The 1891 New Orleans lynchings were the murders of 11 Italian Americans, immigrants in New Orleans, by a mob for their alleged role in the murder of police chief David Hennessy after some of them had been acquitted at trial. It was the largest single mass lynching in American history. Most of the lynching victims accused in the murder had been rounded up and charged due to their Italian ethnicity.
The lynching took place on March 14, the day after the trial of nine of the nineteen men indicted in Hennessy's murder. Six of these defendants were acquitted, and a mistrial was declared for the remaining three because the jury failed to agree on their verdicts.
There was a widespread belief in the city that Italian American organized crime was responsible for the killing of the police chief in a period of anti-Italian sentiment and rising crime. Italian American voters were also known to prefer the scandal-plagued city political machine to the new Reform Democrat mayor, whose own role in inciting the violence that followed may well have been an attempt to misuse government power for the repression of his political opponents.
Believing the jury had been fixed by organized crime, a mob broke into the jail where the men were being held and killed eleven of the prisoners, most by shooting. The mob outside the jail numbered in the thousands and included some of the city's most prominent citizens.
The incident had serious national repercussions. The Italian consul Pasquale Corte in New Orleans registered a protest and left the city in May 1891 at his government's direction. The New York Times published a lengthy statement charging city politicians with responsibility for the lynching of the Italians. Italy cut off diplomatic relations with the United States, sparking rumors of war. Increased anti-Italian sentiment led to calls for restrictions on immigration. The word "Mafia" entered the American lexicon, and this incident increased awareness of the Italian mafioso, establishing it in the popular imagination of Americans.
The lynchings were the subject of the 1999 HBO film Vendetta, starring Christopher Walken. The film is based on a 1977 history book of the same name by Richard Gambino.
Background
Anti-Italian sentiment in New Orleans
In late 19th-century America, there was a growing number of Italians who had been brought in by the business community to replace black labor. Sugar planters, in particular, sought workers who were more efficient than formerly enslaved people; they hired immigrant recruiters to bring Italians to southern Louisiana. In the 1890s, thousands of Italians were arriving in New Orleans each year. Many settled in the French Quarter, which by the early 20th century had a section known as "Little Sicily." Furthermore, during the whole of the 19th century and well into the 20th, Italian immigrants to the United States were often referred to as "White niggers".
In a letter responding to an inquiry about immigration in New Orleans, Mayor Joseph A. Shakspeare expressed the common anti-Italian prejudice, complaining that the city had become attractive to "the worst classes of Europe: Southern Italians and Sicilians...the most idle, vicious, and worthless people among us." He claimed they were "filthy in their persons and homes" and blamed them for the spread of disease, concluding that they were "without courage, honor, truth, pride, religion, or any quality that goes to make a good citizen."
According to professor of history Humbert Nelli, Mayor Shakspeare had been elected as a Reform Democrat with the backing of the Louisiana Republican Party, which had grown increasingly powerless following the end of the Reconstruction era. Mayor Shakspeare and the Republicans were united in opposition to the city's corrupt and scandal-plagued political machine, which was called the Regular Democratic Organization, and remained firmly supported by the city's Italian-American voters. According to Nelli, this may well have been the real reason for the mayor's outspoken anti-Italianism.
Assassination of David Hennessy
On the evening of October 15, 1890, New Orleans police chief David Hennessy was shot by several gunmen as he walked home from work. Hennessy returned fire and chased his attackers before collapsing. When asked who had shot him, Hennessy reportedly whispered to Captain William O'Connor, "dagos" (a derogatory term for Italians and others of Mediterranean heritage). Hennessy was awake in the hospital for several hours after the shooting and spoke to friends but did not name the shooters. The next day complications set in, and he died.
There had been an ongoing feud between the Provenzano and Matranga families, who were business rivals on the New Orleans waterfront. Hennessy had put several of the Provenzanos in prison, and their appeal trial was coming up. According to some reports, Hennessy had been planning to offer new evidence at the trial that would clear the Provenzanos and implicate the Matrangas. If true, this would mean that the Matrangas, and not the Provenzanos, had a motive for the murder. A policeman who was a friend of Hennessy's later testified that Hennessy had told him he had no such plans. In any case, it was widely believed that Hennessy's killers were Italian. Local papers such as the Times-Democrat and the Daily Picayune freely blamed "Dagoes" for the murder.
Investigation
The murder was quickly followed by mass arrests of local Italians. Mayor Joseph A. Shakspeare (according to the Picayune) told the police to "scour the whole neighborhood. Arrest every Italian you come across." Within 24 hours, 45 people had been arrested. By some accounts, as many as 250 Italians were rounded up. Most were eventually released for lack of evidence. Local Italians were afraid to leave their homes for several days after the murder, but eventually the furor died down and they returned to work.
Nineteen men were ultimately charged with the murder or as accessories and held without bail in the parish prison. These included Charles Matranga, who was charged with plotting the murder, and several of the Matrangas' friends and workers. Pietro Monasterio, a shoemaker, was arrested because he lived across the street from where Hennessy was standing when he was shot. (The assassins had allegedly laid in Monasterio's shop awaiting to attack Chief Hennessey on his way home.) Antonio Marchesi, a fruit peddler, was arrested because he was a friend of Monasterio's and "was known to frequent his shoe shop." Emmanuele Polizzi was arrested when a policeman identified him as one of the men he had seen running from the scene of the crime.
A few days after Hennessy's death, Mayor Shakspeare gave a speech declaring that Hennessy had been "the victim of Sicilian vengeance" and calling upon the citizenry to "teach these people a lesson they will not forget." He appointed a Committee of Fifty to investigate "the existence of secret societies or bands of oath-bound assassins...and to devise necessary means and the most effectual and speedy measures for the uprooting and total annihilation" of any such organizations. On October 23, the committee published an open letter to the Italian community encouraging them to expose the criminals amongst them anonymously.
The letter ended on a menacing note:
We hope this appeal will be met by you in the same spirit in which we issue it, and that this community will not be driven to harsh and stringent methods outside of the law, which may involve the innocent and guilty alike...Upon you and your willingness to give information depends which of these courses shall be pursued.
The letter was signed by the committee's chairman, Edgar H. Farrar, who later served as president of the American Bar Association. Other prominent members of the Committee included General Algernon S. Badger, Judge Robert C. Davey, politician Walter C. Flower, Colonel James Lewis, and architect Thomas Sully.
The Committee of Fifty hired two private detectives to pose as prisoners and try to get the defendants to talk about the murder. Apparently the detectives did not obtain any useful information, because they were not asked to testify at the trial. Only Polizzi, who appeared to be mentally ill, said anything to incriminate himself, and his confession was deemed inadmissible.
Meanwhile, the defendants were subject to extremely negative pretrial publicity. Across the country, newspapers ran headlines such as "Vast Mafia in New Orleans" and "1,100 Dago Criminals."
Several shotguns were found near the scene of the crime. One was a muzzle-loading shotgun of a type which was widely used throughout the American South but which the New Orleans Police Department claimed was a lupara, a "favorite" weapon of the Sicilian Mafia. Another shotgun found at the scene had a hinged stock. Local newspapers alleged that the guns were imported from Sicily; in reality, they had been manufactured by the W. Richards Company.
Spurred to action by the popular accounts of Hennessy's murder, a 29-year-old newspaper salesman named Thomas Duffy walked into the prison on October 17, 1890, sought out Antonio Scaffidi, whom he had heard was a suspect, and shot him in the neck with a revolver. Scaffidi survived the attack, only to be lynched a few months later. Duffy was eventually convicted of assault and sentenced to six months in prison.
Murder trial
A trial for nine of the suspects began on February 16, 1891, and concluded on March 13, 1891, with Judge Joshua G. Baker presiding. The defendants were represented by Lionel Adams of the law firm Adams and O'Malley, and the state was represented by Orleans Parish district attorney Charles A. Luzenberg. Jury selection was a time-consuming process: Hundreds of prospective jurors were rejected before 12 people were found who were not opposed to capital punishment, were not openly prejudiced against Italians, and were not of Italian descent themselves.
Much of the evidence presented at trial was weak or contradictory. The murder had taken place on a poorly lit street on a damp night in a notoriously corrupt city and the eyewitness testimony was unreliable. Suspects were identified by witnesses who had not seen their faces but only their clothing. Captain Bill O'Connor, the witness who claimed to have heard Hennessy blame "Dagoes" for the assassination, was not called to testify.
There were numerous other discrepancies and improprieties. At one point, two employees of the defense law firm were arrested for attempting to bribe prospective jurors. Afterward, when federal district attorney William Grant looked into the case, he reported that the evidence against the men was "exceedingly unsatisfactory" and inconclusive. He could find no evidence linking any of the lynched men to the Mafia or to any attempts to bribe the jury. The bribery charges were eventually dismissed.
Matranga and another man, Bastian Incardona, were found not guilty by directed verdict, as no evidence had been presented against them. The jury declared four of the defendants not guilty, and asked the judge to declare a mistrial for the other three, as they could not agree on a verdict. The six who were acquitted were not released but were held pending an additional charge of "lying in wait" with intent to commit murder. Luzenberg admitted that without a murder conviction, he would be forced to drop the "lying in wait" charges. But all nineteen men were returned to the prison—a decision which would prove fatal for some of them.
The jurors were given the option to leave by a side door but chose to walk out the front door and face the angry crowd. Several defended their decision to reporters, arguing that they had "reasonable doubt" and had done what they thought was right. Some were harassed, threatened, fired from their jobs, and otherwise penalized for failing to convict the Italians.
Incitement
A group of about 150 people calling themselves the Committee on Safety (referring to the Revolutionary War era) met that evening to plan their response. The following morning, an ad appeared in local newspapers calling for a mass meeting at the statue of Henry Clay near the prison. Citizens were told to "come prepared for action."
The Daily States editorialized:
Rise, people of New Orleans! Alien hands of oath-bound assassins have set the blot of a martyr's blood upon your vaunted civilization! Your laws, in the very Temple of Justice, have been bought off, and suborners have caused to be turned loose upon your streets the midnight murderers of David C. Hennessy, in whose premature grave the very majesty of our American law lies buried with his mangled corpse—the corpse of him who in life was the representative, the conservator of your peace and dignity.
As thousands of demonstrators gathered near the Parish Prison, Pasquale Corte, the Italian consul in New Orleans sought the help of Louisiana governor Francis T. Nicholls to prevent an outbreak of violence. The governor declined to take any action without a request from Mayor Shakspeare, who had gone out to breakfast and could not be reached. Meanwhile, at the Clay statue, attorney William S. Parkerson was exhorting the people of New Orleans to "set aside the verdict of that infamous jury, every one of whom is a perjurer and a scoundrel." When the speech was over, the multi-racial crowd marched to the prison, chanting, "We want the Dagoes."
Lynching
Lynchings were not uncommon in the United States and the Tuskegee Institute recorded the lynchings of 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites between 1882 and 1968, with the peak occurring in the 1890s. Inside the prison, as the mob was breaking down the door with a battering ram, prison warden Lemuel Davis let the 19 Italian prisoners out of their cells and told them to hide as best they could.