Editing Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana (section)

==History==
{{More citations needed section|date=January 2022}}
Tangipahoa Parish was created by Louisiana Act 85 on March 6, 1869, during the [[Reconstruction era]].<ref>{{cite journal |title=Acts passed by the General Assembly of the state: To Create the Parish of Tangipahoa |url=https://hdl.handle.net/2027/pst.000018406139?urlappend=%3Bseq=87%3Bownerid=13510798899422749-105 |website=HathiTrust Digital Library |publisher=Louisiana State Legislature |access-date=February 2, 2022 |pages=83–86 |date=1869| hdl=2027/pst.000018406139?urlappend=%3Bseq=87 }}</ref> The parish was assembled from territories taken from [[Livingston Parish, Louisiana|Livingston Parish]], [[St. Helena Parish, Louisiana|St. Helena Parish]], [[St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana|St. Tammany Parish]], and [[Washington Parish, Louisiana|Washington Parish]]. It was named after the [[Tangipahoa River]] and the historic [[Tangipahoa]] [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] people of this area. Tangipahoa is the youngest parish in the ''[[Florida Parishes]]'' region of southern Louisiana.

Parts of this area had already been developed for sugar cane plantations when the parish was organized, and that industry depended on numerous African American laborers who were freedmen after the war. Mostly white yeomen farmers occupied areas in the piney woods and resisted planters' attempts at political dominance. African Americans comprised about one-quarter of the population overall in the Florida Parishes before the war but were prevalent in the plantation areas, where they had been enslaved laborers.<ref name="pfeifer"/>

The region developed rapidly during and after Reconstruction. Both physical and political conflicts arose in Tangipahoa Parish among interests related to construction of railroads, exploitation of timber, yeoman farmers in the piney woods keeping truck farms, and the beginning of manufacturing.

Sugar cane had depended on the labor of large gangs of enslaved African Americans before the Civil War. After the war and emancipation, some [[freedmen]] stayed to work on the plantations as laborers. Others moved to New Orleans and other cities, seeking different work. This area had rapid development and received a high rate of immigrants and migrants from other areas of the country. Through the turn of the twentieth century, the eastern Florida Parishes had the most white mob violence and highest rate of lynchings (primarily of black men) in southern Louisiana.<ref name="pfeifer"/>

Especially after Reconstruction, whites helped black communities with flowers and food. <!-- Flowers & food? After lynchings? -->Piney woods whites resisted the planters' efforts to restore their political power, but imposed their own brutal violence on freedmen.

Tangipahoa Parish became more socially volatile by a "pronounced in-migration" of northerners (from the Midwest) and [[Sicily|Sicilian]] immigrants, coupled with "industrial development along the [[Illinois Central Railroad]], and crippling political factionalism."<ref name="pfeifer"/>

During the period of 1877–1950, a total of 24 blacks were [[Lynching in the United States|lynched]] by whites in the parish as a means of racial terrorism and intimidation. This was the sixth highest total of any parish in Louisiana<ref>[https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf ''Lynching in America, Third Edition: Supplement by County''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171023063004/https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf |date=October 23, 2017 }}, p. 6, Equal Justice Initiative, Mobile, AL, 2017</ref> and the highest number of any parish in southern Louisiana.<ref name="pfeifer">[https://books.google.com/books?id=zAGwb3G6soMC&q=Tangipahoa+parish Michael James Pfeifer, ''Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874-1947''], University of Illinois Press, 2004, pp. 83-84</ref> Twenty-two of these murders took place from 1879 to 1919, a time of heightened violence in the state. Unlike some other parishes, Tangipahoa did not have a high rate of legal executions of blacks; the whites operated outside the justice system altogether.<ref name="pfeifer"/> Among those lynched and hanged by a mob was Emma Hooper, a black woman who had shot and wounded a constable.<ref>Pfeifer (2004), ''Rough Justice'', p. 198, Footnote #104</ref>

In 1898 the Louisiana state legislature [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disenfranchised most blacks]] by raising barriers to voter registration. They effectively excluded blacks from politics for decades, until after passage and enforcement of federal civil rights legislation.

In the first half of the 20th century, many African Americans left Tangipahoa Parish to escape the racial violence and oppression of [[Jim Crow]], moving to industrial cities in the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]]. Especially during and after World War II, they moved to the West Coast, where the buildup of the defense industry opened up new jobs. In the 21st century, blacks constitute a minority in the parish.

Timber, agriculture and industry are still important to the parish. It suffered flooding in 1932 and in the early 1980s. In 2016, Tangipahoa was one of many parishes declared a [[Federal government of the United States|Federal]] [[disaster area]] due to [[2016 Louisiana floods|historic flooding]] from rainfall and storms in both March and August.