Bogalusa Sawmill Killings (1919)

Sat Nov 22, 1919

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The Bogalusa Sawmill Killings was a massacre of labor organizers by the white paramilitary group “Self-Preservation and Loyalty League” (SPLL) on this day in 1919, in Thibodaux, Louisiana.

The Bogalusa Sawmill employed both white and black workers, and they had been attempting to form an interracial union for years. To offset labor demands for better wages, local police would arrest black men nightly for minor crimes and force them to work in the mill at gunpoint.

In response to the attempted unionizing efforts, the company organized racist whites into the SPLL. Company gunmen and the SPLL assaulted union members, evicted them from company housing, burned private homes, and kidnapped and tortured organizers.

On November 21st, they shot up black labor organizer Sol Dacus’s home. In a show of force the next day, Dacus marched through the town accompanied by white supporters and allies in the labor movement. The SPLL then murdered four of those white allies, including one American Federation of Labor (AFL) district representative. Dacus and his family were able to escape to New Orleans.

This incident was part of a larger period of civil unrest known as the “American Red Summer of 1919”, including massacres and riots in Elaine, Arkansas, Chicago, Washington D.C., Knoxville, Tennessee, Wilmington, Delaware, and other cities.