“White vigilantes gunned down unarmed black laborers and their families during a spree lasting more than two hours. The violence erupted due to strikes on Louisiana sugar cane plantations. Fear, rumor, and white supremacist ideals clashed with an unprecedented labor action to create an epic tragedy.” 

 

John DeSantis, Author

The Thibodaux Massacre: Racial Violence and the 1887 Sugar Cane Labor Strike

On November 23, 1887, Thibodaux, Louisiana, became the site of one of the bloodiest labor conflicts in American history. What began weeks earlier as a strike by sugarcane workers demanding fair wages, safer conditions, and payment in cash instead of scrip, ended in what is now remembered as the Thibodaux Massacre—when white vigilantes unleashed a deadly wave of violence. To this day, much about the tragedy remains contested: the true death toll, though officials claimed only eight; the location of the graves, with local lore pointing to the grounds beneath Raymond Stafford Post 513, the “Black” American Legion Hall; and even the first shot fired, with some accounts naming Andrew Price—a planter, attorney, and congressman—as among the massacre’s most ruthless participants.

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In Thibodeauxville – The Story of the Thibodaux Massacre: Race, Riot, and
Resilience, a character-driven, archival-rich feature documentary, director and native daughter Christina Hill returns to her hometown of Thibodaux, Louisiana, to confront the long-buried legacy of the 1887 Thibodaux Massacre.

 

Through the voices of descendants, historians, activists, and community members, the film reopens one of the darkest and most misunderstood chapters in American labor history, while asking what it means to remember, to resist, and to heal.​​