Labor Day observance takes more than one form

Terrebonne ponies up for HNC deepening
September 6, 2017
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September 6, 2017
Terrebonne ponies up for HNC deepening
September 6, 2017
Protecting you and yours: Pullaro Insurance bringing stability
September 6, 2017

We observed Labor Day in these parts earlier this week, along with the rest of the country. Well, not so much, maybe. Labor Day’s roots are in celebration of organized labor, and there is not much of an organized labor history here.

The last big push for any type of organization was among and for mariners, and it ended miserably. There was a huge campaign, with signs that said “There Is No ‘YOU’ In Union” and cops harassing organizers in some places. The bottom line with this is that the workers themselves decided they didn’t want unionization, and it is their choice, ultimately, if they want collective bargaining or not. So while parades in different parts of the country celebrate the AFL-CIO we’re fairly content to have some barbecue and be grateful for a day off from work, and don’t really pay much mind to the brave people who once worked in sweatshops but organized to where they could be on somewhat of a footing with management. It was those people who gave us the 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, and other things we take for granted.


Something folks may not be aware of locally – although the word is getting around – is that Terrebonne and Lafourche were actually Ground Zero for an historic labor event, the 1887 sugar strike, which also included St. Mary Parish.

Barely 25 years after the Civil War ended black people living and working on our region’s sugar plantations realized that life hadn’t changed much for the better since slavery. On the largest plantations they were paid not in cash but plantation scrip, redeemable at the plantation store. This meant it was impossible to save money in most cases, and your fate as a field worker was sealed. What was the use of freedom if you couldn’t do the things free people do?

A union from up north, the Knights of Labor, had already organized railroad workers in Schriever, and the organizers, hearing the grievances of the sugar cane workers, got to work. In less than a year the word had spread, and in October the demands were given to the plantation owners, who refused to negotiate. The workers stopped working and there was a risk of cane rotting in the fields or freezing. The Louisiana State Militia evicted the strikers and they migrated, many of them, to Thibodaux, which became a refugee center of sorts. The strike wore on for a month, and when it was clear the strikers were too much of an inconvenience, amid rumors of an uprising that never occurred, the townspeople ended it with firearms and we still don’t know how many people died. We just know that it wasn’t the townspeople, not a one of them.


So on Tuesday the mayor of Thibodaux, Tommy Eschete, issued a proclamation honoring the dead and recognizing this massacre that occurred, and presented it to Sylvester Jackson, the great-grandson of a survivor of great-uncle of one of the dead.

It’s an important act toward reconciliation for past wrongs. But it also speaks well of Thibodaux and its people. While people in other places are fighting over statues, in Lafourche Parish they are just quietly recognizing the past, by meeting it head on rather than sweeping it under the rug.

It’s also very brave and offers an example more communities with troubled histories might wish to follow.


EDITOR’S NOTE:

John DeSantis is president of the Louisiana 1887 Memorial Committee, a non-profit that is coordinating efforts to locate the remains of Thibodaux Massacre victims. He is author The Thibodaux Massacre: Racial Violence and the 1887 Sugar Cane Labor Strike (History Press, Charleston SC, 2016) •