NEW ORLEANS — 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. A graduate student and a professor using ground-penetrating radar and limited coring will begin an initial survey Thursday in Thibodaux, where locals believe white mobs dumped the bodies of African-Americans they killed during a rampage more than 130 years ago. The mobs were out to break a month-long strike by sugar plantation field hands, many of them former slaves. If bodies were buried there, they might be in a trench, a deep circle, or a wide but shallow grave, Gadison said. If there’s a mass grave, the committee wants to have any remains exhumed, investigated, and buried in consecrated ground.

Source: National Post May 17, 2018 10:41 UTC