Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Thibodaux Massacre
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Houma, Terrebonne Parish
STATE: LA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cometeditor/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 91043118
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n91043118
HEADING: DeSantis, John
000 00715cz a2200217n 450
001 278613
005 20170305123629.0
008 910501n| azannaabn |n aaa
010 __ |a n 91043118
035 __ |a (OCoLC)oca02939651
040 __ |a DLC |b eng |e rda |c DLC |d DLC |d NN
046 __ |f 1956 |2 edtf
100 1_ |a DeSantis, John
370 __ |c United States |2 naf
374 __ |a Journalists |a Authors |2 lcsh
375 __ |a male
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a His For the color of his skin, 1991: |b CIP t.p. (John DeSantis)
670 __ |a His The new Untouchables, c1994: |b CIP t.p. (John DeSantis) data sheet (b. 1956)
670 __ |a The Thibodaux Massacre, 2016: |b p. 173 (John DeSantis is a Louisiana-base journalist)
953 __ |a br27 |b sb02
PERSONAL
Born 1956.
EDUCATION:Attended John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
ADDRESS
CAREER
New York Times, New York, NY, former staff reporter; Thibodaux Daily Comet, Thibodaux, LA, former city editor; Times of Houma, Houma, LA, senior staff writer.
AWARDS:Awards from the Louisiana Press Association and the Associated Press Managing Editors Association.
WRITINGS
Contributor to the New York Times, Washington Post, and other publications.
SIDELIGHTS
John DeSantis grew up in Louisiana and then attended the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. He has since become a well-established journalist and author, and he has garnered awards from the Louisiana Press Association and the Associated Press Managing Editors Association. DeSantis began his journalism career while working for a wire service in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. He largely covered local homicides, as well as related proceedings in the Brooklyn courts. During this period, DeSantis was assigned to cover the murder of Yusuf Hawkins, the resulting trial, and the media circus surrounding it. DeSantis parlayed this experience into his first book, in New York City during a period of great turmoil, resulting in his first book, For the Color of His Skin: The Murder of Yusuf Hawkins and the Trial of Bensonhurst.
For the Color of His Skin
Published in 1991 by Pharos, For the Color of His Skin covers the August, 1989 murder of a black teenager named Yusuf Hawkins. The boy was murdered by a group of white boys in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn. The neighborhood was mostly white and Italian, and the murder was racially motivated. As DeSantis reports, of the eight young men tried, only three were convicted. Yet, all of the boys were acquitted of murder, and the three who were convicted were convicted for lesser crimes. After laying out the particulars of the crime, the trial, and its results, DeSantis comments on how the case itself was handled. He zeroes in on incoming DA Charles Hynes and his staff, noting that they did not communicate with outgoing DA Elizabeth Holtzman. This failure largely led to a mishandling of the case, as well as the weak prosecution that allowed most of the perpetrators to go free. Furthermore, DeSantis finds that Holtzman’s political leanings led her to focus on public sentiment rather than on building an adequate case. In support of this claim, DeSantis notes that Holtzman catered to public opinion by bringing charges against all eight boys who were involved, no matter how tangentially. Instead, the author claims, Holtzman should have focused on the gunman and those who abetted him.
Praising the author’s insights in Publishers Weekly, a critic found that “no one comes off well in this account, which leaves the lingering impression that justice has not been served.” Willard W. Whittingham, writing in Black Enterprise, was also impressed, and he announced that “For the Color of His Skin is a book that unblinkingly points to the ugly side of our society.”
The Thibodaux Massacre
Following the success of For the Color of His Skin, DeSantis went on to write The New Untouchables: How America Sanctions Police Violence, which was published in 1991. Around this time, DeSantis became a staff reporter for the New York Times. While working for regional outposts of the paper, DeSantis covered social justice and criminal justice. He reported widely on the Ku Klux Klan, Hurricane Katrina, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. DeSantis then went on to become a senior staff writer at the Times of Houma in Thibodaux, Louisiana, and his work there led him to research the Thibodaux massacre. His resulting book, The Thibodaux Massacre: Racial Violence and the 1887 Sugar Cane Labor Strike, was published by History Press in 2016, and it is based on over ten years of research. The volume focuses on the 1887 massacre, which was brought to a head by resentments over slavery and sharecropping, combined with efforts to unionize. Plantation owners attempted to stop low-wage laborers from unionizing, and this in turn led to a strike at sugar plantations in and around Thibodaux. Black workers were then massacred in a mass murder that the media practically refused to cover. The incident was so poorly covered and investigated that it is unclear how many people were killed, the author reports. DeSantis’s book is thus an attempt to right this grievous wrong. While DeSantis spent ten years looking into a few pivotal hours of violence, he admits in the book to finding very little on the massacre. Yet, a breakthrough occurred when DeSantis uncovered a pension file filled with eyewitness accounts, and these accounts take up the bulk of the book.
Critiques of The Thibodaux Massacre were somewhat mixed, and a Kirkus Reviews contributor remarked: “Though well-written, informative, and interesting, the book lacks a clear focus on the crime at its heart.” An online Gumbo Guide correspondent was more positive, however, asserting: “It is through this detailed collection of facts that we find important lessons that are not only part of our country’s past but very much resonating in modern times.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Black Enterprise, March, 1992, Willard W. Whittingham, review of For the Color of His Skin: The Murder of Yusef Hawkins and the Trial of Bensonhurst.
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2016, review of The Thibodaux Massacre: Racial Violence and the 1887 Sugar Cane Labor Strike.
Publishers Weekly, September 27, 1991, review of For the Color of his Skin.
ONLINE
Gumbo Guide, http://www.gumboguide.com/ (November 28, 2016), review of The Thibodaux Massacre.*
John DeSantis is the senior staff writer at the Times of Houma, Louisiana. A product of New York City, his work has previously appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post and other publications. A journalist whose criminal justice background was attained at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, he has covered social justice and race relations extensively in New York, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, North Carolina and California. He is also a former city editor at the Thibodaux Daily Comet. His other books include For the Color of His Skin: The Murder of Yusuf Hawkins and the Trial of Bensonhurst and the New Untouchables: How America Sanctions Police Violence. A recipient of numerous awards from the Louisiana Press Association, the Associated Press Managing Editors Association and other news media organizations, DeSantis resides in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana.
It's a long way from Jackson Heights, NY to the Louisiana bayou country. But that's the path John DeSantis has traveled during a colorful and rewarding career.
John began chasing homicides in New York's meanest streets during the bloody 1970s and 1980s for leading wire services, and then covered Brooklyn courts for United Press International. One of the cases he was most involved with stemmed from the 1989 murder of Yusuf Hawkins in New York City during a period of great turmoil, resulting in his first book, For the Color of His Skin: The Murder of Yusuf Hawkins and the Trial of Bensonhurst. His second book, The New Untouchables: How America Sanctions Police Violence, was published in 1991. Both are available on Amazon, including a 2013 paperback and Kindle update of "For The Color Of His Skin"
John went on to work as a staff reporter at papers in the New York Times regional chain, in Louisiana, Florida and North Carolina, as well as papers in Mississippi and California.
His career has heavily centered on social and criminal justice issues, including exposing the Ku Klux Klan on the Mississippi coast. He provided special coverage of Hurricane Katrina for the NY Times in New Orleans, and for the Houma Courier intensely covered the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and its effects on Louisiana fishing communities.
Currently he is Senior Staff Writer at The Times of Houma-Thibodaux in Louisiana.
His newest book "The Thibodaux Massacre: Racial Violence and the 1887 Sugar Cane Labor Strike," published by The History Press, releases Nov. 14, 2016 and is available here on Amazon. He regards it as one of his most important tasks to date, the product of 10 years of research that didn't take him past discoveries already made by other researchers. In 2015, however, doors began to open. This led to never-before published information on a brutal incident in the nation's labor and racial history, which is shared in the book.
John's current newspaper work can be accessed at www.houmatimes.com. He is available for speaking engagements, radio, television and print interviews.
Areas of expertise include the sociology of American fishing communities, New Orleans and Louisiana culture, hate crimes and race relations in the US.
His personal e-mail address is bayouscribe@hotmail.com
John DeSantis: THE THIBODAUX MASSACRE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
John DeSantis THE THIBODAUX MASSACRE The History Press (Adult Nonfiction) 21.99 11, 14 ISBN: 978-1-4671-3689-1
A little-known massacre is brought to light.In 1887, the tumultuous elements of the recent past—slavery, sharecropping, a new movement in unionizing workers, etc.—came together in Thibodaux, Louisiana, in a
devastating manner, as the tension between plantation owners and poorly paid workers led to a strike on sugar plantations. Threats during the strike turned into a mass murder of black workers so hushed by the media and overlooked by
society that to this day, the actual number of deaths is unknown. Journalist DeSantis (The New Untouchables: How America Sanctions Police Violence, 1994, etc.) spent more than a decade trying to peel back the layers of history to
shed light on what locals referred to as the Thibodaux Massacre. The author is the first to acknowledge that in 10 years of research, he was able to learn surprisingly little about the killings, but when new information came to light in the
form of direct accounts contained in a pension file, it formed the basis of the story he presents here. It is perhaps the seasoned reporter’s drive for hard facts and the bigger picture that work against DeSantis, because in the final
product, they act to obscure the crime at the center of the book. Though the massacre itself lasted only hours, that is the story the author strives to impart, and details about those hours take up precious little space in the narrative.
Without the pieces that lend color to the crime itself, DeSantis relies heavily on historical details instead. Some of these quite obviously lend context to the massacre, helping readers understand the tensions that existed and how the
situation came to a head. Other information, though, seems tangential and distracting. Though well-written, informative, and interesting, the book lacks a clear focus on the crime at its heart. A better choice for Southern history buffs
than for true-crime junkies.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"John DeSantis: THE THIBODAUX MASSACRE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463216086&it=r&asid=5bf0eabe458def519850ad9c936e1895. Accessed 28 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463216086
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5/28/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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For the Color of His Skin: The Murder of Yusef Hawkins and the Trial of Bensonhurst
Willard W. Whittingham
Black Enterprise.
22.8 (Mar. 1992): p11.
COPYRIGHT 1992 Earl G. Graves Publishing Co., Inc.
http://www.blackenterprise.com/
Full Text:
During the Reagan/Bush years, America's race relations have festered. Aided by U.S. Supreme Court rulings, federal obstruction, and presidential insensitivity, a tone was set that inevitably filtered down to the local level.
On the evening of Aug. 23, 1989, one of the most highly publicized cases of bias-related violence took place when Yusuf Hawkins, an innocent African-American 16-year-old, was murdered by a gang of white thugs. His killing
occurred in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, a mostly Italian-American New York City working-class community.
In the months following, the impact of the incident helped elect New York City's first black mayor and was a subject of heated national interest. In a dispassionate, concise and thought-provoking book, For the Color of His Skin, John
DeSantis unveils the story behind the crime and trial providing details and perspectives from a range of sources on all sides. Gotham is revealed as a city ready to split at the seams complete with a multiracial cast of characters who see
the Hawkins case through the prism of their own agenda.
Obviously, Yusuf Hawkins will not be racial violence's last victim. But if rationality ever prevails and Americans learn to accept each other, journalists like DeSantis will have helped.
For the Color of His Skin is a book that unblinkingly points to the ugly side of our society. However, it's clear that the author was inspired by the hope that understanding racism's nature can help to end it.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Whittingham, Willard W. "For the Color of His Skin: The Murder of Yusef Hawkins and the Trial of Bensonhurst." Black Enterprise, Mar. 1992, p. 11. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA11875680&it=r&asid=c67b2205a1e681a883b07cf0066c7e7d. Accessed 28 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A11875680
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5/28/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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For the Color of his Skin: The Murder of Yusuf Hawkins and the Trial of Bensonhurst
Publishers Weekly.
238.43 (Sept. 27, 1991): p48.
COPYRIGHT 1991 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
In August 1989, Yusuf Hawkins, a quiet black teenager, was murdered by a group of white youths in Bensonhurst, a mostly Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y. Only three of the eight convicted youths are serving time for their
crimes; all were acquitted of murder. In an evenhanded, meticulous reconstruction of the case, DeSantis suggests that the hubris of incoming DA Charles Hynes and his staff in failing to communicate with outgoing DA Elizabeth
Holtzman may have fatally flawed the prosecution. He charges that Holtzman's political ambitions and "reckless acquiescence to public sentiment" led her to target the largest number of individual suspects possible instead of focusing
on the gunman and those who most immediately shared responsibility. Activist Al Sharpton, who held the entire group equally guilty of murder, is portrayed as "inherently manipulative." No one comes off well in this account, which
leaves the lingering impression that justice has not been served. DeSantis covered the case for UPI and the $IWashington Post. Photos. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"For the Color of his Skin: The Murder of Yusuf Hawkins and the Trial of Bensonhurst." Publishers Weekly, 27 Sept. 1991, p. 48. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA11356902&it=r&asid=c712f480cd66f122c816f665e5fa3027. Accessed 28 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A11356902
Book Review: The Thibodaux Massacre
by gumboguide.com Nov 28, 2016
Book1.jpg
by John DeSantis
Author and sister publication The Times senior staff writer John DeSantis tackles the story nobody wanted told in his book, “The Thibodaux Massacre”, set to be released Nov. 14.
A veteran of the newspaper world, John puts his knack for uncovering the details and his rich compilation of correspondence, interviews, and federal records to good use to tell the troubling true story of havoc wreaked upon a group of unarmed black laborers in the Lafourche Parish town in 1887. Throughout the length of the story, the details of the events on Nov. 23 of that year are chronicled, unearthing the rumors and supremacist ideals that led to white vigilantes gunning down those workers and their families.
The desire to weave the details of this story into a book published by Arcadia Publishing and The History Press, two of the largest publishers of local and regional titles in the United States, was fueled upon the discovery of several victim’s names. This discovery felt like a call of duty for the author, who then set in motion plans to tell the events of this fateful day through the narrative of Jack Conrad.
Through the eyes of Jack, who readers get a gut-wrenchingly realistic perspective of as he hides from the gunfire, we learn not only of the brutal undoing that occurred, but also of the historic events leading up to the Nov. 23 event. Jack lives to speak about what he witnessed and what unfolds is raw and unnerving.
“The Thibodaux Massacre” is a fresh look at what we know about historical events and parts of the story that have been undiscovered until now. It is through this detailed collection of facts that we find important lessons that are not only part of our country’s past but very much resonating in modern times. Though a painful tale, it draws on issues that must be faced even today.