 The incident had its roots in both economic pressure and racial hatred.The riot marked the end of fifteen years of racially unified unions in New Orleans, for example in the successful 1892 New Orleans general strike just three years before.In the economic slowdown following the Panic of 1893, the Harrison Line of Liverpool led a number of other shippers in announcing, in February 1895, that they were letting 300 organized white workers go, and replacing them with unskilled non-union black workers.