Biggest Mass Lynching in U.S. History Killed 11, All Italian-Americans

[DemBones DemBones]

On the night of October 15, 1890, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Chief of Police, David Hennessy, was shot down in the street. A former policeman heard the shots and rushed to his side. When asked who shot him, Hennessy allegedly answered, "A dago." "Dago," according to this report, "was a derogatory word used to describe an Italian day laborer."

By the late 1800s, the French Quarter area of New Orleans had become known as "Little Palermo," dominated by successful merchants and restaurant owners who had immigrated from Sicily. Their achievements ignited racial tensions.

Many Sicilians worked as fishermen in New Orleans and were viewed as taking work away from the Irish, who had run the waterfront. As in other cities, they could not break into the jobs held by Irish immigrants on the police and fire departments and because they were the newest group of immigrants and their customs were very different from Irish customs, there was considerable tension between Irish and Italians everywhere. Italians were also widely considered to be non-white.

By the time of Chief of Police David Hennessy's murder, there was a great deal of hatred in New Orleans directed at the Italians, and not only by the Irish. Newspaper cartoons portrayed Italians as dirty, lazy, illiterate, and dangerous. A newspaper headline proclaimed "Superintendent Hennessy Shot Down by a Dago Gang."

300 Italian-Americans were rounded up. Nine men were eventually tried and acquitted of the murder. A mob of thousands broke into the prison and dragged the acquitted men into the streets. A total of eleven Italian-American men were lynched that day.


Happy Columbus Day. :cry:


I had to post this after I saw it in a program on A&E called "Italians in America." Though my family came from England, I love the Italian people and their country, having traveled there often.

[FarLeftRage]

1. I remember reading about this

a few years ago...

Along with the Sacco & Venzetti "crime", this is what bothered my Grandfather about this country after he emigrated from Italy in 1913.

[DemBones DemBones]

2. I'd never heard about it before so I was stunned.

I love New Orleans and thought I knew a bit about its history. :shrug:

The program covered Sacco and Vanzetti, also, which I did know about. I can imagine your grandfather had some strong feelings about both events. We think of the U.S. as a bastion of freedom and democracy back then but it wasn't quite as free and democratic for some.

[Dunedain]

3. Sorry

My home town of Mankato has that dubious honor......38 Sioux Indians December 26, 1862. 307 Dakota were sentenced to death until President Lincoln intervened and whittled the number down to 38. Thousands of vengeful white settlers attended the execution on the day after Christmas.

[DemBones DemBones]

6. But the 38 Dakota were executed after being sentenced, not

dragged from their cells after being acquitted and then hanged as the Italian-Americans were.

If I understand correctly, there were 38 Dakota unfairly but legally executed in Mankato. A mob of thousands watched the executions.

In New Orleans, 11 Italian-Americans were lynched, in a public street. A mob of thousands carried out the lynching.


I'm sorry for Mankato's dubious honor. As my Yellow Dog Dem grandfather said, though, "There's a horse thief in every family tree."

[Tim4319]

4. Check these statistics out!

Between 1882 (when reliable statistics were first collected) and 1968 (when the classic forms of lynching had disappeared), 4,743 persons died of lynching, 3,446 of them black men and women. Mississippi (539 black victims, 42 white) led this grim parade of death, followed by Georgia (492, 39), Texas (352, 141), Louisiana (335, 56), and Alabama (299, 48). From 1882 to 1901, the annual number nationally usually exceeded 100; 1892 had a record 230 deaths (161 black, 69 white). Although lynchings declined somewhat in the twentieth century, there were still 97 in 1908 (89 black, 8 white), 83 in the racially troubled postwar year of 1919 (76, 7, plus some 25 race riots), 30 in 1926 (23, 7), and 28 in 1933 (24, 4).


http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lynching/lynching.htm

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. Not even close.

Unless you consider hanging the only form of "lynching". Our history is riddled with mass killings of blacks.

Not to minimize the horror of what happened in New Orleans, mind you, but compared to what happened to the blacks in this country following the civil war, it's a drop in the bucket.