David Hennessy: The Assassination That Led to America's Largest Mass Lynching

The Assassination That Led to the Largest Mass Lynching in American History

On the night of October 15, 1890, New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy was walking home from work when gunmen stepped out of the shadows and opened fire with sawed-off shotguns. He died the next day at thirty-two years old, and in doing so set in motion one of the darkest chapters in the city's history.

Hennessy was born in New Orleans in 1858 to Irish Catholic parents and grew up in the shadow of the city's police force. He joined the department as a messenger boy at twelve and worked his way up with a combination of ambition and brass. He made his name in 1881 by helping capture Giuseppe Esposito, an Italian fugitive wanted for kidnapping and murder. It was the kind of case that made careers, and it made Hennessy's.

By 1888, he was superintendent of police, appointed by Mayor Joseph Shakspeare to clean up a force that was notoriously corrupt even by New Orleans standards. Hennessy was young, ambitious, and politically connected. He was also walking into a situation that would get him killed.

The Italian immigrant community on the New Orleans waterfront was divided between two rival factions—the Provenzano and Matranga families—who were fighting for control of the lucrative fruit import trade. Hennessy got involved in the dispute, and exactly how and why has been debated for over a century. What's certain is that someone wanted him dead.

Before he died, Hennessy allegedly whispered a single word to the officer at his bedside: "Dagos." Whether he actually said it, whether it meant what people wanted it to mean, and whether it constituted an identification of his killers are questions that historians still argue about. But in 1890, it was all the fuel the fire needed.

The city erupted. Police rounded up hundreds of Italian immigrants. Nineteen men were indicted. The trial that followed was a circus of prejudice and bad evidence. When the jury returned acquittals and mistrials in March 1891, a mob of thousands—organized by some of the city's most prominent citizens—stormed the Parish Prison and lynched eleven of the accused men. It was the largest mass lynching in American history.

The aftermath rippled far beyond New Orleans. Italy recalled its ambassador. There was serious talk of war between the United States and Italy. President Benjamin Harrison eventually paid an indemnity to the Italian government, and the diplomatic crisis slowly cooled. But the damage was done—to the victims, to the Italian community in New Orleans, and to the city's reputation.

Modern historians have largely concluded that the lynched men were almost certainly not responsible for Hennessy's murder, and that the entire episode was driven by anti-Italian nativism, political opportunism, and the kind of mob rage that New Orleans was periodically capable of. The press coverage was sensationalized garbage, the trial was a farce from both sides, and eleven men died because of it.

David Hennessy's assassination and its aftermath tell you something uncomfortable about New Orleans: for all its celebration of diversity and cultural mixing, the city has also been capable of extraordinary violence directed at the very immigrant communities that helped build it. The Italian Americans who survived the 1891 pogrom went on to become an integral part of New Orleans culture—its food, its music, its politics. But the scars of what happened at the Parish Prison never fully healed.