Sorting through our area’s part

During the recent Labor Day weekend there were such barbecues as the weather allowed, and a lot of people who work for a living, at least, getting to relax on a day specifically set aside to honor working folks.

More specifically, Labor Day in much of the nation is seen as a celebration of organized labor, meaning unions, and union is a very dirty word in these parts, but that doesn’t change the history. Not does it change the fact that the Bayou Region was the scene of one of the bloodiest anti-labor actions in American history. The death toll has never been determined, although some estimates place the number of dead at more than thirty or forty, maybe sixty. It all had to do with sugar cane workers striking in 1887, a bitter, month-long action that resulted in mass evictions from plantations in Terrebonne and Lafourche, with the strikers and their families flocking to Thibodaux like hurricane evacuees.

Tensions mounted after the Louisiana State Militia vacated the region, exacerbated by the fact that the striking workers were overwhelmingly black. It all ended the morning of Nov. 23 while Thibodaux was under martial law declared by District Judge Taylor Beattie with the assistance of Lt. Gov. Clay Knobloch, who was also in charge of the local Lafourche Militia. Two volunteers were shot and wounded at one of the entrances to town and that’s when the bloodbath began.

Armed mobs tore through Thibodaux’s back-of-town neighborhood and a few other places. According to eyewitness accounts, the rampant shootings were directed at anyone whose skin color was dark.

There is proof of these assertions, proof unearthed over the past year from government files that hadn’t been opened in more than a hundred years. The results are in a book that is being released in November by The History Press, “The Thibodaux Massacre: Racial Violence and the 1887 Sugar Cane Labor Strike,” which I researched and wrote. Even though the book is done, I was still intrigued by some dangling matters that I am still in the process of exploring. Having identified the names of some victims, I have spent a lot of time trying to locate living descendants, and have been successful in some cases.

Last week I tried yet again to find relatives of Jack Conrad, who fought for freedom as a member of the U.S. Colored Troops, who was wounded in the 1887 incident, and whose 19-year-old son was killed. Prior attempts had met dead ends. Maybe it was because of the upcoming Labor Day holiday. Maybe it was because Conrad’s own eyewitness accounts and those of others, contained in files I uncovered in old federal government records, give the first actual detailed accounts of the incident by survivors, maybe because my shoulder was getting tapped by someone in the great beyond, I went through the census records and the government files one more time. The result was a conversation with a man living in Thibodaux who, it turns out, is undeniably the great-grandson of Jack Conrad, whose own knowledge of his family tree had stopped one generation short. But the results were clear. And I shall now have the honor of standing at a dais with Sylvester Jackson, the great-grandson, when the official launch event for the work is held at Nicholls State University.

It turns out Mr. Jackson is also a military man, having served not just in the Air Force, but the Air Force Reserve and the Louisiana National Guard. Considering that Jack Conrad was part of the unit hat stormed Port Hudson in 1863 and continued his service through the end of the war, it is clear that apples indeed don’t fall far from some family trees. Mr. Jackson is in all ways a gentleman, and I am pleased to have made his acquaintance. I am also pleased that as new understanding of that horrible day in 1887 is digested by readers in the not-too-distant future, the memory of the man who helped make the telling possible has been united with his descendants, who are very, very proud. It made for the happiest Labor Day I have had in just about all my years. •