Hawaii and Louisiana: The Plantation's Shadow, 1887-1889

This episode is part of Season 40: America's 250th Anniversary -- 50 states, 25 double-feature episodesexploring the cases that shaped American history from every corner of the country.Hawaii, 1889. A Japanese shopkeeper is lynched from a telephone pole on the main street of Honoka'a forspeaking English on behalf of plantation workers. Louisiana, 1887. Ten thousand sugar cane workers strike for cashwages instead of scrip -- and armed paramilitaries sweep through residential streets at dawn, killing between 35and 300 people. Two plantation economies. Two communities who challenged the system. The same answer.The VictimsKatsu Goto was twenty-seven years old when he was killed on October 29, 1889. Born in Japan in 1862, hechanged his family name from Kobayakawa to Goto to qualify for the Hawaii immigration program. He arrived inHonolulu Harbor on February 8, 1885, aboard the SS City of Tokio -- one of 944 immigrants in the first wave ofgovernment-contract Japanese workers under the kanyaku imin program. After three years cutting cane at ninedollars a month on the Hamakua Coast, Goto opened a general store in Honoka'a, the second-largest town onthe Big Island. He spoke English. He used that skill to help Japanese workers file complaints against plantationabuses. That made him a target.In Thibodaux, Louisiana, the victims of the November 23, 1887 massacre were overwhelmingly Black -- formerlyenslaved people and their children who had struck for fair wages during the sugar harvest. Eight names survivedthe historical record: Willis Wilson, Felix Pierre, Archy Jones, Frank Patterson, Grant Conrad, Marcellin Weldon,Riley Anderson, and Mahala Washington. They represent a fraction of those killed. The full death toll has neverbeen established.The CrimesOn the night of October 28, 1889, Katsu Goto rode on horseback to Robert Overend's plantation to meet withJapanese workers who had been fined for a cane field fire they may not have set. He left the meeting around teno'clock. Six men were waiting on the road: Joseph R. Mills, Thomas Steele, William C. Blabon, William D. Watson,John Richmond, and a man identified only as Lala. Goto was found the next morning hanging from a telephonepole on Honoka'a's main street. The coroner determined he died of asphyxiation -- he was alive when the ropewent around his neck.In Louisiana, the 1887 sugar strike began on October 29 when approximately 10,000 workers laid down their caneknives at the start of harvest season. The Knights of Labor had demanded $1.25 per day in cash wages, eliminationof the scrip system, and biweekly payment. Governor Samuel Douglas McEnery -- himself a planter -- deployedeleven companies of state militia to evict striking families from plantation housing. Parish District Judge TaylorBeattie, a former Confederate and sugar planter, declared martial law over the Black population of Thibodaux,assembled a committee of three hundred armed white men, and required Black residents to carry passes. Onthe morning of November 23, 1887, armed paramilitaries moved through Black neighborhoods for more than twohours, killing men, women, and children in their homes, yards, and streets.The InvestigationIn Hawaii, all six perpetrators in the Katsu Goto lynching were identified within weeks. Lala and Richmondcooperated with authorities in exchange for dropped charges. The 1890 trial convicted four men of manslaughter-- not murder. Mills and Steele received nine years; Blabon and Watson received four years each. But justiceeroded: Steele escaped to Australia, Blabon escaped to California, and Mills was pardoned in 1894 by the sameplanter-aligned provisional government that had overthrown Queen Lili'uokalani the year before. Only Watson,who played the smallest role, served his full sentence.In Thibodaux, no one was arrested for the killings. No one was tried. No one was convicted. The bodies werecollected and dumped in unmarked graves at a site that later became the city dump. Andrew Price, a...