The Massacre at Opelousas: How A Forgotten Tragedy Became the Template For Black Voter Suppression
Louisiana is overgrown with beautiful history, but September 28th is a day from our past so ugly most locals never learn it. Gather round, history nerds and die-hard New Orleans fans. It’s time to get caught up on The Massacre at Opelousas.
Flashback to September 1868. Summer was transitioning sweetly into fall, which in Louisiana is more like “Spring, Again, But This Time With Hurricanes!”
The 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States, had only been ratified for about a year. The Deep South was still very much in the throes of what some some historians call a “period of adjustment.” (A polite way of saying “throwing a hissy fit about losing the Civil War.”)
At this point in American history the Democratic Party was primarily vehement conservatives. The Republican Party was home to left-leaning abolitionists and economic reformists. “Dixie Democrats,” as they were dubbed, included members of domestic terrorism groups like the Ku Klux Klan, The Knights of the White Camellia, and The Innocents.
[Sidebar: If you don’t know about The Innocents, look them up. They were a group of Italians who paraded around New Orleans terrorizing people of color and anyone who voted Republican. Lamest. Parade krewe. Ever.]
Around this time an 18-year-old white school teacher, editor, and essayist from Ohio named Emerson Bentley published a piece in The St. Landry Progress, a Republican paper distributed across St. Landry Parish. Bentley condemned the Knights of the White Camellia for threatening liberal voters and causing violence in the lead up to the 1868 election. He encouraged his abolitionist peers to keep supporting freed slaves by assisting with their education, and advocated for voting black men into political office to increase their representation.
Within days of publication a note was pinned to the front door of the schoolhouse where Bentley taught African American children to read and write. “E.B. BEWARE! KKK,” it read, along with a hand drawn image of a coffin, skull, and bloody dagger. Bentley responded by continuing his work with children of color and advocating publicly for the voting rights of freed slaves. It was an election year, after all.
A few weeks later, Democrats John Williams, James R. Dickson, and local constable Sebastian May burst into Bentley’s schoolhouse during class. The trio savagely beat Bentley in front of the children, forced him to sign a retraction of his article slamming Democrats for their violence, then beat him again for irony. Traumatized black children spilled from the school, crying that their teacher was dead. (He was not actually dead, but did have to immediately flee north to save his life.)
Local black families were horrified. African Americans began organizing a small group to confront Bentley’s trio of assailants. But white Democrats who witnessed the organizing began sending word to neighboring parishes. They warned a militia of armed black men were organizing, and claimed “black rebellion” was about to detonate in St. Landry.
On September 28, 1868, over two dozen African Americans — some armed, many not, as it was still illegal for blacks to own guns at the time — gathered in Opelousas, Louisiana, to address the men who had assaulted Bentley and menaced their innocent children. They were met by a large group of armed white men mounted on horses. The black men demanded to know where Emerson Bentley was. When they were told he was alive and heading north, several turned around and left immediately. Words were exchanged between the two groups of men who remained, and at some point shots began firing on both sides. Desperately outnumbered, a total of 29 blacks were swiftly captured and shuttled to the local prison.
27, including twelve black Republican leaders, were executed within the day without a trial.
Over the next several weeks, thousands of white men from St. Landry Parish and its surrounding areas — some Knights of the White Camellia, some KKK, some “Red Shirts” and “Innocents,” some just deranged dudes with weapons — terrorized black families across Southern Louisiana. They also targeted anyone suspected of being a “Lincoln Republican” or abolitionist sympathizer, regardless of skin color. Families were dragged from their homes and lynched on their own property. African Americans were shot in public by white men who were not arrested or prosecuted. The editor of the St. Landry Progress, Mr. C.E. Durand, was murdered and put on display outside an Opelousas’ drug store as a warning to anyone who supported liberal causes or African Americans, period. Sexual assault, or threat of it, was leveraged against women known to support civil rights even though they could not legally vote themselves.
In an effort to prevent word from reaching neighboring states — and delay government intervention — the white supremacists even burned down Republican-owned printing presses and slaughtered “suspected journalists,” allowing Democratic newspapers to hide domestic terrorism as it was happening. They claimed the original massacre of 27 black men on September 28th was not a mass killing at all, rebranding it as a “riot” properly responded to by compassionate, patriotic law enforcers.
“The people are generally well-satisfied with the results of the St. Landry Riot,” wrote Democratic editor Daniel Dennet, “only they regret that the Carpet-Baggers escaped.” The mangled and fleeing Emerson Bentley being the “carpet-baggers” he was referring to.
This terror continued on through October as part of a coordinated effort on behalf of Democratic organizers to suppress potential Republican voters. Similar outbreaks of mass murder also popped up around the state, including nearby St. Bernard Parish. And the use of violent fear-mongering worked. Though Republican Ulysses S. Grant did indeed win the presidency, exactly ZERO Republican votes were counted in St. Landry Parish. Given that it was one of the most heavily populated areas in the state at the time, and home to no small number of freedmen and women, this was kind of a big deal.
By the time the official wave of mass murder and voter manipulation ended, upwards of 250 people — the vast majority of them African American — were dead by the hands of white supremacists. Democratic papers reported the numbers to be far lower, around 40, but historians over the last 100 years have proven otherwise. The Massacre at Opelousas officially “ended” with the election season, but became the template white supremacists and members of the “conservative” party would use every election cycle.
Lynching black voters, as well as beating and menacing white liberal voters sympathetic to people of color, remained commonplace across Louisiana for the next half century. Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia didn’t play their cards much differently. It was 1876 before another Republican newspaper existed in St. Landry Parish, and not until the mid-20th century that lynchers were prosecuted for mob justice with any regularity.
And even then, as we learned in the case of war veteran Maceo Snipes, it continued on a smaller scale.
For the record, some history books still parrot the words of white supremacist editor Daniel Dennet by referring to the massacre as “The Riot at Opelousas.” But it takes only a middle school education to see the misnomer.
A “massacre” is defined as “an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people.” Its synonyms include “murder, butcher, annihilate,” and “exterminate.” A “riot” is defined as “a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd,” with synonyms like “rampage” and “furor.” Considering that the 27 black men killed on September 28, 1868, ultimately took no lives and damaged little property, but all died within 24 hours, massacre certainly seems more accurate. But rebranding murder as a response rioting is a longstanding American tradition, much like warm apple pie and refusing to pay taxes.
The Massacre at Opelousas has been recognized by historians and politicians alike as the most deadly outbreak of violence in Reconstruction’s history. One local blacksmith, a freed man of color named Beverly Wilson, recalled at the time that he and his peers suffered during the fall of 1868 “a worse condition now than in slavery.” Whites murdered as part of the violence were dismissed as traitorous “radicals,” their murderers never brought to justice. James R. Dickson, one of the original three men who brutalized Emerson Bentley, was even elected to a local judgeship later that decade.
History forgotten turns into history repeated. If you’re just learning about this nugget today, pass it on, lest we encounter it in replay.
This piece is a collaboration with Human Fuckery Podcast, which you can support at www.patreon.com/humanfuckery.
