St. Bernard Parish Massacre of Blacks in Louisiana October 25-26, 1868

I am looking at the violence that engulfed Louisiana in the weeks leading up to the November 1868 election. Republican Ulysses S. Grant would triumph nationally, but the Black vote would be decisively suppressed in Louisiana. St. Bernard’s Parish was the scene of a massacre of a large number of former slaves.

From the New York Times 10/31/1868:

A local history blog has an interesting post on the St. Bernard Massacre. There are a lot of comments on the blog from local folks that offer more info on the killings. The author of that blog post, Chris Dier has written a book on the subject, as well as this article.

From the article by Dier:

On a chilly Louisiana afternoon in October 1868, Louis Wilson left the courthouse, where he’d testified in an ongoing case. Wilson was a freedman living in St. Bernard Parish, a rural community outside the city of New Orleans. The Civil War had been over for three years, and the 14th Amendment, which gave Wilson full citizenship, had passed just three months before. Across the South, tensions were high because of the upcoming presidential election that would decide the fate of Reconstruction.

Wilson rode home alongside the winding Mississippi River, where he was confronted by a group of armed white men on horseback. He was aware that freed people had been killed the day before, but wrongly assumed that the carnage had ended. The men ordered him to dismount, and one of them struck his jaw with the butt of a shotgun. Wilson was thrown into a wagon with other captive freedmen and transported to a makeshift prison.

Later that evening, Wilson and a few others were dragged out of their cells, lined up, and blasted with shotguns. Everyone was killed except Wilson, who somehow crawled into a nearby cane field and waited for three days until he felt safe. Over the next few days, white men tore through the parish, attempting to eliminate any further threats, leaving behind them a trail of black corpses. Estimates of the massacre range from 35 to more than 100 murdered.

Dier is a history teacher in St. Bernard’s. He found that his students had a personal connection to the events 150 years ago:

What I discovered was that a murderous rampage had occurred in my hometown, and almost no one knew. The perpetrators never discussed their atrocities. Local records were lost due to numerous floods, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I researched these events for years, driving to and from work, down roads and past former cane fields that were once the bloody battleground of Reconstruction.

Not only did I live in the very parish where the massacre took place, but the surnames of the assailants and the victims matched those of some of my students, both black and white, who worked together, played sports together, and shared lunches. As I delved deeper into U.S. Congressional archives, I uncovered investigations commissioned by the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Louisiana State Legislature, and correspondence with then-President Andrew Johnson. But my most startling discovery was that several of my students were the descendants of those involved, victims and perpetrators alike.

He writes that he uses the history of the massacre in his classroom:

I incorporated the story of the St. Bernard Parish Massacre into my teaching curriculum, so that students could be made aware of their community’s history and its relevance today. Other teachers also have the book in their classroom and discuss it with their students, examining how dangerous rhetoric can lead to deadly actions and the dire consequences of racist scapegoating.

My students are often shocked when they learn about this chapter of their community’s history. But it provides opportunities to have open dialogue with one another about their roots, and to bring these conversations into their own homes.

I have been criticized by some in the community for unearthing buried history. Some have claimed that the timing was inappropriate, that it would worsen existing racial tensions. However, the overwhelming majority of people in the community have been supportive and eager to know more.

The progress that has brought my students closer together in the classroom can only be honored through a deeper understanding of history.

 

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