Editing Thibodaux, Louisiana (section)

===Post-Reconstruction and Thibodaux massacre===
{{Main|Thibodaux massacre}}
In the late 19th century, after having taken back control of the state government following the [[Reconstruction era (United States)|Reconstruction era]] by use of election fraud and violence by [[paramilitary]] forces such as the [[White League]], which suppressed black voting, white Democrats continued to consolidate their power over the state government. In the late 1880s they were challenged temporarily by a biracial coalition of Populists and Republicans. In this period, because blacks were skilled sugar workers, they briefly retained more rights and political power than did African Americans in the north of the state who worked as tenant farmers or sharecroppers on cotton plantations.

But from 1880, through the Louisiana Sugar Producers Association, some 200 major planters worked to regain slave conditions and control of workers, adopting uniform pay, withholding 80 percent of the workers' pay until after harvest, and making them accept [[scrip]], redeemable only at plantation stores owned by the planters, rather than cash. Cane workers struck intermittently against these conditions.

The [[Knights of Labor]] organized a chapter in 1886 in [[Shreveport, Louisiana]] and attracted many cane workers seeking better conditions. A sugar cane workers' strike in Lafourche and three neighboring parishes involved 10,000 workers, 1,000 of whom were white, during the critical "rolling period" of the sugar cane harvest. Planters were alarmed both by outside labor organizations and the thought of losing their total crops. The governor called in the state militia at the planters' request; they protected strikebreakers and evicted black workers. The strike was broken in Terrebonne Parish.

Paramilitary forces closed off Thibodaux, where numerous black workers had taken refuge. A New Orleans newspaper reported that "for three weeks past the negro women of the town have been making threats to the effect that if the white men resorted to arms they would burn the town and [end] the lives of the white women and children with their cane knives."<ref>''The New Orleans Times-Democrat'', November 24, 1887.</ref> Similarly, in the days leading up to the climactic event, it was reported that "[s]ome of the colored women made open threats against the people and the community, declaring that they would destroy any house in the town" and that "[n]ot a few of the negroes boasted that in case a fight was made they were fully prepared for it."<ref>''The Lake Charles Echo'', December 9, 1887, p.6.</ref> One historian adds:

<blockquote>As late as November 21 some still comported themselves with confidence, and perhaps bravado, on the sidewalks. Mary Pugh, widow of Richard Pugh, owner of Live Oak Plantation in Lafourche Parish, reported "meeting negro men singly or two or three together with guns on their shoulders going down town & negro women on each side telling them to 'fight - yes - fight we'll be there.'"<ref>Rebecca J. Scott, ''Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba After Slavery'', Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 84.</ref>
</blockquote>

On November 23, after the ambush and wounding of two pickets posted in the southern section of town, the militia committee began to indiscriminately shoot black workers and some family members, killing an estimated 35 (and quite possibly more) in what is called the "[[Thibodaux massacre]]" of November 23, 1887. The incident is generally considered to be the second bloodiest labor dispute in U.S. history. Casualties including wounded and missing were claimed by some to be in the hundreds, but there has never been an accurate count.

The cane workers returned to the plantations under conditions dictated by white planters. The massacre and subsequent [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disenfranchisement of blacks]] in Louisiana at the turn of the century by making voter registration more difficult, and white Democrats' imposition of [[Jim Crow]], ended labor organizing of cane workers until the 1940s.