Episode
Hawaii and Louisiana: The Plantation's Shadow, 1887-1889
- Published
- Sep 15, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2102
- Processing state
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- http://mythsandmalice.com
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Summary
This episode is part of Season 40: America's 250th Anniversary -- 50 states, 25 double-feature episodes exploring the cases that shaped American history from every corner of the country. Hawaii, 1889. A Japanese shopkeeper is lynched from a telephone pole on the main street of Honoka'a for speaking English on behalf of plantation workers. Louisiana, 1887. Ten thousand sugar cane workers strike for cash wages instead of scrip -- and armed paramilitaries sweep through residential streets at dawn, killing between 35 and 300 people. Two plantation economies. Two communities who challenged the system. The same answer. The Victims Katsu Goto was twenty-seven years old when he was killed on October 29, 1889. Born in Japan in 1862, he changed his family name from Kobayakawa to Goto to qualify for the Hawaii immigration program. He arrived in Honolulu Harbor on February 8, 1885, aboard the SS City of Tokio -- one of 944 immigrants in the first wave of government-contract Japanese workers under the kanyaku imin program. After three years cutting cane at nine dollars a month on the Hamakua Coast, Goto opened a general store in Honoka'a, the second-largest town on the Big Island. He spoke English. He used that skill to help Japanese workers file complaints against plantation abuses. That made him a target. In Thibodaux, Louisiana, the victims of the November 23, 1887 massacre were overwhelmingly Black -- formerly enslaved people and their children who had struck for fair wages during the sugar harvest. Eight names survived the historical record: Willis Wilson, Felix Pierre, Archy Jones, Frank Patterson, Grant Conrad, Marcellin Weldon, Riley Anderson, and Mahala Washington. They represent a fraction of those killed. The full death toll has never been established. The Crimes On the…