Lynching of Five Sicilian Shopkeepers

By 1899, five Sicilians were doing business in Tallulah, with four small stores devoted to fruit, vegetables and poultry. On July 20, 1899, a mob of white residents of Tallulah lynched the five Sicilians from Cefalù. The town and parish had long had majority-African American populations rooted in antebellum agriculture. A conflicting secondary account alleges the shopkeepers were killed for treating Black customers the same as whites, but it describes three shopkeepers rather than five and cannot be reconciled with the Tallulah account.