NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A patch of ground in southern Louisiana is being surveyed to see if it may hold a mass grave from a Reconstruction-era racial massacre.
Davette Gadison is a graduate student who has worked on mass graves. She will check the area in Thibodaux on Thursday and Friday, using ground-penetrating radar and limited coring. Those could indicate whether digging would likely turn up a mass grave where white mobs are said to have dumped the bodies of African-Americans they killed in 1887.
John DeSantis wrote a book about the Thibodaux Massacre and organized a committee to honor the victims. He says mobs went door-to-door for more than two hours, shooting unarmed blacks to break a strike by sugar plantation field hands.