Vengeance, Violence, and Vigilantism: An Exploration of the 1891 Lynching of Eleven Italian-Americans in New Orleans

Kennedy, Caitlin (2018) Vengeance, Violence, and Vigilantism: An Exploration of the 1891 Lynching of Eleven Italian-Americans in New Orleans. Undergraduate thesis, under the direction of Jessica Wilkerson from History, The University of Mississippi.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the 1891 lynching of Italian immigrants in New Orleans, the subsequent news coverage by the American Press, and how the lynching was memorialized. The Italians were killed because most of the city’s whites blamed them for the assassination of the chief of police. The turbulent political arena and strict racial hierarchy of post-Reconstruction New Orleans was a precarious environment for Italian immigrants; the assassination of the police chief was a pretext for their lynching. This lynching soon became national news and took on different meanings to different groups of Americans. Throughout the past century the meaning of this lynching has fluctuated based on prevailing cultural values. This paper analyzes a variety of primary sources such as newspaper articles, letters, speeches and census data. Secondary scholarly sources are used to provide context.

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