The Opelousas Massacre of 1868
This post originally appeared on our Facebook page on the 153rd anniversary of Opelousas, September 28, 2021.
154 years ago today, in Opelousas, Louisiana, three members of the Seymour Knights white supremacist organization attacked and beat Emerson Bentley, a white Republican party leader, newspaper editor, and teacher of Black students at a local Methodist school. Bentley had recently written an editorial criticizing Democrats’ behavior around Black voting rights. White supremacists confronted Bentley in front of his classroom of children, beat him with a cane, and forced him to sign a retraction of the article before he fled to New Orleans.
Then the white mobs began the massacre.
From the below article: “As Bentley fled, white mobs began a killing rampage that lasted several weeks, targeting Opelousas’ Black citizens—ostensibly to keep them from organizing. ‘Colored men were not allowed to stand in groups upon the sidewalks,’ according to the New Orleans Advocate. ‘Each day new victims fell.’ In St. Landry parish, dozens of black bodies were found scattered in shallow graves. The Republican party estimated casualties at between 200 and 300, while Democrats put it between 25 and 30. An Army investigation cited 233.”
Read more here.
154 years ago today, in Opelousas, Louisiana, three members of the Seymour Knights white supremacist organization attacked and beat Emerson Bentley, a white Republican party leader, newspaper editor, and teacher of Black students at a local Methodist school. Bentley had recently written an editorial criticizing Democrats’ behavior around Black voting rights. White supremacists confronted Bentley in front of his classroom of children, beat him with a cane, and forced him to sign a retraction of the article before he fled to New Orleans.
Then the white mobs began the massacre.
From the below article: “As Bentley fled, white mobs began a killing rampage that lasted several weeks, targeting Opelousas’ Black citizens—ostensibly to keep them from organizing. ‘Colored men were not allowed to stand in groups upon the sidewalks,’ according to the New Orleans Advocate. ‘Each day new victims fell.’ In St. Landry parish, dozens of black bodies were found scattered in shallow graves. The Republican party estimated casualties at between 200 and 300, while Democrats put it between 25 and 30. An Army investigation cited 233.”
Read more here.
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| St. Landry's Parish, Opelousas, Louisiana. Source |
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