Sicilian Immigration to Louisiana - 1891 Massacre and Lynching of Italians

Police chief David Hennessy was shot on October 15, 1890, and died the next day. Of nineteen men indicted, nine went to trial; six were acquitted and three had a mistrial. On March 14, 1891, a meeting at the Henry Clay statue sent thousands toward the Orleans Parish Prison, where a smaller execution squad led by William Parkerson killed eleven men: Antonio Bagnetto, James Caruso, Loreto Comitis, Rocco Geraci, Joseph Macheca, Antonio Marchesi, Pietro Monasterio, Emmanuele Polizzi, Frank Romero, Antonio Scaffidi and Charles Traina. Italy recalled its ambassador; the United States paid each family $2,211.90.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Congo Square — steps away
  The 2.35-acre corner of Louis Armstrong Park where, from 1817, New Orleans confined Sunday dancing by enslaved people to one place, and where crowds of hundreds gathered to drum, dance and trade.
• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 0.2 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.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 0.5 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.
• The Cabildo — 0.5 mi
  The Spanish town hall on Jackson Square, finished in 1799, where Louisiana changed flags in 1803 and where the state Supreme Court sat in the same room until 1910, Plessy v. Ferguson among its cases.

More markers nearby

• Mahalia Jackson — steps away
• Allison "Big Chief Tootie" Montana — steps away
• Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong — steps away
• Sidney Joseph Bechet — steps away