger of the Knights of the White Camellia, a group formed to stop the Republican Party, began to show violent force against any black person they came into contact with. Although the Knights were not the Ku Klux Klan, they stood by the same values of their white-hooded counterparts. They were seen as a heavily grouped organization in which it was written that one in four whites were members. As Election time drew close, The Knights went on a rampage. This began with a newspaper editor being beaten. When black came to his aid, they were immediately arrested. But before a trial, they were lynched. During the evening, any black person found was murdered right away. When the carnage ended, 200-300 blacks were killed. Even with the murders, Ulysses Grant (R) won the election against Horatio Seymour and Francis Blair, both anti-black contenders.

- 1868 Wilmington Insurrection: Wilmington, North Carolina aw close to 2,000 white men on a rampage when they burned The Daily Record newspaper company. This didn’t stop as the very next day they took their rampage through the city telling Blacks to leave. If they didn’t leave they were subsequently murdered. After the deaths of up to 60 Black People, the mob proceeded to force a Government official to resign... at gun point, mind you. Days before going on a rampage and putting their own leadership in place, the Leader stated he would “Choke The Current of Cape Fear with Black Bodies.” This was the only  coup d’état on  American soil. It was done because the city council of Wilmington was interracial. Some of the tactics used to form this mob was claiming that back men were preying on white women. - 1873 Colfax, LA: 7 Years after the Civil War, a period where they said was a “Great Period For Blacks”, 150 Black Men and Women were murdered with guns and cannons for trying to assemble at the courthouse. Many of the uncounted bodies were thrown into the Red River. - 1874 Eufsula, AL - 1874 Vicksburg, AK - 1875 Clinton, AK - 1887 Thibodaux, LA - 1896 Jim Crow Laws begins - 1898 Wilmington, Delaware:  Whites marched through the city, exiling Black citizens and killing those unwilling to leave. - 1906 Atlanta - 1908 Springfield - 1910 Slocum, LA - 1917 East St. Louis - 1919 Elaine, AK: Seen as “Red Summer”, black soldiers were adjusting to living the life as civilians upon returning from the first World War. Civil Rights Activist W.E.B. DuBois stated: “We are cowards and jackasses if now that the war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land.” With that, many black men returning from war were no longer wiling to live under Jim Crows Laws. This infuriated whites, causing them to prey upon blacks with violence, especially those who served time during the war. With demographics changing in part because of the Great Migration, violence became a huge problem in small towns such as Elaine, Arkansas... which was the largest instance of violence. Veterans fought  back, with the help of non-veterans. Those who weren’t killed were captured, forced to do false confessions and then murdered. They would later known as the Elaine 12. Over a span of 72 hours, Black sharecroppers, who were trying to improve their conditions were beaten and lynched. In the end of it all, over 200 black men, women and children were murdered. - 1919 Chicago:  200+ Black people were killed and thousands of Black homes were looted and damaged. - 1919 Washington – 1920 Ocoee: A relatively wealthy African-American man named Mose Norman tried to vote but was turned away. Members of the KKK even took a gun away from him, a weapon he had brought to protect himself, and ordered him to go home. Later that day, a mob of whites, many of them KKK members, traversed the black neighborhoods looking for Norman before eventually deciding to head to the home of another prominent black man: July Perry. Eventually, they captured him, lynched him and burned his neighborhood down. The terror wrought by the mob was so great that Ocoee turned into an all-white town for decades. During the 1920 census, around 500 black people called Ocoee home; in 1940, 1950, 1960 and 1970, every census taken revealed there to be no black citizens at all. .–  1921Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood was once the wealthiest Black community in the country, earning it the moniker of “Black Wall Street.” In 1921, it was bombed, burning it to the ground and leaving up to 300 dead. It all began when a 17 year old white girl accused a Black teen of assault. Estimated total: 10,000 whites - 1923 Rosewood: Like Tulsa, an entire community was burned to the ground. This also began with a white woman accusing Sam carter, a black locksmith of assault. He was executed and his body, mutilated, was hung from a tree for all to see. He was one of an estimated 150 that were killed. - 1935 Redlining begins - 1943 Detroit- 1963 Alabama - 1963 The Southern Strategy begins - 1965 Jim Crow Laws ends - 1968 Redlining ends with the Fair Housing Act - 1972 The Southern Strategy Ends - 1985 Philadelphia – In 2015, a lone white supremacist in Charleston entered one of the country’s oldest Black churches and shot 10 worshipers in cold blood. With all of these massacres, show me in history where Black People have burned down an entire white community. When was America Great?

[higginsindla]

Project Going Home: The Thibodaux Massacre in 1887

1887.

The previous year, 1886, had been a busy one for organized labor. Organized labor and striking to force change go hand in hand. The Thibodaux Massacre was one of the outbursts of violence in the year of 1887. The prior year had the Haymarket Affair in Chicago in May. There was the Bay View Tragedy in Wisconsin that preceded it. These two protests focused on the right for an eight-hour workday. The Haymarket Affair was particularly brutal as several anarchists were involved but as Mayor Carter Harrison, mayor of Chicago, recalled that it had been peaceful. The Bay View Tragedy was exactly that. A tragedy, like Thibodaux in the matter that the powers that be did not want the strike. The governors, Rusk, of Wisconsin, and McEnery, of Louisiana of both encouraged local militias to be formed and shoot at peaceful, unarmed protesters (Thompson). The result is one that no one must ever forget.

Five days before the Thibodaux Massacre there was a strike in Pattersonville. The history of organized labor is widespread in the United States. They were concentrated in North and Midwest. You may ask why there was no attempt in the South? There was. In 1887, the Knights of Labor headed down to Louisiana around the time of the sugarcane harvest. They were taking up the cause of the African American sugar cane harvesters who were making pennies in comparison. Even in modern day the money they were making and with adjustment for inflation, the African American were making just around a dollar a day. According to Klelibert, the massacre came down to “race and classism” which is why the strike was so ill-timed (Kleibert). The strike occurred right at the time of the sugar cane harvest. The harvest is a time when all hands must be on deck, lest the sugar cane rot. Louisiana was the second in the nation behind Cuba when it came to sugar cane (Cooper, Fredrick et al.) The issue that came into play for the workers was race. This was only twenty years after the end of the Civil War. The sugar industry had been hardest hit by the war and suffered through several economic inflation as before leveling out in the mid-1870s. The Massacre occurred on November 20th, 1887. It had been preceded by riots in Pattersonville and St. Mary’s Parish near the sugar cane harvest. I cannot stress this enough but any delay in that harvest would lead to disaster for the state’s economy. The state’s economy was already in shambles during Reconstruction and fluctuated throughout the two decades after. Once the word got out a strike was planned, Gov. McEnery encouraged a militia to be formed and disband the strike. What followed as Kleibert describes from the first-hand accounts was, “an orgy of violence that lasted three days” (Kleibert). The militia tore through three parishes rooting out any African male who was of working age and killed them. As the dust settled, the powers that be swept the whole incident under the rug. The bodies of the dead were never given a proper burial.

Unlike the Bay View Massacre, there is no memorial for those who were killed in Thibodaux. Unlike the Haymarket Affair, no justice was ever made in the court system for this most affected. No one was ever held to account and it was left only told as an oral history. It was due to the tireless work of John DeSantis who brought this story back into the open. It was through his tireless dedication that they will go home and receive the burial they truly deserve. It is my hope that there will one day be a memorial in the heart of Thibodaux to memorialize the once forgotten dead.

Bibliography

1886: The Haymarket Martyrs and Mayday. 6 March 2006. Web. 24 April 2021. <https://web.archive.org/web/20060329211053/http://www.libcom.org/history/articles/mayday-haymarket-martyrs/>.

Cooper, Frederick, et al. Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Post emancipation Societies. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press. HeinOnline, https://heinonline-org.ezproxy.nicholls.edu/HOL/P?h=hein.slavery/uncaaak0001&i=2.

Kleibert, Stephen. "U.S.: Thibdoaux Masssacre 1887." 2021. Internet Archive. Web. 29 April 2021.

Thompson, William Fletcher. The History of Wisconsin. Vol. 3. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1973. Web. 22 April 2021.