This Day In Black Our Story

Back in the day on January 8th, 1811, the largest slave revolt in U.S.
history occurred in Louisiana as Charles Deslondes led an insurgent band
of hundreds towards the city of New Orleans. Starting in Saint Charles and
Saint James Parish in Louisiana, the rebelling slaves marched from
plantation to plantation along the eastern bank of the Mississippi gaining
new recruits along the way. Armed with plantation tools, clubs and
captured munitions, Deslondes? rebels killed two whites and burned three
plantations down before the revolt ended two days after it commenced.
Plantation owners assembled militias backed by the U.S. army and defeated
the slave insurgents just outside New Orleans. Nearly a hundred slaves
were killed and executed in the rebellion including Charles Deslondes
while others were forced to return to their plantations.

The decapitated heads of the executed rebels were placed on poles to serve
as a warning, however, as history shows, slave revolts did not cease. The
gruesome displays then only showed the barbarity of the slave owners.


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