Charles "Chalou" Trepagnier Building

Chalou Trepagnier was born in 1906 to Sicilian immigrants, part of a wave that brought about 11,000 Italians to Louisiana by 1890. After emancipation, sugar planters wanted labor to replace freed Black workers, and Italian citrus traders recruited Sicilians for the harvest, sometimes by coercive methods. Many came in the fall and left after the cane was cut. Those who stayed often moved from field work to grocery stores, as his family had. They also met hostility. In 1891 a mob in New Orleans lynched eleven Italians, and the killings caused a diplomatic crisis.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• E. D. White Historic Site — 20 mi
  A National Historic Landmark house of about 1790 on Bayou Lafourche, built by enslaved people and home to two Whites, a governor and a Chief Justice, with an exhibit on the bayou's history.
• Whitney Plantation — 21 mi
  A museum on a former sugar plantation along the River Road that tells its story through the people who were enslaved there, with memorials to 107,000 enslaved Louisianans and 2,200 children.
• LSU Rural Life Museum — 22 mi
  Four slave cabins moved from Welham Plantation and a working-plantation row of more than twenty saved buildings, on land the Burden family held as Windrush plantation since the 1830s.
• Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center — 24 mi
  A Jean Lafitte National Historical Park center on Bayou Lafourche with Acadian and bayou-life exhibits, a 200-seat theater and ranger-guided boat tours to the E. D. White house.

More markers nearby

• Donaldsonville — steps away
• Louisiana Square — steps away
• Francis T. Nicholls — steps away
• Fort Butler — 0.2 mi