National memorial marks Thibodaux mass shooting
29th May 2018 · 0 Comments
By Meghan Holmes
Contributing Writer
On a gentle rise in downtown Montgomery, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice marks the violent deaths of more than 4,000 African Americans across the United States. Iron pillars hanging from the ceiling of the memorial record the names and dates of those killed, with individual columns for each place where an African American was lynched. One column’s list stretches longer than most, and one date appears over and over next to each victim, some identified by name and others listed as ‘unknown.’ It’s a testament to one of the largest mass shootings in the United States, when white mobs murdered between 30 and 60 African Americans in Thibodaux, Louisiana, on November 23, 1887.
“On the morning of the 23rd, two white guys posted at the end of town, near the Terrebonne parish line, were shot at and wounded,” says John DeSantis, who wrote the book on the Thibodaux massacre, The Thibodaux Massacre: Racial Violence and the 1887 Sugar Cane Labor Strike, released in 2016. “Groups of armed white men started assembling in town and going from house to house in the predominantly Black section of Thibodaux and shooting people.”
The violence began following a labor strike on the part of the integrated Knights of Labor sugar cane union, with ninety percent African American membership. Almost all Black sugar cane farmers worked as sharecroppers on white owned plantations.
“They wanted to end the use of scrip. Workers could only use scrip at the plantation store. They didn’t get paid in cash. There was no way to raise your family up out of that system. How do you buy a mule and a wagon? They didn’t see a future,” Desantis says.
The planters ignored the strikers demands, and tensions escalated when workers left the fields enmasses during peak harvest season in response. When planters asked the state government to intervene, militias forced strikers and their families from their homes following a mass eviction order. Many walked to Thibodaux. “It was a sea of people, and it became ground zero. There was also a thriving Black community in Thibodaux where many strike leaders lived,” DeSantis says.
After the mass eviction, the state militia left, and local leaders took charge. Rumors began circulating that strike leaders had mass supplies of ammo and weapons, and planned to revolt. A local judge declared martial law and deputized more than 300 white men.
“The white people were afraid,” DeSantis says. “And after shots were fired, they sounded a general alarm and started killing Black people. We don’t know how many. There are eight verified names, but the best accounts at the time indicate between 30 and 60. White people held on to this idea that only strike leaders had been killed, but that’s not what happened, and we know this because of Jack Conrad.”
Connecting Past and Present
Jack Conrad’s son, Grant, was murdered during the Thibodaux massacre. So was his next door neighbor, Marcelen Welden. Both names are inscribed on the Lafourche column at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, likely next to their other neighbors whose names we still don’t know. DeSantis spent decades looking for more information on the victims, hoping to find more names, or descendants of the eight persons known. Eventually, he found a 200-page pension application while searching for more information on Grant Conrad.
“Grant’s father, Jack, walked off the plantation when the union army got to Thibodaux, and he fought throughout the war,” DeSantis says. “Later, he filed an application for pension benefits available to invalid Union army veterans.” Conrad signed an affidavit, confirmed through a medical examination, stating that he had been shot four times and had trouble moving his upper body. His wounds weren’t from the war – they were from the Thibodaux massacre.
Conrad’s personal account of the massacre is chilling. He estimates that the shooting lasted two and half hours, and describes 50 to 60 white men with guns outside his home, demanding he and his 19-year-old son Grant come outside.
“They came out, and the men took aim and started shooting. Jack managed to crawl under his house and somehow survived, and the mob moved down the street to the next house,” DeSantis says.
After the carnage, the state militia returned and the sharecroppers went back to the fields. More than a century of oral tradition indicates that the mob buried their victims in a mass grave, near an African-American legion post in Thibodaux. Today, a nonprofit group of town residents as well as DeSantis and the family of Jack Conrad are working to examine the area for proof that it was the burial site, and to memorialize any victims that may rest there.
DeSantis found the descendants of the Conrad family after he connected Grant and Jack Conrad. “He asked me if I knew Clara Conrad, and I said that was my grandmother on my father’s side,” says Sylvester Jackson, who lives in Thibodaux. “Then he asked me if I knew about the massacre. People told stories growing up, and we knew there was supposed to be a mass grave, but I had no idea my family was connected.”
Clara Conrad is Jack’s granddaughter, making Sylvester his great grandson. As a child, Sylvester doesn’t remember his family talking about the massacre, but he attributes that to being next to youngest in a big family. He’s now 86, and all of his siblings passed away before he found out about their connection to Conrad.
“My niece, my second oldest sister’s daughter Wiletta, is a teacher and a researcher and she teaches at St. Mary’s in New Orleans. I let her know and put her in touch with John, and the two of them have been learning more about what happened,” Jackson says.
Remembering the Victims Today
“When I found out about Jack Conrad, I had mixed emotions,” says Wiletta Ferdinand. “I was so sad for what happened to him and his son, but I was also elated, because we had an ancestor we could trace to pre-civil war. It’s very difficult for African Americans to trace their history during that time. I let my family know immediately that we had found Jack, and we decided to come to Thibodaux on November 23, 2016, and remember our ancestors buried there with a jazz funeral and celebration.”
More than 200 of Jack Conrad’s descendants came to Thibodaux, from California, Michigan, Missouri, Texas, Ohio, and other parts of Louisiana. They came back in 2017, and they’ll come again this November.
“Ten of us also went to Port Hudson, to see where Jack Conrad fought for the Union,” Ferdinand says. “We were so proud that he fought on the Union side, and it’s amazing that he survived through war and then the massacre. I always tell people that God wasn’t done with him yet, and that his story needed to be told.”
Both Ferdinand and DeSantis describe resistance on the part of some African-American community members when asked to speak publicly about the massacre. Oral history has carried the story through time, but only in whispers, and only spoken to certain people.
“I spent summers in Thibodaux at my grandmother’s house, who lives on the same block as the burial site, and no one ever talked about it,” Ferdinand says. “I actually learned about it in grad school from one of my professors at Howard. I think some people were scared to talk about it. That’s why it’s so important that we hold events and educate the community.”
In addition to the ceremonies Conrad’s family held, the city of Thibodaux and the parish council in Lafourche both released statements acknowledging the massacre following the release of De Santis’ book in 2017. On May 18 of this year, a group of scientists and archaeologists arrived in Thibodaux from Tulane and University of Louisiana Lafayette to begin analyzing the area rumored to hold the mass grave: a grassy field next to the American Legion post, with two single wide trailers bordering its other side.
“At some point this was a city dump,” says Davette Gadison, a doctoral student at Tulane with research excavating mass graves. “Years after the massacre, carcasses of mules were dumped and burned, and trash was heaped here, but we don’t know if any of that was actually buried. It wasn’t a landfill. So, we will be using ground penetrating radar equipment and taking core samples of the earth to see if there are any anomalies. We aren’t really sure what remnants would be left, if any.”
The search for remains at the site is part of the efforts of the Louisiana 1887 Memorial Committee, comprised of DeSantis, Conrad family members, and other community members, to erect a memorial for the Thibodaux massacre victims.
“We want to do right by those people down there, and erect a memorial, and they deserve to be removed and be buried in sacred ground,” DeSantis says.
Sylvester Jackson hopes Grant Conrad’s remains can be removed and reinterred at a cemetery blocks away – with the rest of his family. “I hope we can dig it up, and find the bodies. I’ve got a spot for Grant, in my tomb at Allen Chapel.”
In the meantime, his niece Wiletta is planning another family trip – to see Grant and his neighbor Marcellen’s names at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
“Oh, I’ll definitely have to road trip to Montgomery to see that,” Ferdinand says. “We have to keep moving forward, but I want my children and my grandchildren to know Grant and John and to remember this and understand what happened in Thibodaux.”
This article originally published in the May 28, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
