The “h” is silent, the “aux” is “oh”, so TIB - e - doh. Thibodaux is an hour or so southwest of New Orleans along the banks of Bayou Lafourche. The area was settled by French colonists, and soon they and their African slaves developed sugar cane plantations. St. Joseph church was established in 1849, and the building was rebuilt following a fire in 1919. St. Joseph cemetery was also established in 1849, and many of the Thibodaux founders and decedents are buried there.
St. Joseph Church, Thibedaux, Louisiana
St. Joseph cemetery
Sugar cane was being harvested in the parish when we drove the roads around Thibodaux. Huge trucks wound the roads and headed to the sugar mill which smelled like molasses as you drove by. Antebellum Laurel Valley Sugar Plantation was over 50,000 acres and worked by 135 slaves. Much of the land still grows cane which is now harvested by John Deere combines. A nearby general store was moved to the property, and displays tools and farm implements used to farm sugar. Some of the outdoor equipment shows the wear of Louisiana summers and storms. Like the church and cemetery, the general store is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Laurel Valley general store museum
Following the Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery, the sugar cane workers’ lives, both black and white, were little removed from slave conditions. They lived in old slave quarters, worked in gangs and were paid 42 cents a day. In 1874 some cane cutters organized to demand increased wages. The Louisiana White League fought this effort and forced out the Republican governor, and the attempted strike failed. Another strike in 1880 failed. In 1883, the Knights of Labor, then the largest union in the country, began to organized the workers. In 1887, the seven Louisiana locals asked for wages of $1.25 a day. The state militia, led by ex-Confederate General Beauregard, joined local white supremacists militias to attack strikers. Many of the displaced workers sought refuge in Thibodaux. Vigilantes barricaded the town which became a killing ground. At least 35 African-Americans in Thibodaux were among the 60 killed in the state to put down the union. Union organizing was consistently met with violence in the South, as elsewhere. Indeed, in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Memphis supporting the sanitation workers strike when he met a violent death. The Smithsonian Magazine ran a story of the Thibodaux Massacre two years ago.
Laurel Valley has maintained the servant quarters shotgun houses that were on the plantation. A few may date to antebellum days, but most were built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Laurel Valley servant quarters