A dying police chief blamed his death on Italians. Mass arrests and a mass lynching followed.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, shown here in 2018, is expected to apologize to the Italian American community for the infamous killings. By Meagan Flynn Meagan Flynn Morning Mix reporter Email Bio Follow April 1 at 7:09 AM The mob assembled promptly at 10 a.m., crammed so tightly on the pavement that the streetcars couldn’t run.
Once the speeches finished, The Post reported then, everyone stood still for a moment, quiet just long enough for one man’s voice to catch the agitated crowd’s attention: “Shall we get our guns?” “This is not something that’s too little, too late,” Santo told The Post. “This is something that has to be addressed.”
“There was some preexisting anti-Italian sentiment that [after the shooting] people saw was then validated or justified,” Jackson said. “It was not a universal sentiment, but the discourse existed. Some were concerned with upwardly mobile Italians, who then used this to capitalize on some of those fears of Italians they had.”
The Post described the mob’s leaders as “cool-headed men” and “persons of influence” in an 1891 article, which Santo said disturbed him too, along with coverage in the New York Times and the local New Orleans press. Most of the coverage appeared sympathetic to the lynch mob, reflecting city leaders’ own attitudes, Santo said.
The accounts published in the papers at the time revealed vile details, reported from close range. According to The Post’s account, the man hanged from the lamp post was also shot at a dozen times as he dangled lifeless in the air. The Times reported that the mob spared the 14-year-old child charged with being accessory to murder — apparently its one act of mercy — but that men seeking to broach a confession from the boy assured him his father was alive and well, believing that would relax him.
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