The 1868 St. Bernard Parish Massacre

by C. Dier

  The case to prosecute the perpetrators in Grant Parish led to the United States v. Cruikshank et al Supreme Court case. The landmark decision undermined legislation that granted the federal government the authority to impose Reconstruction in the South. The Enforcement Act of 1870, which was enacted to prosecute paramilitary organizations similar to the White League, was nullified. It was a fatal blow for freedpeople in St. Bernard Parish and throughout Louisiana. The success of staunch anti-Republicans at Colfax ignited a new spark for overthrowing Republican rule via black disenfranchisement.

  Freedpeople hiding in the swamps to escape violence. Harper’s Weekly, 1873. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  A member of the White League shakes hands with a KKK member over an African American couple holding a deceased baby. An African American hangs from a tree in the background. Harper’s Weekly, 1874. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  In August 1874, in Coushatta Parish, the White League kidnapped six Republican officeholders and a few of their family members and rounded up twenty-five nearby freedpeople. They coerced the officeholders to sign a document stating they would leave the region. They were executed before that chance was granted to them. The freedpeople were killed because they witnessed the atrocity. No members of the White League were charged.

  A month later, McEnery and his loyal supporters organized a legislature in New Orleans and orchestrated a coup to oust Kellogg. The legislature mobilized the White League, including members from St. Bernard Parish, to provide over 5,000 armed militants, many of them ex-Confederates, as a de facto army. The Metropolitan Police and the state militia, which included both African Americans and ex-Confederates, were tasked to defend the city with a smaller force of approximately 3,500. On September 14, 1874, a usually bustling Canal Street of commerce was turned into a bloody battleground. James Longstreet, a former Confederate general and Metropolitan officer, attempted to halt the violence of the White League. He was shot and taken prisoner. The conflict, dubbed the Battle of Liberty Place, resulted in an estimated over 100 causalities and a decisive victory by the White League.192

  The new government occupied government buildings, inaugurated McEnery and exercised control of the entire city for three days. President Grant sent federal troops to restore order; the White League retreated prior to their arrival. As with many other violent episodes during Reconstruction, no arrests were made. Although the Battle of Liberty Place did not achieve the desired results for the White League and Democrats, it sent shockwaves throughout St. Bernard Parish and the entire region. The Metropolitan Police and state militias were disrupted beyond repair. Kellogg maintained his power through force by federal troops, but his authority was almost nonexistent in rural Louisiana. The White League increased its influence in New Orleans, St. Bernard Parish and throughout Louisiana.193

  In 1876, Democrats regained control of the state legislature. In the same year, Democrat Francis T. Nicholls won the gubernatorial election. The majority of the White League morphed into the state militia and the National Guard. Supporters of Nicholls marched on the Cabildo, the Louisiana Supreme Court, and ousted the Supreme Court justices. Nicholls then appointed justices who would appease white supremacists. Nationally, the disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election was settled through an agreement that federal troops would be removed from the South if the South conceded to a victory for Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. The Compromise of 1877 officially ended Reconstruction in the South.194

  The end of Reconstruction meant the black population in St. Bernard Parish would not have the level of protection granted under federal occupation. Voter records show that voter intimidation increased after 1877. When Democrat Nicholls ran for governor in 1876, he received 48.4 percent of the St. Bernard Parish vote, demonstrating a significant black voter turnout. However, when Democrat Louis A. Wiltz ran for governor after Reconstruction ended, he won 65.5 percent of the parish vote despite the notion that the majority of the voter eligible population was black. The pattern was similar across local, state and federal elections.195

  BOURBON ERA

  After federal occupation ceased, Louisiana entered the Bourbon Era, a reactionary period dating from the Louisiana Constitution of 1879 until the Constitution of 1898. Its name derives from the Bourbon kings who dominated the political landscape in France after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. The Bourbon kings sought to reverse the monumental political and economic gains provided by the French Revolution. They favored archaic laws designed to reestablish royal power at the expense of France’s middle and lower classes. Like the Bourbon kings of France, the Bourbon Democrats of Louisiana sought to restore policies that favored the elites and reverse gains made during Reconstruction. Once they obtained power, the impact was immediate for St. Bernard Parish.

  The quality of life for black citizens during the Bourbon Era worsened in St. Bernard Parish and throughout Louisiana. They were left unprotected and vulnerable. The quality of life for whites did not improve either. The lower class suffered from economic and social immobility. Bourbon Democrats saw and seized the opportunity to exploit the plight of Louisiana’s impoverished whites by using divisive and racially charged rhetoric to win their votes. They scapegoated the white citizens’ economic stagnation as being the result of both competition with black laborers and corrupt carpetbag rule. They claimed to empathize with poor whites; the whites pledged their votes to the Democrats in response. The Louisiana Constitution of 1879 severely limited the gains of African Americans and moved the state capital from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.

  Black reaction to the rise of paramilitary groups such as the White League and the Ku Klux Klan coupled with failures of Reconstruction was powerful. Henry Adams, an ex-slave and Union veteran, organized the Colonization Council in 1874 in an attempt to initiate a mass exodus from Louisiana. He sent agents throughout the state to recruit and inform of his goals. His association was estimated at 92,800 members. The movement, known as “the Exodus” for its biblical implications, attempted unsuccessfully to migrate to Liberia; the would-be emigrants’ demands to the federal government went ignored. Leaders of the Exodus shifted their sights instead to a mass migration to Kansas for its vast agricultural opportunities. The movement especially captivated the imaginations of African Americans living in the lower Mississippi River Valley.196

  In April 1879, as delegates met in New Orleans to finalize the new constitution, another convention was assembling. The Exodus Convention was organized by many influential black activists of the era to coordinate a mass departure from Louisiana’s increasingly oppressive political regime. The movement was controversial among people of color and faced resistance from prominent black leaders. One state senator gave a speech outside the convention that almost ignited a riot. P.B.S. Pinchback claimed that proposed migration was misguided and had been organized by illiterate clergy members. Frederick Douglass criticized the movement because it conceded to the notion that “colored people and white people cannot live together in peace and prosperity.” A man at the Exodus Convention responded to such criticism by inquiring as to why Douglass himself had left the South yet insisted that others of his own race remain. The inquiry went unanswered. Despite the increasingly hostile racial division in the region, resistance to the migration among whites was surprisingly intense. Planters did not want to see their largest labor force depleted. To incite fear among potential emigrants, planters perpetuated horror stories in local newspapers about northerners threating to shoot “Exodusters” on sight and claimed that the region was being decimated by smallpox. One rumor circulated that Jefferson Davis himself blocked the Mississippi River with ten thousand armed veterans ready to re-enslave migrants.197

  Migrating anywhere proved challenging for impoverished black Louisianans. To properly relocate required around $700 worth of equipment, supplies and food. Many arrived to their new homes without capital, and federal assistance never materialized. Despite the complications of resettlement, over ten thousand black Louisia
nans made the arduous journey north during that year. William Ivy Hair noted in Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest that the “Exodus of 1879 deserves recognition as one of the most genuine grass-roots upheavals in American history.”198

  THERE WERE SCATTERED episodes of solidarity between black and white Louisianans during this racially tumultuous era. In 1881, in St. Bernard Parish, Gabriel Casanova, an Isleño, is reported to have instigated a substantial labor strike. Backed by other Isleños, he traveled to various plantations and convinced the laborers to cease working in protest for better wages. Reports estimated that at least three hundred black and white laborers joined Casanova’s forces to combat poor working conditions. The Times-Picayune wrote in an article, “Riot in St. Bernard,” about the circumstances:

  On Monday, however, the strike assumed more serious proportions, verging into a riot. It is stated that about three or four hundred negroes banded together under the leadership of some of the Spaniards, or “Islangs,” and went from plantation to plantation, compelling the laborers to stop work until the planters consent to pay the wages demanded.…Finding it necessary to quell the turbulent disturbers a committee of planters called at the Governor’s office and asked for the authorities of the State to assist them as the parish authorities are powerless.199

  The strike garnered national attention, perhaps for the multiracial makeup of its participants. The Boston Daily Journal wrote a story claiming “laborers are on a strike in St. Bernard parish” and noted that the “leader of the strike is a white man.”200

  Newspapers reported that since Sheriff Nuñez, an Isleño as well, failed to subdue the strike, Governor Wiltz sent a detachment from the Orleans Artillery to suppress the demonstration. Notably, just thirteen years prior, federal troops had entered St. Bernard Parish to prevent further killings of African Americans by whites, a proportion of whom were Isleños. In 1881, federal troops again were dispatched to St. Bernard Parish, this time to protect the planters’ interests as those same ethnic groups marched in solidarity. Serious strikes such as these continued to occur throughout Louisiana, representing a substantial challenge to the status quo in areas where planters had previously maintained supremacy.201

  LOUISIANA FACED ITS demise from the national spotlight during the Bourbon Era. The year 1880 was New Orleans’s final one as one of the nation’s top ten most populated cities. During this time, populations rapidly expanded in other cities around the country. Racial violence, although not as severe as the violence that occurred during Reconstruction, also plagued Louisiana during this era.

  One episode in particular epitomized the racial tension during the Bourbon Era. In 1893, Victor Estopinal, the man who led armed groups to violence during the St. Bernard Parish Massacre of 1868, was acting as judge in Carrollton, then a separate jurisdiction to New Orleans. The man on trial was Roselius Julian, an African American man accused of beating his wife. Notably, Julian was known to have supported a Republican candidate who lost to Estopinal. During the trial, Julian shot Estopinal twice while Estopinal’s back was turned away from Julian. Estopinal charged at his assailant, only to be struck a third time. Estopinal’s wife walked in as Julian stood over the injured judge and watched Julian deliver the fourth and fatal shot in the heart.202

  August Estopinal, a son of Victor Estopinal, chased his father’s murderer to his cabin, where Julian reloaded and grabbed a Winchester rifle. Julian shot August twice. August crawled to a nearby house and received medical attention, while Julian escaped to the swamps. His three brothers, mother and sister were arrested a few days later on suspicion of assisting the fugitive.203

  After news of the attack spread throughout the region, armed groups roamed the swamps in search of Julian, but to no avail. They went to the house of John Willis, Julian’s friend, but their interrogation did not yield the desired information. Infuriated, the mob beat Willis to death. After a long day of unsuccessful searching, the crowd convened at the prison to discuss further action. It was there they decided the fate of Julian’s imprisoned family, and their decision garnered national attention. The New York Tribune provided the following description of the events that unfolded:

  About 11 o’clock a body of about twenty-five men, some armed with rifles and shotguns came up to the jail and lit a lantern. They unlocked the door and then held a conference among themselves as to what they should do. Some were in favor of hanging the whole five, while others raised objections and insisted that only two of the brothers, a short one and tall one, Valsin and Bakile, should be taken out and strung up. This was finally agreed to, and several of the men went into the jail, and coming out afterward brought with them the two doomed negroes. They were hurried across to a pasture, 100 yards distant, and there asked to take their last chance of saving their lives by making a confession. The negroes made no reply. They were then told to kneel down and pray. One did so: the other remained standing, but both prayed fervently. The taller negro was then hoisted up. He remained hanging fully five minutes before the second one was hanged. The shorter negro stood gazing at the horrible death of his brother without flinching.204

  The tombstone of Victor Estopinal and his family in the St. Bernard Cemetery. Courtesy of Rhett Pritchard.

  The mob returned to the prison and took Julian’s third brother, Paul, and lynched him at Camp Parapet in full view of a crowd as a warning to others. Julian’s mother and two sisters were publicly beaten and flogged, after which they were given an hour and a half to leave town. After having witnessed the brutalities inflicted on the Julian family, other African Americans then armed themselves and amassed at Camp Parapet for protection. The episode was one of the most gruesome of the Bourbon Era, excluding the lynching of eleven Italians two years earlier.205

  AS WITH MOST of the American South, violence against African Americans to keep them in their position in St. Bernard Parish came in the form of lynching. There are several recorded accounts of such events. In 1884, two men engaged in a scuffle at the Contreras Plantation, the former plantation of General P.G.T. Beauregard. The conflict ended when Charles Goodman, an African American, shot Louis Maspero, the white owner of the plantation, as Maspero was walking his servant home at night. Charles and his brother, Albert, were lynched as retribution. Albert was not present for the crime but deemed guilty by association. The Daily Picayune remarked that the brothers were “launched into eternity from the gallows.”206

  A similar incident occurred in May 1886. Major W.P. Greene, a prominent planter, engaged in an altercation with Robert Smith, a black laborer. The origins of the conflict are unknown, but Smith attacked Greene with a singletree, a bar used in pulling wagons or plows, and caused him to fall. Smith then armed himself with a pistol and went to the house where Greene was eating. As soon as Major Greene opened the door, Smith greeted him with a shot in the abdomen. Smith abandoned the scene, and Greene died at his residence later that night. Smith was eventually captured and imprisoned for the murder of Major Greene. A mob gathered the next morning and battered their way into the prison. Smith was lynched at the nearest tree.207

  In 1894, another saga in Arabi, an area of St. Bernard Parish closest to New Orleans, captured the attention of the city. George King, a black cattle merchant, was apparently a known fighter in the area with a reputation for getting into scuffles. The Daily Item noted that many of the fights were not his fault because they were caused “by the deviltry of St. Bernard residents who knew that the negro was a very ticklish individual and wanted to fight the moment he was poked in the ribs.” One such event came to a peak when King threatened a local butcher after a heated exchange. The butcher notified Joseph Guerra, a police officer, and the two men waited for King’s reappearance.208

  King returned to the scene with a shotgun. Guerra drew his gun on King; King fired a shot in response and wounded Guerra in the face. A mob gathered at the scene and started chasing King, who fired at the crowd as he ran to take cover in a nearby barn. The mob proceeded to fire at King each time he presented his face a
t the barn window. After a half hour, “there was a mob of several hundred people, a large number carrying shotguns and a general demand for the negro’s blood was heard.” King was eventually wounded in his side, but he did not budge from his position. Throughout the ordeal, King wounded nine members of the mob before the frustrated horde decided to torch the place to “smoke him out.” King jumped out of the window as the fire neared him and shot his shotgun into the mob when he landed. King was shot once more, and he fell silent. The crowd cheered.209

  To the surprise of many, King crawled from his position and ran to the levee. The mob chased him and shot him another time, causing him to fall once again. This time, his substantial injuries prevented his escape. The mob positioned a rope around his neck and dragged him three hundred feet until he was hoisted up the nearest tree. His desperate pleas for mercy were met with scorn and mockery. After his death, his body was cut down, but the heated crowd strung him up once more, this time to a different tree. After he was cut down a second time, the mob “trampled upon” his lifeless corpse. His corpse was then put on display by the “little court house,” presumably as a warning to others.210