Thread by @Americas_Crimes

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

Years after US officially ended Black slavery w/ 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. They were essentially serfs, indebted to their growers.

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 & newspapers circulated false reports of black-on-white violence.

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 shot at sparked the massacre. White vigilantes rode through the neighborhood firing their weapons & rounding up/executing 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 murderers. 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.