Thibodaux Massacre
| Thibodaux massacre | |||
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Louisiana sugar cane laborers c. 1880
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| Date | November 22–25, 1887 | ||
| Location | Thibodaux, Louisiana, USA | ||
| Goals | wages | ||
| Methods | Strikes, Protest, Demonstrations | ||
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The Thibodaux massacre was a racial attack mounted by white paramilitaries in Louisiana in November 1887. It followed a three-week strike by an estimated 10,000 workers against sugar cane plantations in four parishes in the critical harvest season.
The strike was the largest in the industry and the first conducted by a formal labor organization, the Knights of Labor. At planters' requests, the state sent in militia to protect strikebreakers, and work resumed on some plantations. Black workers and their families were evicted from plantations in Lafourche Parish and retreated to Thibodaux.
Tensions broke out in violence on November 22, 1887, and white paramilitary attacked black workers and their families in Thibodaux. Although the total number of casualties is unknown, at least 35 persons were killed in the next three days and as many as 300 blacks were said to have been killed, 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 organizing of sugar workers until the 1940s. "The defeated sugar workers returned to the plantations on their employers' terms."
The sugar cane harvest and processing was a complex series of events that had to be closely coordinated among a large labor force pushed to work to physical extremes. Sugar plantations were described as "factories in the field" and had a high death rate during slavery times. Conditions were little improved after Reconstruction.
A major issue for sugar workers since the early 1880s was being forced by plantation owners to accept scrip for pay, a change the planters had initiated in the early 1880s, when they also cut wages because of a declining international market. These "pasteboard tickets" were redeemable only at company stores, which operated at high profit margins. As the plantation kept the books, often illiterate workers found themselves unable to get out of debt. Required by law to pay off the debt, workers became essentially bound to the plantation in a state similar to slavery. Most of the cane workers were black, but there were also whites. The Knights of Labor used this issue to organize workers, and thousands joined.
In October 1877, Duncan F. Kenner, a millionaire planter, founded the statewide Louisiana Sugar Producer's Association (LSPA), consisting of 200 of the largest planters in the state, and served as president. The powerful LPSA lobbied the federal government for sugar tariffs, funding to support levees to protect their lands, and research to increase crop yields. For the next decade these members also worked to gain control over their labor: they adopted a uniform pay scale and withheld 80 percent of the wages until the end of the harvest season, in order to keep workers on the plantations through the end of the season. They ended the "job" system and the largest planters, who maintained stores, required workers to accept scrip instead of cash, redeemable only at their stores.
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Wikipedia