Massacre in Sugarland

Iberville Parish, Louisiana

1905

The steam-powered engine rumbled loudly as a young farmhand raked sugar cane from a plantation railcar onto the cane carrier feeder outside a sugar mill. The new machine, a back-saver called Walsh’s Rake, was the latest improvement on the sugar cane farms in Iberville Parish.

“Hello!” Dutch, a high school senior, shouted to be heard over the engine noise.

The farmhand gave a quick nod in Dutch’s direction, not wanting to take his eyes off the moving rake in case it got hung up or detached from the cables.

Dutch was surprised when he saw the worker was a young man near his own age.

“My name’s Harry, but mostly people call me Dutch. What’s your name?” he shouted.

“Abe,” the operator called out, watching the rake intently.

After several minutes, he finished raking the load of cane from the railcar and shut off the engine. Ordinarily, neither Dutch nor Abe were prone to much small talk. But today, Dutch was filled with questions about the raking machine his father had built, and he was impressed that its operator was a young black man not much older than himself.

Dutch asked, “How d’ja learn to work this machine?”

“Mistuh Walsh showed me,” Abe answered with pride.

“Oh.” Dutch was envious. He wondered why his father had not told him that someone his age was operating the rake. “My papa built this machine.”

“I know. Mistuh Walsh told me.” Abe’s boss, Daniel Walsh, designed the rake built by Dutch’s father, Henry Nadler.

The two young men were deep in conversation when Dutch’s father joined them.

“Papa, this is Abe,” Dutch said.

“Nice to meet you, Abe. Mister Walsh tells me you learned to run the rake like a fish learns to swim. That right?”

Abe grinned shyly. “Yessuh.”

“I’ve seen you in town,” Henry said to Abe. “You lived around here all your life?”

“No, suh. My mama and me came here from Thibodaux when I was a baby.”

Henry didn’t respond right away. Thibodaux was a sugar town about fifty miles south of Plaquemine. He had clients there, so he knew something of the area’s troubled past.

“Do you stay with your mama and daddy?” Henry asked.

“Just my mama. My daddy’s dead.” For a split second, Abe’s expression winced.

Henry softened his voice. “Was your family living in Thibodaux when your daddy died?”

“Yessuh.”

“How old are you, Abe?”

“Eighteen.”

Henry knew then. If Abe left Thibodaux eighteen years ago after his father died, that meant his father had most likely been killed in the massacre.

“I’m sorry about your daddy.” Henry’s words were somber.

Abe mumbled, “Yessuh,” looking at the ground.

The quiet moment hung in the air with the debilitating humidity.

Abe didn’t remember his father. Pieces of the story were told in hushed tones, but people didn’t want to talk about it. Everyone on both sides had regrets and wished it had never happened. Wishing was futile. Maybe if they didn’t talk about it, the horror and sadness could be forgotten.

As the sun was setting, Henry steered their horse and wagon down long dirt roads toward home. Dutch, sitting beside his father, was finally able to ask questions burning on his tongue.

“Papa, did you know Abe’s daddy?”

“No, Son. That all happened the year before your mother and I moved here from Illinois.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“Yes, I know. Remember William Blackie — the man who ran the foundry with me?”

Dutch nodded.

“He told me what happened.” Henry waited. “No one likes to talk about it. Some things are just too painful.”

Dutch pressed, “Will you tell me?”

Henry wondered if his sixteen-year-old son was ready to hear about such an unbelievably horrific event that happened so close to home.

If not now, then when?

Henry took a deep breath and began. “Well, it was about a year and a half before you were born, November of 1887. A group of men called the Knights of Labor came into four of our neighboring parishes. They meant to help the sugar laborers get higher wages, but their ways were not honorable. They organized a labor strike to strong-arm the plantation owners.”

Dutch knew what that meant since many field workers were essential for harvesting.

“They stayed out of our parish. Maybe the workers in Iberville were satisfied with their pay and working conditions, I’m not sure. Anyway, the Knights of Labor were a roughshod group of rabble-rousers. Earlier that year they had incited a riot up in Chicago. People died – lawmen and laborers.”

Henry let the horses slow their pace, knowing the rest of the story would take a while.

“So, right at rolling season, the sugar-laborers refused to work until the growers agreed to pay them more. You know what happens if the cane doesn’t get to the mill in time?”

“It rots.” Dutch knew. He had been around sugar cane all his life.

“That’s right.” Henry continued. “The growers refused to be bullied. Instead of paying their field hands, they hired outside contract workers to come in and roll the cane. Only it wasn’t so simple because everyone was afraid the strikers and the Knights would cause trouble as they had in Chicago. So, plantation owners asked the governor to send in the state militia to protect the hired contract laborers.”

“A governor can do that?” Dutch asked.

“Well, he did. You see, he was also a plantation owner.” Henry continued. “Strikers were forced from their homes which were owned by the growers, and many of them found places to live in Thibodaux.”

“Is that why Abe’s family was there?” Dutch asked.

“I assume so, but that isn’t the end of the story. With the strikers out of the way, the state militia went home, and local farmers were left to their own means to protect their interests. An old Democratic parish judge, who was a sugar grower in Thibodaux, hired 300 men with guns to keep the strikers imprisoned in their homes in Thibodaux so the contract laborers could get the crops in.”

Dutch said, “Seems like with all the money they were spending they could’ve just paid the laborers more and saved themselves the trouble.”

Out of the mouths of babes, Henry thought.

“Well, unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Everybody was on a hair trigger, tempers flared, and before you know it, two colored men were dead and two white men were injured, both sides accusing the other of firing the first shots. Tragically, after three days, at least 35 colored men, probably more, had been killed by the judge’s paramilitary group. They say the dead were buried in a mass grave.” Henry shook his head. “I can’t understand it. Senseless. Horrible.”

Recalling the atrocity made Henry nauseous.

“Mr. Blackie taught me the importance of fairness to employees. Business owners are obligated to pay their skilled employees wages so they can take care of their families and feel a sense of pride. That’s important in building a thriving community. If you destroy a man’s pride, you’re gonna have trouble. I hope you’ll remember that.”

“I will.” Dutch thought about the workers at his father’s foundry, then wondered something else. “Papa, you said the judge was a Democrat and our governors have been Democrats since before I was born. Aren’t you a Democrat?”

Henry kept his eyes forward. “Yes. Everyone I know is a Democrat.”

“Is that the way Democrats are? I mean killing people like that?” Dutch asked.

“No!” Henry looked his son in the eye. “No, not at all. The massacre in Thibodaux was despicable. Those men got away with murder, plain and simple. A disgrace to humanity,” Henry spat out the words.

“When a man calls himself a Democrat, he’s saying he supports the rights of the states and local jurisdictions to make their own laws, to do what’s best for his state’s citizens. The farmers and those who support agriculture usually prefer the Democratic party. A Republican, on the other hand, wants a centralized federal government to make laws for all Americans. There’s good and bad in both. But to be sure,” his voice was stern as he shook his finger in the air. “No political party has the right to commit murder.”

Father and son rode in silence, letting the words soak in.

Dutch broke the quiet with another question. “Papa, why doesn’t Abe go to college?”

“He should. He’s smart enough, from what Mr. Walsh tells me,” Henry said.

“Maybe he could take university classes with me this fall at LSU.”

Henry shook his head. “He probably doesn’t have the money to pay for college. Besides,” he cleared his throat. “He’s not allowed to go to that university. He would have to go to Alabama, or maybe Grambling. I hear there’s a college for coloreds up there.”

“That doesn’t seem fair, Papa.”

“No, Son. It doesn’t.”

They rode without talking the rest of the way home, both wondering to himself what it must be like to not have the freedom to make one’s own life choices.