November 23, 1887: The Thibodaux Massacre and the Crushing of Black Unions

A farmworkers union was a challenging concept for anyone to accept in 1887 but especially for White landowners employing Black laborers. On Nov. 23, 1887, the idea led to one of the worst racial/labor massacres in United States history.

In the “Sugar Bowl” area of Louisiana, encompassing St. Mary, Terrebonne, and Lafourche parishes, sugar cane was cut and pressed by black laborers who were trapped by being paid only in company script and Thibodaux, the town at the center of the cane planting industry was a company town and the store only took the script at a 100 percent mark-up leaving most workers destitute, they also owed their housing to the company. Because of the Louisiana laws about debt and vagrancy, this left most of the workers as indentured servants to the growers.

In 1887 the largest union in the United States was the Knights of Labor and after two failed stoppages/negotiations with the growers, the laborers of the sugar bowl reached out to the Knights, over a few months the Knights organized sugar workers into seven locals of 100 to 150 members and in August of 1887 attempted to meet with the growers, but they refused.

In October as the pressing season began the union requested $1.25 a day in cash wages and the growers again refused and fired all union leaders, so the cutters and rollers went on strike. As the October shadows grew longer and the cane remained in the fields. and growers requested aid from the governor, Samuel D. McEnery, Democratic governor, and former planter, he in turn called for the assistance of several all-white Louisiana militias under the command of ex-Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard. At this point, Some 10,000 plantation workers took part in the strike. Most of the strikers were black, but nearly 1000 were white. When striking plantation workers were faced with soldiers armed with Springfield rifles, they offered little to no resistance. They heeded the orders to leave the plantations. Many congregated in the black section of Thibodaux.

With strike-breakers brought in from Mississippi and Tennessee, tensions were extremely high, with the town of Thibodaux sealed and all blacks needing a pass to travel. On the morning of the 23rd shots came from a cornfield at white guards this shooting was a fuse setting off an explosion of violence across the sugar bowl. The white militia began hunting blacks and killing them at random. Records are incomplete, census and pay records are best available but don’t direct much to a crime that was completely covered up. At least 30 people were murdered but based on the available records it is more likely 300 were killed. There was no federal investigation, the state ignored it because of the governor and even the press like the Daily Picayune blamed the black strikers for the violence.

Organized labor made no attempts to work with the Sugar Growers Association until the 1950s and even today the plantations still hold most of the power in the region politically. 

Picture "Cutting sugar cane in Louisiana" by William Henry Jackson for the Detroit publishing company

Sources:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/thibodaux-massacre-left-60-african-americans-dead-and-spelled-end-unionized-farm-labor-south-decades-180967289/

https://libcom.org/article/thibodaux-massacre-1887

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/the-thibodaux-massacre-november-23-1887/