Chattel slavery is what kept those slaves alive retard. They are more like family on a mom and pop plantation. Corporate sugar cane slaves were worked to death and replaced fast, just like non slave white Irish. Black slaves never died like this in the USA, ever. STFU
Mass grave of Irish diggers stirs quarrel
NEW ORLEANS -- The mass grave of thousands of Irish ditch diggers killed by disease 150 years ago is at the center of a neighborhood quarrel over a housing project.
As many as 20,000 Irish immigrants perished from cholera and yellow fever during the six-year construction of the New Basin Canal, begun in 1832. The victims were buried wherever they died.
Opponents say a planned subdivison of 94 houses on the canal site amounts to grave desecration. They cite a state law defining desecration as 'damaging in any manner of any grave, tomb or mausoleum for the dead.'
Residents admit their primary concern is not the burial site. They say the strip of green space along the filled-in canal is essential to the tranquility of their neighborhood.
Councilman Bryan Wagner said neighbors brought the desecration statute to his attention this week.
'We certainly intend to look into it to verify if they are correct' in their interpretation of the law, Wagner said.
Despite the opposition of 1,000 residents who signed petitions, city planners gave unenthusiastic approval to the project Wednesday. Planning Commissioner Albert Saputo said he lacked authority to oppose it.
'If I thought we were on good legal ground, I would deny the application,' he said. However, the commission forbade development for 90 days in hopes of reaching a compromise with neighbors.
Developer Phil Nugent, president of New Orleans Canal, Inc., said he would be willing to abandon the site if he can work out a land swap for an adjacent tract owned by the state.
'I think the state is agreeable to a swap,' he said.
The immigrant Irishmen who hacked through swampland with picks and shovels were paid $1 a day for their labor. Wives were paid 50 cents for a half-day's work,
considered too dangerous for slaves who sold from $500 to $1,500 each.
The settlers hoped the canal would secure their independence from the Creoles, the descendants of France and Spain who dominated New Orleans' culture and economy for a century. The canal opened shipping access to the American sector on the Uptown side of Canal Street.
Barges laden with melons and other produce traveled the canal for more than a century before it was filled in by the state in 1949.
The mass grave of thousands of Irish ditch diggers killed by disease 150 years ago is at the center of a neighborhood quarrel over a housing project....
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