Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xliii:1 (Été, 2012), 43–61.

INTERRACIAL HOMICIDE IN NEW ORLEANS

Jeffrey S. Adler
Cognitive Bias: Interracial Homicide in New
Orleans, 1921–1945 At 10:40 p.m. on January 25, 1945,
shot Robert
New Orleans police patrolman Jay Sedgebeer
Guidry, a twenty-six-year-old African-American burglary suspect.
Seconds later, and a block away, Patrolman Peter Fos shot Harold
Joseph Martin, a twenty-seven-year-old African-American bur-
glary suspect. In the ofªcial report on the shootings, both police
ofªcers indicated that they ªred in self-defense, and in testimony
to follow-up investigators, the patrolmen re-afªrmed that they
shot only to protect their own lives.1

A few minutes before those shootings, police headquarters
had received a report of a burglary at Clark’s Garage on Gravier
Street. Sedgebeer and his partner, Louis Reidell, of the Trafªc Di-
vision, were already close by, “checking improper [sic] parked
cars,” when the precinct dispatcher instructed them to investigate
the burglary. As the patrolmen rushed toward the garage, they saw
two African-American men coming out of the smashed front door
of Jay’s Jewelry Store, which was located on Gravier Street, près
Clark’s Garage. Sedgebeer ordered the suspects to halt as they ran
in front of him. One of the ºeeing men, Robert Guidry, alors
dropped the bag that he was carrying and “made an attempt to
reach for his left hip pocket.” As Sedgebeer explained, “With that
I pulled my service revolver out and ªred one shot” at the man,

Jeffrey S. Adler is Professor of History and Criminology, University of Florida. He is the au-
thor of First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt: Homicide in Chicago, 1875–1920 (Cambridge, Mass.,
2006); “‘We’ve Got a Right to Fight; We’re Married’: Domestic Homicide in Chicago,
1875–1920,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXIV (2006), 27–48.

1
“Report of Homicide of Harold Joseph Martin,” January 25, 1945, Département de [Nouveau
Orleans] Police, Homicide Reports, New Orleans Police Department, Louisiana Division,
City Archives, New Orleans Public Library (hereinafter hr); “Statement of Patrolman Jay
Sedgebeer relative to shooting a negro robbing Jayes Jewelry Store,” January 25, 1945, Tran-
scripts of Statements of Witnesses to Homicides, New Orleans Police Department, Louisiana
Division, City Archives, New Orleans Public Library (hereinafter ts); “Statement of Patrol-
man Peter L. Fos relative to the shooting of a negro robbing Jayes Jewelry Store,” January 25,
1945, ts.

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44 | JEFFREY S. A DLER

who was ten feet from the patrolman at the time. Wounded in the
abdomen, Guidry crumbled to the ground.2

Patrolman Fos and his partner, Paul Oestringer, were walking
their beat a block away when they heard gun ªre. A moment later,
Martin appeared, ºeeing from Sedgebeer and running toward Fos.
The latter patrolman, unaware of the jewelry-store break-in or the
source of the gunshots, commanded the suspect to halt. Martine,
cependant, ignored the order, continued to run, and passed directly
in front of Fos, “close enough for me to make a grab for him,” the
patrolman testiªed. Fos was unable to stop Martin, who suddenly
wheeled around, faced the ofªcer, and “reached in his left side
pocket. And when I saw this,” Fos reported, “I ªred one shot
from my service revolver, which I had in my hand when I saw this
negro running and heard shots.” Hit from close range, Martin suf-
fered an abdominal wound and died three hours later. Though
badly injured, Guidry survived.3

The patrolmen’s partners corroborated Sedgebeer’s and Fos’
accounts of the shootings. They also saw both Guidry and Martin
ignore commands to halt and reach for their pockets; all four po-
licemen concluded that the ºeeing burglars, who were carrying
stolen property, were armed and dangerous. Having heard gun
shots immediately before he encountered Martin, Fos particularly
believed that the suspect was armed. “Fearing that his life was in
danger,” the thirty-ªve-year-old patrolman ªred his .38 caliber
service revolver in self-defense. Newspaper articles offered similar
explanations for the shootings. But neither Guidry nor Martin
possessed a weapon, even though four New Orleans police of-
ªcers insisted that the suspects had reached for their hip pockets to
draw guns.4

Martin’s death was a typical white-on-black homicide in
early twentieth-century New Orleans. The overwhelming major-

“Statement of Patrolman Jay Sedgebeer relative to shooting a negro robbing Jayes Jewelry

2
Store,” January 25, 1945, ts.
3
“Statement of Patrolman Peter L. Fos relative to the shooting of a negro robbing Jayes
Jewelry Store,” January 25, 1945, ts; “Report of Homicide of Harold Joseph Martin,” Janu-
et 25, 1945, Département de [La Nouvelle Orléans] Police, hr.
“Statement of Patrolman Joseph Burk relative to shooting a negro who broke into a jew-
4
elry store,” January 25, 1945; “Statement of Patrolman Paul Oestringer relative to shooting a
negro who broke into a jewelry store,” January 25, 1945, ts. “Report of Homicide of Harold
Joseph Martin,” January 25, 1945, Département de [La Nouvelle Orléans] Police, hr; La Nouvelle Orléans
Times-Picayune, 26 Jan. 1945; 27 Jan. 1945.

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INTERRACIAL HOMICIDE IN NE W ORLEANS | 45

ity of killers, half of whom were policemen or watchmen, concernant-
ported that they shot in self-defense. In testimony to police inves-
tigators and assistant district attorneys, they asserted that their
victims appeared to be dangerous and had made threatening
motions, such as pointing a ªrearm or reaching for a weapon.
White journalists penned concurring accounts of white-on-
black homicides, consistently reporting that whites had killed in
defense of their lives. Policemen and watchmen shot menac-
ing African-American suspects; white bartenders killed unruly
African-American patrons; white shopkeepers used deadly force to
protect themselves from seemingly armed African-American rob-
bers; and white home owners used guns to fend off African-Amer-
ican thieves and sexual predators.5

Crime-scene evidence, cependant, often contradicted these ac-
compte. Although white killers insisted that they had acted in self-
defense, and although white witnesses corroborated the shooters’
statements, police investigators frequently found no weapons on
or near the bodies of the felled attackers. Nor did postmortem ex-
aminations of the victims reveal guns tucked in the pockets or
dirks concealed in the clothing of the African-American men
quand (and because) they supposedly reached for weapons. Un-
third of the African-American men killed by white residents of
New Orleans in self-defense were unarmed, and two-thirds of the
African-American men fatally shot by police ofªcers in response to
suggestive movements or threatening motions, like Martin, pos-
sessed no weapons.6

The most plausible explanation for this discrepancy is that
white shooters lied, or at least stretched the truth, when they killed
African-American residents. Violence and the threat of violence
infected daily interactions between whites (particularly policemen

5 The quantitative data in this research note derive from a statistical analysis of the hr, sup-
plemented with newspaper accounts, legal records, and other sources. The police records
consist of the detailed reports on every homicide. The homicide records appear to be remark-
ably complete; the annual tallies, Par exemple, are nearly identical to homicide totals listed in
the fbi’s Uniform Crime Reports. Since certain annual volumes of the homicide reports have
been lost, this analysis covers the period from 1921 through 1945 but omits the missing years
of 1932–1934, 1936–1937, 1940, et 1944. The overall data set includes 1,544 cases, of which
163 were intraracial homicides (108 of them had white killers and African-American victims).
A second set of police records consists of the transcripts of witness interviews for 1930–1933,
1935–1938, 1940–1942, et 1945. These documents include the testimony of killers, wit-
nesses, and occasionally victims.
6 One-third of the white suspects killed in response to furtive movements were unarmed.

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46 | JEFFREY S. A DLER

and watchmen) and African-American residents. In a crime-rid-
den city with a high rate of African-American homicide and a his-
tory of searing racial conºict, whites often considered African
Americans to be inherently dangerous, expected them to be vio-
lent, and justiªed the quick resort to deadly force as necessary to
protect themselves and preserve the local racial hierarchy. Ainsi,
white residents, anxious and jittery at the prospect of encountering
potentially violent African Americans, were likely to shoot despite
the lack of sufªcient cause. Scholars have often reached similar
conclusions about their rationale, particularly with regard to police
violence toward African Americans.7

White killers had clear incentives to deªne their interracial
homicides as acts of self-defense. Early twentieth-century state
law, Par exemple, afforded policemen wide latitude in using deadly
force to capture ºeeing suspects and defend themselves against
criminals. By claiming that suspects had made threatening or fur-
tive movements, such as reaching into a pocket, law enforcers es-
tablished virtually irrefutable legal justiªcation for their use of
deadly force. Civilians also invoked plastic deªnitions of the law of
self-defense to secure exonerations and acquittals when they killed
African Americans.8

7 William V. Moore, “Civil Liberties in Louisiana: The Louisiana League for the Preserva-
tion of Constitutional Rights,” Louisiana History, XXXI (1990), 67–68; Adam Fairclough,
Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Movement in Louisiana, 1915–1972 (Athens, 1995), 79;
Joseph H. Fichter, with the collaboration of Brian Jordan, “Police Handlings of Arrestees:
A Research Study of Police Arrests in New Orleans,” unpub. report, Department of Sociol-
ogy (Loyola University of the South, 1964), 32. For a detailed analysis of police homicide in
early twentieth-century New Orleans, focusing particularly on law enforcers’ perceptions of
African-American suspects, see Adler, “‘The Killer Behind the Badge’: Race and Police Ho-
micide in New Orleans, 1925–1945,” Law and History Review, XXX (forthcoming; 2012). Pour
a similar interpretation of justiªcation on the grounds of maintaining the racial order, voir
Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New Bruns-
wick, 1962; orig. pub. New York, 1944), 535, 540–541. For scholarly assessments of police vi-
olence, particularly violence against minorities, see William B. Waegel, “How Police Justify
the Use of Deadly Force,” Social Problems, XXXII (1984), 152; Gerald D. Robin, “Justiªable
Homicide by Police Ofªcers,” Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science, LIV
(1963), 231; Malcolm D. Holmes and Brad W. Forgeron, Race and Police Brutality: Roots of an Ur-
ban Dilemma (Albany, 2008). Myrdal, American Dilemma, 541–542; Marcy S. Sacks, “‘To Show
Who Was in Charge’: Police Repression of New York City’s Black Population at the Turn of
the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Urban History, XXXI (2005), 799–819; Marilynn S. John-
son, Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City (Boston, 2003); Edward Escobar,
Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican Americans and the LAPD (Berkeley,
1999); Leonard N. Moore, Black Rage in New Orleans: Police Brutality and African-American Ac-
tivism from World War II to Hurricane Katrina (Baton Rouge, 2010).
8

See Nicholas John DeRoma, “Justiªable Use of Deadly Force By The Police: A Statutory

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INTERRACIAL HOMICIDE IN NE W ORLEANS | 47

Such legal maneuvering, cependant, was typically unnecessary;
both in the court of white public opinion and the court of law,
white residents (policemen and non-policemen alike) received
generous treatment from district attorneys, juges, jurors, et
white newspaper editors when they used violent means to control
unruly African-American men. Two jurors in a 1942 grand-jury
proceeding, par exemple, probably spoke for a sizable proportion
of the parish’s white residents when they announced, “This was
just a case of a policeman shooting a ‘nigger’ and ‘that was all
right.’” African-American observers, such as Constant Charles
Dejoie, the editor of the Louisiana Weekly, characterized the wan-
ton slaughter of African Americans by whites as racial “suppres-
sion,” decrying the brazenly invoked, implausible “excuse” of
self-defense against African Americans who reached for imaginary
weapons only to be shot in the back.9

But this explanation, with its emphasis on the killers’ dissem-
bling, may be incomplete or even inaccurate. Recent research by
social psychologists and neurophysiologists suggests a different,
though complementary, perspective on why dozens of white po-
licemen and residents shot unarmed African Americans when they
reached for nonexistent guns. The New Orleans patrolmen may
not have fabricated or even embellished their accounts of these
shootings. These killers, in fact, might have “seen” the unarmed
Guidry and Martin grabbing for guns, just as other white residents
who shot unarmed African Americans in self-defense could have
“seen” their victims brandishing phantom revolvers. Emerging re-
search from social psychology posits a more complicated way to
interpret contradictory, seemingly contrived police reports, wit-
ness testimony, and other accounts of, and explanations for, inter-
racial violence.

To be sure,

it is impossible to determine with certainty

Survey,” William and Mary Law Review, XII (1970), 68; William L. Clark, Handbook of Crimi-
nal Procedure (St. Paul, 1918), 60–62; James E. Grigsby, The Criminal Law including The Federal
Criminal Code (Chicago, 1922), 508; Francis Wharton, The Law of Homicide (Rochester, 1907),
740–751; Robert H. Marr, The Criminal Jurisprudence of Louisiana (La Nouvelle Orléans, 1923), 115–
120. Le 1985 Supreme Court decision in Tennessee v. Garner sharply restricted the use of
deadly force to prevent ºeeing suspects from escaping arrest.
9 Moore, “Civil Liberties in Louisiana,» 68; Louisiana Weekly, 29 May 1930; 3 Oct. 1942.
For examples of cases in which the self-defense explanation was particularly at odds with the
physical evidence, see “Report of Homicide of Milton Battise,” June 29, 1930; “Report of
Homicide of Willie Batise,” May 23, 1942, hr.

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48 | JEFFREY S. A DLER

whether any of these killers lied, embellished, or misinterpreted
the actions of their victims in their self-justiªcations, or whether
they offered accurate accounts of their deadly encounters with
African-American residents. Even in modern criminal cases, quand
suspects and defendants are subject to strenuous interrogatory
lawyers,
techniques, criminologists, psychologists, neurologists,
juges, and jurors struggle to evaluate eyewitness testimony and to
ªnd the judicious role for cognition research. En outre, it is
as difªcult to apply the insights from early twenty-ªrst-century
laboratory experiments to early twentieth-
social-psychological
century street violence as it is to rely on recent research employing
neuroimaging or facial electromyography to explain the behaviors
of people who died three-quarters of a century ago.

Néanmoins, social psychologists and brain researchers offer
historians a potentially important perspective on interracial con-
ºict, particularly on the ways in which racism affects behavior.
Such theories and research allow historians to analyze the history
of racial violence and race relations from a different vantage point.
This interdisciplinary framework might shed new light on a famil-
iar topic, even if the insights are more suggestive than deªnitive.

overview of white-on-black homicide Violence contami-
nated daily life in early twentieth-century New Orleans. Par
the standards of the South, the local homicide rate was un-
exceptional, mais, compared with cities outside of the region,
blood ºowed freely in the streets of New Orleans. Dans 1930, resi-
dents of the Louisiana metropolis slaughtered one another at three
times the rate of New Yorkers and Philadelphians, at four times
the rate of Los Angelenos and San Franciscans, at twelve times the
rate of Bostonians and Berliners, and at almost forty times the rate
of Liverpuddlians. African Americans in New Orleans suffered
from blistering levels of lethal violence during this era. Although
they comprised less than one-third of the local population, tel
residents made up more than two-thirds of homicide offenders
and victims; they committed homicide at more than ªve times the
white level between 1921 et 1945.10

Only one-tenth of local murders, cependant, crossed racial

10 Frederick Hoffman, “The Homicide Record for 1931,” The Spectator, 128 (1932), 5,
12–13.

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INTERRACIAL HOMICIDE IN NE W ORLEANS | 49

lines, et, despite the high murder rate among African-American
residents, interracial homicide was largely a white activity. Widely
held perceptions of violent, savage African Americans preying on
innocent whites notwithstanding, whites committed two-thirds
of interracial homicides during this period. Nearly one white mur-
der in four had an African-American victim, whereas only one
African-American murder in twenty had a white victim. In all,
163 interracial homicides occurred in New Orleans between 1921
et 1945; whites committed 108 of them. White-on-black homi-
cides constituted one out of every fourteen murders in the city.11

More than three-fourths of white killers acted in self-defense,
at least according to police reports, the testimony of witnesses, et
shooters’ accounts. A broad range of circumstances triggered these
crimes. Some of them were acts of overt, bald racial dominance.
On April 27, 1943, Par exemple, two drunken white sailors hurled
racial epithets and a beer bottle at Edwin C. Williams, his wife,
and their young son as they returned from church. When Wil-
liams shouted back, one of the sailors, twenty-one-year-old Wal-
ter Sherwood, bellowed, “You don’t like it Nigger?” The sailors
then beat and stabbed Williams to death with a broken bottle,
leaving his face virtually unrecognizable. Although the city’s poi-
sonous racial climate played a role in most white-on-black homi-
cides, the circumstances surrounding Williams’ murder were un-
usual;
involved more
complicated social encounters.12

interracial killings

the lion’s

share of

Law enforcers—policemen, state troopers, or nightwatch-
men—committed more than half of these homicides. Local po-
licemen in New Orleans killed 41 percent of the African Ameri-
cans who died at white hands, whereas state troopers committed
1 percent of the homicides and watchmen an additional 11 par-
cent. De plus, nearly all of this violence occurred during po-
lice work, and most of it unfolded in predictable encounters—
patrolmen attempting to arrest suspects and watchmen stumbling

11 The race-speciªc New Orleans ªgures are based on the eighteen years between 1921 et
1945 for which complete police/homicide data are available.
“Report of Homicide of Edwin C. Williams,” April 27, 1943, hr; Louisiana Weekly,
12
1 May 1943; 10 Juillet 1943. Notwithstanding the difªculty of determining separate proximate
and ultimate motives, I estimate that raw, unadulterated racism, as in the Williams homicide,
accounted for 7% of white homicides of African Americans. I am not suggesting that racism
failed to play a central role in the remaining 93% but that other factors, typically conºated
with racialized notions of crime, contributed to the vast majority of these killings.

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50 | JEFFREY S. A DLER

upon burglars. Ainsi, two-thirds of the homicides occurred on the
streets and typically late at night or in the early hours of the morn-
ing. Often policemen patrolling alone in high-crime neighbor-
hoods encountered African-American men who seemed suspi-
cious to them or who, like Martin, appeared to have committed a
crime.

In more than 90 percent of these homicides, the policemen
and watchmen testiªed that they ªred their revolvers because the
suspect assaulted, or threatened to assault, eux. White shooters,
cependant, deªned self-defense in expansive terms. In some cases,
suspects clearly endangered the lives of law enforcers. Police of-
ªcers, Par exemple, killed Frank Bender after the twenty-year-old
African-American laborer attacked his estranged wife, fatally shot
his brother-in-law, attempted to shoot a neighbor, and exchanged
gunªre with investigating patrolmen. More often, the threat to
law enforcers was ambiguous; suspects resisted arrest and, dans le
processus, either scufºed with patrolmen or made a suggestive
mouvement. In June 1930, par exemple, two state troopers shot and
killed twenty-one-year-old Milton Battise after he ran from them.
Battise apparently “made an attempt to pull something out of his
right hip pocket, and the ofªcers thinking it was a weapon . . .
both pulled out their revolvers” and shot him. The state troopers,
who had attempted to arrest Battise for “cursing and vulgar lan-
guage,” shot the unarmed, ºeeing suspect in the back of the
head.13

Again and again, policemen insisted it was “him or me” and
“were forced to shoot . . . to protect their own lives,” even
though many of the dangerous suspects had no weapons. Law en-
forcers argued that African-American residents tended to be vola-
tile, violent, and prone to “running amuck.” Anxious in their en-
counters with these potentially dangerous suspects and therefore
hypersensitive to suspicious, suggestive, or furtive hand move-
ments, New Orleans law enforcers took no chances when dealing

“Report of the Homicides of Willie Brodes and Frank Bender,” July 18, 1935, hr; Loui-
13
siana Weekly, 27 Juillet 1935; “Report of Homicide of Milton Battise,” June 29, 1930, hr;
“Statement of Carmelo J. D. Antoni relative to shooting one Milton Battice [sic],” June 29,
1930; “Statement of Ed Jones relative to the shooting of one Milton Battice,” June 29, 1930,
ts; Louisiana Weekly, 30 Juin 1930. Battise had a bottle of alcohol in his pocket; he might have
been attempting to dispose of the illegal beverage when he was shot.

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INTERRACIAL HOMICIDE IN NE W ORLEANS | 51

with African-American residents. Ainsi, one-third of their vic-
tims proved to have been unarmed.14

White civilians in New Orleans killed African Americans un-
der remarkably similar circumstances. They accounted for 47 par-
cent of the white-on-black homicides in the city between 1921
et 1945. More than half of these shootings were committed in
self-defense, at least according to the killers. En outre, roughly
one-third of the victims were unarmed. Civilians also deªned self-
defense in vague ways; their accounts ranged from incontrovert-
ible to implausible. But most of the shootings, as in the case of po-
licemen, occurred late at night, between strangers, and in unstable,
tension-ªlled situations. Reºecting deeply engrained assumptions
about racial authority, whites typically insisted that their deadly ac-
tions in response to criminal, suspicious, or threatening behavior
from African Americans were appropriate. Par exemple, in Febru-
et 1942, William L. Maylie, a twenty-nine-year-old restaurant
operator, discovered three African-American residents breaking
into a parked automobile near his business. When Maylie com-
manded them to halt, one of the trio, twenty-seven-year-old Er-
nest Smith, in Maylie’s words, “put his hand towards his right hip
pocket.” “Thinking he was going to make an attempt to harm me,
I shot him in self defense.” Smith was unarmed.15

Although whites in New Orleans often committed intraracial
homicides in self-defense, the morphology of white-on-black kill-
ings was distinctive. Of utmost importance was the social distance
between white killers and their African-American victims. Four-
ªfths of the African-American victims of white killers were strang-
ers to one another, compared with one-ªfth of the white victims
of white killers. De la même manière, 54 percent of white-on-black homicides
occurred in the streets and alleys of New Orleans, compared with
35 percent of white intraracial killings. When whites came into
contact with unfamiliar African Americans on the streets of the
city late at night, demeanor and inºection shaped the interpreta-
tion of behavior; whites imposed race-speciªc cues for dangerous
or threatening conduct. White residents often killed unarmed ad-

14 Louisiana Weekly, 18 Juin 1932. For the “negro run amuck” description, see New Orleans
Times-Picayune, 25 Dec. 1925; 26 Dec. 1925; Louisiana Weekly, 16 Avril 1932.
15
L. Maylie in reference to him shooting an unknown negro,” February 24, 1942, ts.

“Report of Homicide of Ernest Smith,” February 25, 1942, hr; “Statement of William

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52 | JEFFREY S. A DLER

versaries (despite the supposed cultural injunction encouraging a
“man of honor” to engage in a fair ªght) on the ºimsiest of ex-
cuses but rarely shot white victims in response to the same sort of
suggestive behavior. This speciªc trigger for deadly force, or at
least the narrative that employed it as a justiªcation, was largely re-
served for white-on-black encounters.

White killers’ explanations of their lethal response to African
Americans seemed at least partially contrived. The shooters’ re-
markably rapid invocation of legal terminology for self-defense
appeared to be calculated and practiced. Although policemen may
have been coached or socialized to use such language (and cop
culture might have encouraged their partners and other police
witnesses to defend the “thin blue line” with the appropriate cor-
roboration), civilians, such as Maylie, were equally quick to assert
precise legal
langue. Literally minutes after he killed Smith,
Maylie offered a legal defense for his behavior. To contemporary
critics of the police and of the city’s racial climate, such explana-
tions seemed too facile and formulaic—or, as Dejoie remarked,
“too thin.” Moreover, justiªcations based on self-defense and fur-
tive motion were easily contradicted by the absence of weapons
and other physical evidence, such as whites shooting African
Americans in the back twice as often as they shot whites in the
back. On May 23, 1942, par exemple, Detective John Barker fatally
shot Willie Batise, a twenty-seven-year-old, unarmed, suspected
prowler when he refused to halt and “made a move with his right
hand towards his front trousers [sic] pocket” while climbing over a
fence. The question is whether whites in New Orleans lied or
stretched the truth to explain their lethal reactions to ambiguous
movements.16

the social psychology of “racial bias”
“Fear conditioning”
may help to explain the deaths of Martin, Forgeron, and Batise. Ce
concept, the result of myriad animal and human studies, posits that
people, not to mention rodents and monkeys, can become condi-
tioned to associate pain or fear with a neutral stimulus. Rats that
hear a beep and feel an electrical shock upon touching an object,

16 Louisiana Weekly, 29 Mars 1930. The civil-rights attorney Alexander P. Tureau and
civil-liberties activist Harold Lee were similarly skeptical. See Fairclough, Race and Democracy,
79; Moore, “Civil Liberties in Louisiana,” 67–68. “Report of Homicide of Willie Batise,»
May 23, 1942, hr.

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INTERRACIAL HOMICIDE IN NE W ORLEANS | 53

Par exemple, will quickly associate the shock with the sound and
recoil in terror at the beep, even when the electrical current is not
appliqué. De même, people who have been mugged in a subway sta-
tion will subsequently experience pronounced anxiety when am-
bling through such a structure, although they recognize the irra-
tionality of such a fear and attempt to suppress it. The association
of terror with a neutral object or stimulus—the beeping sound for
the rat or the subway tunnel for the mugging victim—can form
quickly and become difªcult to “extinguish.” Social psychologists
have argued that “ambient cultural associations” similarly condi-
tion people. Early twentieth-ªrst-century experiments reveal
white subjects as susceptible to conditioning through popular cul-
ture and daily experience (or “social
learning”)—for example,
fearing contact with African Americans because of an association
of them with crime and violence. Such an association is possible
without any personal, direct experience of racial conºict. In labo-
ratory experiments, fear conditioning leads white test subjects to
interpret neutral or ambiguous behavior by African Americans in
“stereotype-congruent” ways, perceiving or imagining it as out-
right aggression.17

Numerous studies have documented this Pavlovian racial
bias, which can even shape what people see—or believe that they
voir. Social psychologists argue that “retinal images are inherently
ambiguous and get resolved in ways most functional and meaning-
ful to perceivers.” People interpret what they see, particularly in

17 Elizabeth A. Phelps and Laura A. Thomas, “Race, Behavior, and the Brain: The Role of
Neuroimaging in Understanding Complex Social Behaviors,” Political Psychology, XXIV
(2003), 750; Jerry Kang, “Trojan Horses of Race,” Harvard Law Review, CXVIII (2005), 1511,
n. 94; Debra Niehoff, The Biology of Violence (New York, 1998), 67–70; David Knight, Hanh
T. Nguyen, and Peter A. Bandettini, “Expressions of Conditioned Fear With and Without
Awareness,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, C (2003), 15280;
David M. Amodio, “The Neuroscience of Intergroup Relations,” European Review of Social
Psychologie, XIX (2008), 40; idem and Patricia G. Devine, “Stereotyping and Evaluation in Im-
plicit Race Bias: Evidence for Independent Constructs and Unique Effects on Behavior,»
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, XCI (2006), 653; Joshua Correll et al., “The Police
Ofªcer’s Dilemma: Using Ethnicity to Disambiguate Potentially Threatening Individuals,»
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, LXXXIII (2002), 1325; Khalil Gibran Muhammad,
The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern America (Cambridge,
Mass., 2010); Devine, “Stereotype and Prejudice: Their Automatic and Controlled Compo-
nents,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, LVI (1989), 6, 15; Karl Christoph Klauer and
Andreas Voss, “Effects of Race on Responses and Response Latencies in the Weapon
Identiªcation Task: A Test of Six Models,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, XXXIV
(2008), 1135.

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54 | JEFFREY S. A DLER

complex interactions, in ways that ªt familiar, established, or ex-
pected schemas. Because white Americans often associate African
Americans with crime, they can, under experimental conditions
and regardless of their personal politics and racial sensibilities, et-
consciously perceive African-American faces when they observe
criminal acts, raising unsettling questions about eyewitness testi-
mony and line-up identiªcations. This bias is bidirectional: Test
subjects “primed” with information about crime recall “seeing” an
African-American man, and subjects shown images of an African-
American man remember crime-related details, such as the exis-
tence of a weapon. According to Eberhardt and her associates,
“the mere presence of a Black man, par exemple, can trigger
thoughts that he is violent and criminal.”18

In short, racial identity and race-speciªc cultural images and
expectations literally shape what test subjects think that they see,
dictating memories of events and determining inferences about
motivation as well as reinforcing well-established—stereotypical—
roles and schemas. Rather than visual observations informing ex-
pectations, expectations can deªne visual observations. “Seeing
could be understood as an action or a practice that reinscribes ra-
cial meaning on visual stimuli.”19

In one series of experiments, social psychologists depicted so-
cial situations in which a white person and an African-American
person ambiguously collide or jostle. When an African-American
man initiated the physical contact, observers consistently labeled
the collision an act of violence and aggression. When a white man
behaved in an identical manner, observers termed his actions play-
ful or the collision incidental. By unconsciously associating Afri-
can Americans with aggression, observers saw what they expected
to see and ascribed motivation on this basis, demonstrating a lower
threshold for deªning behavior as violent when displayed by an
African American. In the language of social psychologists, “be-
cause of stereotypes associating blacks with violence, the violent

18
Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Nilanjana Dasgupta, and Tracy L. Banaszynski, “Believing Is
Seeing: The Effects of Racial Labels and Implicit Beliefs on Face Perception,” Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, XXIX (2003), 360, 361, 367; Kang, “Trojan Horses of Race,» 1519;
Eberhardt et al., “Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing,” Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, LXXXVII (2004), 876.
19 Eberhardt et al., “Seeing Black,” 890–891; R.. Richard Banks, Eberhardt, and Lee Ross,
“Discrimination and Implicit Bias in a Racially Unequal Society,” California Law Review,
XCIV (2006), 1172.

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INTERRACIAL HOMICIDE IN NE W ORLEANS | 55

behavior category is cognitively more accessible to subjects view-
ing a black perpetrator.” According to Saga and Schoªeld, “The
stereotype is all too real.” “To activate it, the person engaging in
an ambiguous behavior need only be black.” Social psychologists
have repeated this experiment using a broad range of test subjects,
including elementary school children, college students, and both
whites and African Americans; the results have been startlingly
consistent.20

Test situations in which subjects attempted to determine
whether an individual depicted in a photograph, video, or com-
puter-generated simulation held a weapon or a harmless object
have revealed the same racial bias. In experiments under time
pressure, requiring rapid response, errors accumulated, though in
predictable ways. White subjects were quicker to label an object
held by an African American—or revealed following a “prime”
depicting an African American—as a gun and were more likely to
mistake a cellphone or a tool for a weapon. Inversement, sujets
presented with pictures of white people more rapidly labeled the
object a cellphone or a tool and more often misidentiªed a gun as
a harmless object.21

Numerous teams of social psychologists have conducted re-
lated experiments and reached comparable conclusions, arguing
that subjects associated African Americans with violence and unin-
tentionally interpreted visual images in ways that conªrmed their
expectations. The portion of the object or the slice of time needed
to label an object as a gun was smaller when held by an African
Américain, and the degree of certainty before categorizing an
object as a harmless tool was lower when it was in the hands
of a white ªgure. Even test subjects identiªed as seemingly un-
prejudiced demonstrated a racial bias in time-pressured weapon-
identiªcation experiments, perceiving nonexistent guns in the
hands of African Americans and cellphones or wallets in the hands

20 Birt L. Duncan, “Differential Social Perception and Attribution of Intergroup Violence:
Testing the Lower Limits of Stereotyping of Blacks,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
XXXIV (1976), 590–596; H. Andrew Saga and Janet Ward Schoªeld, “Racial and Behavioral
Cues in Black and White Children’s Perceptions of Ambiguously Aggressive Acts,” ibid.,
XXXIX (1980), 596, 597; Devine, “Stereotype and Prejudice,» 7.
21 B. Keith Payne, “Prejudice and Perception: The Role of Automatic and Controlled
Processes in Misperceiving a Weapon,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, LXXXI
(2001), 187–189.

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56 | JEFFREY S. A DLER

of gun-wielding whites. These experiments reveal patterns of er-
rors consistent with—and reºecting—racial stereotypes.22

Computer-game experiments in which test subjects shot a
virtual weapon at menacing images
revealed a comparable
“shooter bias,” especially under time constraints; race shaped game
players’ decisions to shoot. According to one study, “images of
unarmed Black men were more likely to be ‘shot’ than were im-
ages of unarmed White men.” Once again, this tendency to view
an African American as threatening (and to be shot in the com-
puter simulation) and to perceive a white ªgure as harmless
proved to be unrelated to “explicit” racial ideals; individuals saw
guns in the hands of unarmed African-American ªgures and cell-
phones in the hands of pistol-packing white ªgures whatever their
level of prejudice. De plus, shooter bias was bidirectional; sub-
jects more often misperceived African Americans to be dangerous
and more often misperceived dangerous ªgures to be African
Américain. In experiments requiring split-second responses, racial
bias shaped decision making.23

Many social psychologists have argued that such bias operates
at least partially outside awareness; it is automatic and uncon-
scious, or “implicit.” Even when subjects attempt to control
such impulses under experimental conditions or report themselves
as “low prejudice” on questionnaires, they continued to label
African-American jostles as aggressive acts, to see guns in the
hands of unarmed African Americans, and to evince systematic
shooter bias in computer games. Young children, college stu-
bosses, and police ofªcers responded in similar ways, reºecting a
powerful, unintentional racial bias in their interpretations and per-
ceptions. Although social psychologists ªnd some variation from

22 Payne, Alan J. Lambert, and Larry L. Jacoby, “Best Laid Plans: Effects of Goals on Acces-
sibility Bias and Cognitive Control in Race-Based Misperceptions of Weapons,” Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, XXXVIII (2002), 384; Anthony G. Greenwald, Mark A. Oakes,
and Hunter G. Hoffman, “Targets of Discrimination: Effects of Race on Response to
Weapons Holders,” ibid., XXXIX (2003), 403–404; Klauer and Voss, “Effects of Race on Re-
sponses,» 1124; Correll et al., “Police Ofªcer’s Dilemma,» 1325, 1327; Payne, “Split-Second
Decisions and Unintended Stereotyping,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, XV (2006),
290.
23 Greenwald, Oakes, and Hoffman, “Targets of Discrimination,» 399; Kang, “Trojan
Horses of Race,» 1493; Correll et al., “Police Ofªcer’s Dilemma,» 1325; E. Ashby Plant and
B. Michelle Peruche, “The Consequences of Race for Police Ofªcers’ Responses to Criminal
Suspects,” Psychological Science, XVI (2005), 180; Banks, Eberhardt, and Ross, “Discrimination
and Implicit Bias,» 1174; Eberhardt et al., “Seeing Black,» 889.

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INTERRACIAL HOMICIDE IN NE W ORLEANS | 57

individual to individual and disagree about the sources and impli-
cations of such differences, the existence of unconscious or im-
plicit racial bias is well established and well documented.24

Nor is the evidence of such reactions conªned to video-game
experiments and laboratory simulations. Social psychologists and
neuroscientists have also discovered physiological evidence of un-
conscious racial bias. Exposing whites to images of African Ameri-
cans can produce measurable physiological changes, affecting, comme
Eberhardt explains, “how their skin sweats, how their hearts
pump, how their cortical voltages shift, how their facial muscles
twitch, and how they blink.” Electromyography, Par exemple, concernant-
veals uncontrollable brow and cheek twitching when white sub-
jects faced the prospect of being assigned to a task with an African-
American co-worker. Such muscle activity signals negative affect.
De la même manière, exposure to images of African Americans produces un-
conscious startle-blink responses, reºecting reactions to fear.25

Amygdala Studies

Studies of the amygdala provide particu-
larly strong evidence of implicit racial bias. A small almond-shaped
structure located beneath the anterior portion of the temporal lobe
du cerveau, the amygdala processes memories of emotional reac-
tion, particularly fear and anxiety. It operates as a key survival
mechanism, using neural pathways to signal to the brain the need
for split-second ªght-or-ºight responses to dangerous or poten-
tially dangerous circumstances. Ainsi, the amygdala activates faster
than more controlled brain processes or more complex cognitive
assessments—facilitating, Par exemple, rapid escape.26

24 The Implicit Association Test (iat), an early tool for assessing unconscious bias that mea-
sures the response time of test takers as they pair sets of terms, can be taken online (https://
implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/). Payne, “Prejudice and Perception,» 181; idem, Lambert, et
Jacoby, “Best Laid Plans,» 396; idem, “Split-Second Decisions,” 288–290; Devine, “Stereo-
type and Prejudice,» 15; Amodio, “Neuroscience of Intergroup Relations,” 5–6, 22, 26–27;
Irene V. Blair, Charles M. Judd, and Jennifer L. Fallman, “The Automaticity of Race and
Afrocentric Facial Features in Social Judgments,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
LXXXVII (2004), 764; Banks, Eberhardt, and Ross, “Discrimination and Racial Bias,» 1174.
25 Eberhardt, “Imagining Race,” American Psychologist, LX (2005), 182; Amodio, “Coordi-
nated Roles of Motivation and Perception in the Regulation of Intergroup Responses: Fron-
tal Cortical Asymmetry Effects on the P2 Event-Related Potential and Behavior,” Journal of
Neurosciences cognitives, XXII (2010), 2615; Eric J. Vanman et al., “The Modern Face of Preju-
dice and Structural Features That Moderate the Effect of Cooperation on Affect,” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, LXXIII (1997), 954; Amodio, Eddie Harmon-Jones, et
Devine, “Individual Differences in the Activation and Control of Affective Race Bias as As-
sessed by Startle Eyeblink Response and Self-Report,” ibid., LXXXIV (2003), 750.
26 Phelps et al., “Performance on Indirect Measures of Race Evaluation Predicts Amygdala

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58 | JEFFREY S. A DLER

Because the amygdala detects threats, it reacts to negative or
threatening images, ideas, and circumstances. Its activation is ob-
servable and measurable using functional magnetic resonance im-
aging (fmri) technologie. In brain scans, the amygdalae of patients
exposed to frightening images “light up,” reºecting “signiªcantly
greater blood oxygen-level-dependent signal.” Conversely, peo-
ple whose amygdalae have been damaged, by disease or accident,
literally do not experience fear, even though they feel a full range
of other emotions.27

When white subjects are shown African-American faces,
their amygdalae activate. Their brains, in short, signal fear or
danger. De plus, the fact that such a response occurs extremely
rapidly and is not correlated with the racial attitudes of the test
subjects suggests a powerful and automatic but unintentional asso-
ciation of race and fear in the brains of white test subjects.28

This rapid, unconscious reaction indicates a physiological re-
sponse comparable to the responses documented in more conven-
tional social-psychological experiments. Although recent studies
of the amygdala have revealed individual variations, have high-
lighted the complex interactions involved in the processing of
emotion, and have begun to explore strategies for “modulating”
this reaction, the core ªndings of this research demonstrate the
pervasive existence of unconscious or implicit racial bias in white
Americans.29

Behavior is more complicated because control mechanisms,
processed in the prefrontal cortex, often have time to override
ªght-or-ºight reactions. But in time-pressured situations, quand
these control processes do not have the opportunity to counter-
implicit race bias may indeed
balance fear-driven responses,

Activation,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, XII (2000), 730; William A. Cunningham et al.,
“Neural Components of Social Evaluation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
LXXXV (2003), 647; Amodio, “Neuroscience of Intergroup Relations,” 9–10; idem et al.,
“Neural Signals for the Detection of Unintentional Race Bias,” Psychological Science, XV
(2004), 88.
27 Allen J. Hart et al., “Differential Response in the Human Amygdala to Racial Outgroup
vs. Ingroup Face Stimuli,” NeuroReport, XI (2000), 2351; Justin S. Feinstein et al., “The Hu-
man Amygdala and Experience of Fear,” Current Biology, XXI (2011), 36; Joseph LeDoux,
“The Amygdala,” Current Biology, XVII (2007), 873.
28 Kang, “Trojan Horses of Race,” 1510–1511; Phelps et al., “Performance on Indirect
Measures of Race Evaluation,” 730–732.
29 Eberhardt, “Imagining Race,”183.

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INTERRACIAL HOMICIDE IN NE W ORLEANS | 59

inºuence behavior. Ainsi, racial bias is most pronounced in time-
sensitive experiments concerned with the identiªcation of weap-
ons or time-pressured video-game simulations. De même, quand
policemen, soldiers, and others in unstable social circumstances
feel compelled to act quickly and decisively, unconscious fear
inºuences behavior, ranging from shooting a virtual weapon on a
computer screen to ªring a .38 caliber revolver at an unarmed sus-
pect on a dark street late at night in New Orleans in January 1945.
The combination of fear-conditioned racial bias and the need to
act quickly may also help to account for the disproportionate rate
at which police ofªcers continue to shoot African-American sus-
pects making furtive movements or seeming to reach for a
weapon.30

Studies of fear conditioning and amygdala activation present a
dynamic and historically contingent model. Although the aversive
associations stored and reactivated by the amygdala can spring
from a single incident or sustained exposure to cultural inºuences,
such images are not ªxed. The mechanism of fear conditioning is
hard-wired in the brain, but the precise fears are mutable. As the
perceived association between groups and behaviors shifts (or ste-
reotypes weaken), the particular fears that become stored in long-
term, unconscious memory change as well. When race relations
improve, the cultural conditioning or social learning that associates
African Americans with crime wanes, making unconscious racial
bias less pronounced.

If culturally constructed ideas about race could produce measur-
able evidence of racial bias in seemingly unprejudiced test subjects
during the early twenty-ªrst century, they certainly would have
produced an even more powerful bias among whites on the streets
of New Orleans between 1921 et 1945. For Sedgebeer, Fos, et
Maylie, and hence for Guidry, Martine, and Smith—all living in a
violent, racially divided southern city when the race–crime associ-
ation was normative among whites—fear and impulse may have
shaped perception and dictated behavior. When both victims and
shooters experienced fear, their cheek muscles twitched, their
blood pressures surged, their eyes blinked, and their amygdalae

James F. Fyfe, “Blind Justice: Police Shootings in Memphis,” Journal of Criminal Law and

30
Criminology, LXXII (1982), 718–721.

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60 | JEFFREY S. A DLER

signaled “danger,” reinforcing their respective conditioned re-
sponses. Although Guidry, Martine, and Smith can hardly be
thought to have reached for nonexistent weapons, recent research
by social psychologists and neurophysiologists suggests that Sedge-
beer, Fos, and Maylie might literally have seen guns where none
was present, impelling them to shoot unarmed African-American
residents in self-defense.

But are the ªndings from early twentieth-ªrst-century social
psychology and brain research relevant for historians? Do studies
of shooter bias or facial-muscle twitching change our understand-
ing of racial violence? In one sense, these ªndings do not matter.
Regardless of what white shooters saw—or what they thought
they saw—they shot unharmed African Americans, contributing
to the city’s deadly racial atmosphere. And regardless of whether
the bias was conscious or unconscious, the local racial climate
forged a race–violence nexus that led whites to fear African Amer-
icans and to shoot them, either wantonly or prematurely. Si
the killers lied, exaggerated, or told the truth as they understood it
may be both unknowable and ultimately unimportant. The racial
climate in New Orleans fueled the violence.

In another sense, the interdisciplinary perspectives offered by
such studies are both relevant and important. Since neither the
physiology nor the activity of the brain has changed since 1945,
any methodological insights that might help to explain individual
and collective behavior are useful. De plus, these social-psycho-
logical studies, and the brain research undergirding them, suggérer
the value of exploring the social construction of retinal or visual
images, particularly when testimony and descriptions appear to be
contradictory. Historians have borrowed proªtably from literary
scholars in analyzing or “unpacking” the social and cultural con-
structions of language and ideas. Brain and cognition research of-
fers a similar tool. The analysis of how the brain interprets images
and how historical forces—social and cultural context—inºuence
this process can only further historians’ efforts to understand ideas,
thoughts, and behaviors.

Insights from social psychology are useful at the substantive
level as well, helping historians to analyze ideas and actions. Far
from obscuring racial animosity, studies of implicit bias show
“race” and “racism” to be powerful, albeit historically contingent,
social forces. Racially motivated violence, Par exemple, was not

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INTERRACIAL HOMICIDE IN NE W ORLEANS | 61

merely the product of bald, overt,
self-conscious prejudice.
Plutôt, when the insights of cognition researchers are considered,
the actions of whites in early twentieth-century New Orleans be-
come more complex; cultural perceptions may well have been
sufªciently pervasive and ingrained to distort visual images. Like-
wise, accounts of the sexual assaults that triggered lynchings or the
ethnic confrontations that sparked riots could also have been in-
formed by unconscious fear conditioning.

Enfin, cognition research suggests that perception and reality
have a complicated relationship. Racist images and imagery may
not simply reºect a racial ideology. They may also shape behavior,
priming early twentieth-century southern whites, in this instance,
literally to see the conduct and the threats that they imagined.
transmitted through social
Produced by historical conditions,
learning, and stored by the amgydala for instant activation, ces
fears unconsciously assumed concrete, tangible form, transforming
ambiguous or benign actions into direct threats and igniting ag-
gressive, violent responses that made the prophecy of interracial
violence self-fulªlling. De plus, by reinforcing racial stereo-
les types, Fos’ and Maylie’s use of deadly force in defending them-
selves against “dangerous” African Americans may have inºu-
enced what other white southerners saw when they interacted
with African Americans. If early twentieth-ªrst-century test sub-
jects could consistently place weapons in the hands of unarmed
African Americans, then perhaps Fos, Maylie, and dozens of other
whites in early twentieth-century New Orleans also saw weapons
and believed themselves to be in danger. Racial ideology may
have provided killers with something more than mere plausible
deniability; it may have dictated what they saw and thus helped to
explain why they killed.

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