The 1887 Thibodaux massacre crushed striking sugar workers after Reconstruction’s end

Evidence

But the gains of Reconstruction were short-lived. As W.E.B. Du Bois so eloquently wrote in his 1935 book Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880: “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.” The domestic terrorism that ended Reconstruction and destroyed so many Black lives was particularly vicious in the sugar region. Striking sugar workers were often met with swift and violent reprisals. In November 1887, a decade after former Confederates had regained political control of the South and had terrorized and purged much of Louisiana’s Black political leadership from office, a national union attempted to organize sugar workers. In three parishes during harvest season, workers had “downed their tools, walked off the job,” and insisted on higher wages paid in cash rather than plantation credit, writes Follett. Strikebreakers and state militiamen responded with a show of force. Shots rang out, and at least thirty Black people—some sources estimated hundreds—were killed in their homes and on the streets of Thibodaux, Louisiana. “I think this will settle the question of who is to rule[,] the nigger or the White man? for the next 50 years,” a local white planter’s widow, Mary Pugh, wrote, rejoicing, to her son. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 305

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Supplementary evidence for how post-slavery labor systems were enforced by terror — connects to the Grafting & Growth infrastructure piece in how plantation economies structurally endure.
• XREF: Du Bois’s line about the slave moving back toward slavery anticipates the reframing argument about continuity between slavery and later labor exploitation.