Mass Lynching in New Orleans / Racial Violence in America

The July 1900 violence began with a street stop. Near 11 p.m. on July 23, officers questioned Robert Charles and a 19-year-old, Leonard Pierce, on a porch, and Charles and Officer August Mora shot each other in the legs; accounts differ on who fired first. On July 24 Charles killed Captain Day and Patrolman Peter Lamb, and white mobs went after Black residents. Acting Mayor William Mehle announced a $250 reward, and Mayor Paul Capdevielle later called out the militia with two Gatling guns. Mobs burned the Thomy Lafon school. At least 28 people died, most of them Black.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — 0.9 mi
  The Garden District's 1833 cemetery of about 1,100 family tombs, closed to visitors in 2019 and reopened on October 1, 2026 for small guided tours run by the Preservation Resource Center.
• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park — 1.3 mi
  A National Park Service unit created in 1994 to tell where jazz came from, with free programs and a visitor center in the French Quarter and park land inside Louis Armstrong Park.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 1.4 mi
  A French Quarter museum and research center founded in 1966, whose 2015 Purchased Lives exhibition took on New Orleans' place as the largest slave market in antebellum America.
• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 1.4 mi
  New Orleans' oldest surviving city of the dead, opened in 1789 after the fire of 1788 and the burial place of Homer Plessy, reachable only on a guided tour since March 2015.

More markers nearby

• Confederate Memorial Hall — 0.5 mi
• The Pythian Temple — 0.9 mi
• Touro Infirmary — 0.9 mi
• Bank's Arcade — 0.9 mi