Sending this in the hope that this is still your address. I am a historian (from Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, living in NC) who researches and writes on race and civil rights in LA. I am very interested in the Freetown Massacre, especially the members of the community. The collection in the Foner book (mentioned in an earlier post) is a good one. The documents concerning Freetown (largely newspapers) are among the last entries in Vol. 8. The Freetown Massacre came in the immediate aftermath of the great Sugar Strike of 1887, which occurred in the first three weeks of November. Geographically, the strike occurred over the region stretching from Lafourche Parish west to Lafayette Parish. It ended very bloodily with the Thibodaux Massacre when white militias(one of them from the Shreveport area, others local) used a mysterious early morning shooting incident as the pretext for systematically killing strikers. Death toll was at least 35, and perhaps ran into the hundreds according to one white observer. The later white violence in Iberia Parish seems to have involved not only sugar industry issues but also white hatred directed at mixed race people who were possibly/probably landowners--white fears of miscegenation and of independent people of color (any) having political or economic power was a clear and present factor in all of the violence surrounding the sugar strike. I am glad to have found this interest in the innocent families who were so deeply affected by this unnecessary tragedy. If anyone wants further information or to send me family names from that era, I can be contacted at
wademg@appstate.edu.