The Thibodaux Massacre: Racial Violence and the 1887 Sugar Cane Labor Strike

by John Desantis, Foreword by Burnell Tolbert (Foreword)

Fear, rumor and white supremacist ideals clashed with an unprecedented labor action spawned an epic tragedy.
On November 23, 1887, white vigilantes gunned down unarmed black laborers and their families due to strikes on Louisiana sugar cane plantations. A future member of the U.S. House of Representatives was among the leaders of a mob that routed black men from houses and forced them to a stretch of railroad track, ordering them to run for their lives before gunning them down. According to a witness, the guns firing in the black neighborhoods sounded like a battle. Author and award-winning reporter John DeSantis uses correspondence, interviews and federal records to detail this harrowing true story.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, History

176 pages, Paperback

Published November 14, 2016

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me, it was a bit too brief. It's very straightforward and could have used a little more depth or expansion on the context, although I know the written records of the massacre are scant. As a Houma native, I can easily visualize the places the author mentions and have prior knowledge to some of the people he references. However, for a reader not from the area or unfamiliar with this period of history, I can imagine this might be a little confusing or challenging to read. On the other hand, I imagine most of the people interested in reading this book are from the area. 5 stars for bringing to light a little known (or unknown) tragedy. I just wanted a bit more from the book.

[Maria Magliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really, really helpful book on the Thibodaux Massacre, a little-known event in our country's labor history. The book is well researched and provides a concise description of the tense state of race and labor relations in the post-Civil War era in Western Louisiana, in particular, tied to the sugar industry. The massacre itself was the tragic reaction of a concerted effort by unions to organize sugar laborers not only in Thibodaux but across multiple parishes, an effort that was highly successful, at least insofar as it garnered the attention, and massive retaliation, from white planters and the State itself. The book does a marvelous job of tying very disparate and simultaneous events together to provide a deeper picture of what ended up being an indiscriminate act of violence and murder of black strikers. For those interested in labor issues, southern history, or US history, this is a very good, and not very long, read. I myself came to this as part of research for a novel I'm writing and found it highly informative.

[Lora Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again into slavery.”
- W.E.B. DuBois, "Black Reconstruction in America"

Discounting work, home, and children, this book took a lot longer for me to finish than it should have for a book that is less than 200 pages; however, I acknowledge the fact that when a book does not grab my attention, I tend to put it down/away often. As with other historical books I’ve read, the lead-up to the actual subject of the book is buried far in, and you have to wade through a lot of background info to get to the heart, including backstories of Louisiana’s first major inhabitants back in 1701 (the massacre took place in 1887). There are quite a few names included, both major & minor players; a lot of towns, districts, and parishes, and a multitude of facts. Of those facts, I found in my own after-the-book research that DeSantis did get several facts wrong, including facts regarding the 1872 gubernatorial election and the fraud in the 1876 presidential election. But things like this are really minor in the face of the overall story.

With all of that being said, I picked up this book because we often hear of the massacres of Rosewood (FL) or Black Wall Street (aka Tulsa Race Massacre), but I had never heard of any other race massacres and wanted to learn more. The basis of this story is the sugar industry in Louisiana, labor disputes between black workers and white sugarcane planters in Louisiana's southeastern parishes near and along the Gulf Coast, and the massacre that came about as a result of the labor disputes. It’s not a hidden fact that even after slavery was over, African Americans were still subjected to slave-level labor and treatment, only this time in exchange for less than a dollar a day. Sometimes they weren’t even paid in actual money, but instead on pieces of paper on pasteboard (“scrip”) to be used in exchange for goods from the same plantation’s own general store. “By 1880…black workers were still resisting the replacement of slavery’s yoke with the barely distinguishable one of wage labor.” (pg. 72) At the time, workers were only being paid an average of about sixty cents a day. Enter the Knights of Labor, the nation’s first labor union and one of the few to permit African American membership. The KOL encouraged the sugar cutters to demand better treatment and $1.25 a day in cash only, not scrip. Without giving away too much more of the actual story, needless to say the planters rejected all demands, and even went so far as to call for help from the governor, who sent militias with a Gatling gun and small cannon, against the striking workers. The strikers were fired and evicted, leaving them homeless and replaced by other workers brought in by train.

Angered by the disrespect, the strikers surprisingly fought back. Men walked around town with guns; the women would mutter about hurting white people and burning down buildings. Two sentries who were guarding the edges of town, demanding passes from any African Americans coming or going, were fired upon by unknown parties on the night of November 23, 1887, and the paramilitaries responded at daylight by invading the black section of the town and indiscriminately gunning down anyone known to be connected with the strike and many who were not. The documented estimates of black people killed range from “six to the hundreds, although an examination of most historical accounts would indicate a number between thirty and sixty, with many more wounded” (p. 137). Even if the tragic end results were fairly foreseeable, I think they were only foreseeable by everyone except the workers. They clearly thought that having the white leaders of the KOL speaking on their behalf was going to make a difference. But I agree with one of the wives of a member of one of the militias: “All the trouble is caused by…white leaders. These leaders do no work and get up disturbances among the field hands and then leave the field hands to fight it out.” I also agree with the Louisiana newspapers who opined that “workers had been led astray and…they were left holding the bag.” The workers did deserve everything they asked for, but were ultimately, and unfairly, left to fight the fight alone.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this slim volume on what was (until John DeSantis’ book) was mostly hidden Louisiana history. While the official death toll from the November 23, 1887, Massacre of striking black sugar cane workers is eight, DeSantis believes the actual number is between 30 and 60.

A key find was the pension application for a black Union Army veteran who grew up in Thibodaux. Jack Conrad’s son Grant was among those killed in the Massacre. Jack Conrad was wounded by several shots but survived. He decided to move to New Orleans and applied for his pension. In the application he detailed the events of the Massacre and included hundreds of pages of eye-witness accounts that provided crucial information.

DeSantis, who works as a reporter in Houma, LA, is now working to identify the mass grave site where the bodies of the victims of the murderous rampage were dumped.

Excellent book. Essential Louisiana history!

[Chris DuPre · Rating 5 out of 5]

The idea that I grew up with family so close to such a shocking event with such a powerful precedent for labor action in the US and had no idea of its existence is a damning statement on our ability to hide and cover up the past. I suggest anyone with family in Lafourche generally or Thibodaux specifically or who is interested in labor activism and the backlash of reconstruction to read this book. While some of the historical details are not entirely clear (was there actual armed action by the striking laborers against strike breakers), this is less of a statement about the author and more of a statement of the loss of history due to neglect and willful ignorance.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-researched piece of LA history I didn’t even know existed.