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The name Tangipahoa comes from an Acolapissa word meaning "ear of corn" or "those who gather corn." The parish was organized in 1869 during Reconstruction.
Parts of this area had already been developed for sugar cane plantations when the parish was organized, but yeomen farmers occupied areas in the piney woods and resisted planters' dominance. Blacks comprised about one-quarter of the population overall in the Florida Parishes before the war.
The region developed rapidly during and after Reconstruction. There were conflicts in Tangipahoa Parish among interests related to construction of railroads, exploitation of timber, yeoman farmers in the piney woods keeping truck farms, and the beginning of manufacturing. Sugar cane depended on the labor of large gangs of slaves before the Civil War. After the war and emancipation, some freedmen stayed to work on the plantations as laborers. Others moved to New Orleans and other cities, seeking different work. This area had rapid development and a high rate of immigrants and migrants from other areas of the country. The eastern Florida Parishes had the most mob violence and highest rate of lynchings in southern Louisiana.
Especially after Reconstruction, whites helped black communities with flowers and food. Piney woods whites resisted the planters' efforts to restore their power, but imposed their own brutal violence on freedmen. Tangipahoa Parish was made more volatile by a "pronounced in-migration" of northerners (from the Midwest) and Sicilian immigrants, coupled with "industrial development along the Illinois Central Railroad, and crippling political factionalism."
During the period of 1877–1950; a total of 24 blacks were lynched by whites in the parish as a means of racial terrorism and intimidation. This was the sixth highest total of any parish in Louisiana and the highest number of any parish in southern Louisiana. Twenty-two of these murders took place from 1879 to 1919, a time of heightened violence in the state. Unlike some other parishes, Tangipahoa did not have a high rate of legal executions of blacks; the whites operated outside the justice system altogether.[6] Among those lynched and hanged by a mob was Emma Hooper, a black woman who had shot and wounded a constable.
In 1898 the Louisiana state legislature disenfranchised blacks by raising barriers to voter registration, excluding them from politics for decades, until after passage of federal civil rights legislation. In the first half of the 20th century, many African Americans left Tangipahoa Parish to escape the violence and oppression of Jim Crow, moving to industrial cities in the Great Migration. During World War II, they moved to the West Coast, where the buildup of the defense industry opened up new jobs. In the 21st century, they constitute a minority in the parish.
Adjacent Counties & Parishes
- Amite County, Mississippi
- Pike County, Mississippi
- Washington Parish
- St. Helena Parish
- Livingston Parish
- St. John the Baptist Parish
- St. Tammany Parish
Cities, Towns, Villages & Communities
- Amite City (Parish Seat)
- Baptist
- Fluker
- Hammond
- Husser
- Independence
- Kentwood
- Loranger
- Manchac (Akers)
- Natalbany
- Ponchatoula
- Pumpkin Center
- Robert
- Rosaryville
- Roseland
- Tangipahoa
- Tickfaw
- Wilmer
Cemeteries
Links
National Register of Historic Places
