The event, Wednesday, September 28, 2022, will also serve as a NAACP St. Landry membership drive at the St. Landry Parish Courthouse
Library of Congress
by Dominick Cross
The Opelousas Massacre of African Americans in 1868 stands out as a breathtakingly horrible event and an ugly stain in and on Louisiana and U.S. history during the Reconstruction Era.
While there are varying accounts of what actually triggered the carnage and the number of resulting deaths, the common denominators of voter intimidation, racism, rumor, equality, election results, journalism, vigilantism and Reconstruction all dovetail into the same conclusion: Up to 300 African Americans lives were taken as they were murdered at home, in public, summarily executed or chased down and shot over several weeks; some 30-50 whites also died.
NAACP St Landry will host a Candlelight vigil, 6 p.m., in remembrance of the Opelousas Massacre, September 28, 2022, in front of the St. Landry Parish Courthouse, 118 Court St., Opelousas.
Candles will be provided. A virtual candle App for smartphones is available.
The racial massacre stands out as the worst of the Reconstruction Era that followed the four-year bloodbath known as the Civil War.
Remember the Civil War?
It was where the people of seceded Southern states fought from 1861-1865 to keep captive fellow human beings as slaves for free labor and other nefarious pursuits, while other people from Northern states didn’t think it was such a good idea.
As we know, the good guys won and one would think that would’ve been the end of the hostilities toward African Americans in the U.S and Louisiana.
Far from it.
And that’s where the Opelousas Massacre comes in.
Beginnings
The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 granted voting rights to African American men. As the freedmen were trying to become actual American citizens and moved to partake in all the rights and privileges of being such, White Southern Democrats felt differently.
In St. Landry Parish, Ohio native Emerson Bentley, a white Republican school teacher and an editor of the Republican Party’s St. Landry Progress newspaper (Republican and Democrats had their own papers for their agendas), wanted to assist the recently freed people to find jobs, get an education and become politically involved.
As the November 1868 presidential election neared, Republicans in Louisiana had already pretty much swept local and state offices that spring, including the governorship. Southern White Democrats were none too pleased.
In early September 1868, a large number of Black Republicans and White Democrats converged in the nearby town of Washington for a dual political rally of sorts.
Some blacks wanted to join the predominately white Democrat Party, but its members strongly insisted otherwise. Many Republicans also thought it a bad idea and encouraged blacks to remain with the party.
Prior to the meeting, a rumor circulated among the whites that Republicans planned to kill Washington residents and burn down the town. As a result, many whites in the parish, weapons in hand, headed to Washington.
In addition, a racist organization, the uniformed and armed Seymour Knights lined the street and stood at the front of the platform where speeches were held.
Following the tense rally, a procession headed back to Opelousas. Once there, a shot was fired into the air from a Republican wagon, but before any violence could occur and confusion about the incident, the two sides reportedly parted peacefully.
Shortly thereafter, the leaders of the Democrats and Republicans signed a peace treaty between the parties.
Still, Bentley was told by the Democrats why they’d arrived in Washington, locked and loaded as they were, and insisted they wanted their version of the story printed.
A newspaperman not to be intimidated, Bentley wrote about the Washington incident as he saw it.
E.B. Beware! K.K.K.
“E.B. Beware! K.K.K.” The note was posted on the schoolhouse door where he taught. He found the message illustrated with a coffin, a skull and bones, and a dagger dripping with blood.
On the morning of September 28, 1868, three Seymour Knights went to the school where Bentley taught and wanted him to recant the story and he refused. He painfully paid for his stand.
The men beat Bentley unmercifully in front of his black students who ran out of the school and thought him dead. Thus spread the rumor of his death in the African American community.
Bentley, however, and a group of black residents, had gone on to file an affidavit at the justice of the peace office. At this time, Bentley was informed of fighting in Opelousas and urged to leave with his life, which he did, and he eventually made it back to Ohio.
The very same rumor of Bentley’s death set the Democrats in motion, too, going house-to-house to quell any Republican response and by any means possible.
The massacre was underway.
At one point in the afternoon, a group of about 29 armed black men had gathered at Halaire Paillet’s plantation, south of Opelousas. Southern Democrats arrived and told the group to unarm and return to Opelousas with them. The freedmen responded with gunfire.
A short gunfight ensued with injuries on both sides and the death of one black man. Of the the 29 blacks captured as the others fled, 27 were promptly executed.
This would be the only organized group of African Americans the whites would encounter during the massacre.
Still, whites continued to converge in Opelousas and their numbers increased to some 2,500 by that evening. In the meantime, African Americans had left their homes in the area — voluntarily or not — in fear for their lives, which they would lose if caught.
White patrols continued for two weeks or more in the region and, by some accounts, up to 300 African Americans were killed in the process in the weeks-long massacre.
In the end, the St. Landry Progress was no more as would be the Republican Party in St. Landry Parish. Also vanquished were the political gains and rights of African Americans after the Civil War.
Epilogue
After the Opelousas Massacre 154 years ago, the political parties have seemingly exchanged identities, platforms and policies.
The political parties began the slow shift as the 1964 Civil Rights Act came into being and eventually became ideologically opposed to their former selves.
Today, in a nutshell, the Democrat Party, more or less, stands up for minorities, immigrants, the working class, climate change and social issues. The Republican Party favors the business community and its interests, the wealthy, and are conservative on social issues.
So as this country tries to right its racial wrongs in the public square by the removal of confederate statues, monuments, and battle flags, as well as the renaming of military bases and streets — another contemptible movement is afoot.
That movement, spurred on by the Republican Party, is voter suppression.
While non-violent, the Republican Party adheres to the same agenda Democrats supported for more than 100 years: Keep certain American citizens from exercising their right to vote, or installing people in office who can determine whether the vote counts once it is cast.
That said:
The NAACP St. Landry will hold a voter registration/information/membership drive, Thursday, October 6, 2022, 5-8 p.m. at Da Zydeco Shack, 4451 NW Evangeline Thruway, in Carencro, Louisiana.
Sources:
The1868 St. Landry Massacre: Reconstruction’s Deadliest Episode of Violence
The Deadliest Massacre in Reconstruction-Era Louisiana Happened 150 Years Ago
The 1868 Louisiana Massacre That Reversed Reconstruction-Era Gains