LOUISVILLE MASSACRE

For many years the city of Louisville continued to bask in the glow of its' success and it seemed to have managed to deny that there was ever a reason to pause and look into their past. However, there was and is a most compelling reason, for on Election Day August 6th 1855, Nativists, sectarian mobs (Know Nothings) attacked and slaughtered and burned alive the poorest of the Irish and German immigrant living throughout the city in their ethnic enclaves and in the now famous Louisville and Portland Canal on 10th and 11th Streets.

The smell of burning human flesh hung over the city for a week. The events of that day are now known as The Bloody Monday Massacre

In a run up to the election, the xenophobic George Prentice who was the Publisher/Editor of the Louisville Journal the local newspaper, fueled the fires of hatred and whipped up the anti immigrant hysteria in regular tirades of vitriolic attacks, that provided the spark that eventually claimed the lives of unknown number of innocent people.

According to recent reports from a neighborhood newspaper, Quinn's Row, across the street from the Lottery building) a short street between 10th and 11th along Main St., was attacked by a mob of at least five hundred armed, guns, cleavers, knives, burning torches and the courthouse cannon. The mob barricaded each exit from the streets and set the area ablaze with the residents locked inside. Anyone who ventured outside were shot to death.

For three days following the slaughter the houses and the evidence were allowed to burn.

Young Mary Carroll, later to become Sr. Christine of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth later wrote of her childhood memories. She said that she watched from a window as the hooded mob moved down the street to Denis Long's house where they hung his two sons from a banister and burned the house around them. She also noted that on the following day, the mob took the dead and charred bodies to the court house where a mock trial was held.



A news report of the day gives an account of the charred bodies of a man and a woman from the 11th St area that were also deposited at the courthouse. It stated that a Francis Quinn was shot and consumed in the flames and a baby was shot in his mothers arms and perhaps as many as twenty were consumed in the flames. Irish and German Catholics were not the only ones killed. A Mr. Rhodes and his 21 year old son were killed at 11th St and others known to have been killed were Joseph Allison George Berg, John Chevers, Martin Connolly. There were no racial distinction made in the killing frenzy, Protestants, Catholics and immigrants all met the same fate on that infamous day in Louisville.

No one in authority, including the mayor, members of the city council, federal officials, the judiciary, the media nor the police provided initial protection nor subsequent justice for the victims who were slaughtered . Instead they sat idly by.

There was confusion about the number of lives that were lost. Although the official death count is estimated to be between twenty two and thirty six, there is reason to believe that it could be many times that amount. Hundreds of families fled to other states

What followed was a monumental denial of justice by the city of Louisville and indeed the state of Kentucky. This denial of justice, a blot on an otherwise beautiful city is hopefully being addressed by their participation in the Bloody Monday Commemoration, to be held on Saturday August 6th in Louisville.

There is a growing concern in the city that powerful interests may attempt to use this commemoration to gloss over the Bloody Monday Massacre. One area of concern is that George Prentice who played a key role in fomenting the riots was the Publisher /Editor of the Louisville Journal a predecessor of today's newspaper The Courier Journal,

The Ancient Order Of Hibernians and the German American Club are in the forefront in organizing the commemoration in the quest for justice for the victims of the Bloody Sunday Massacre

The Commemoration will begin at 1pm, followed by a Bus Tour of the Bloody Monday Historic Sites at 3pm. A Mass will be celebrated at the Cathedral of the Assumption at 5pm and a Reception at the German American Club at 7pm.