Teaching History the Books Forgot

Chris Dier

Using TikTok, Chris Dier is Reaching an Audience Hungry to Learn Lesser-Known Aspects of Local History

By Alexandra Kennon

When teaching eighth grade at St. Bernard Middle School in 2013, Chris Dier was researching episodes in local history that would be relevant to his students. He knew from his graduate studies in education at the University of New Orleans that the best way to increase class engagement is with topics from close to home, after all.

His search led him to John C. Rodrigue’s Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana’s Sugar Parishes, 1862–1880 (LSU Press, 2001), wherein a vague footnote piqued his curiosity; it mentioned “disturbances” in St. Bernard Parish in 1868. Dier—an avid reader of historical texts who was raised by a history teacher mother, majored in history at East Texas Baptist University, and now taught history himself—had never heard of these “disturbances,” which had apparently taken place in the very parish in which he had grown up and now taught in.

Dier began poring over records—some digitized by Harvard University and some via the Congressional Record Archive—to learn more about the episodes in question. In doing so, he discovered that the 1868 St. Bernard event referenced by the footnote amounted to much more than “disturbances.” In fact, he had stumbled upon one of the deadliest massacres in the history of Louisiana.

The 1868 St. Bernard Massacre

Following the Civil War, in the days leading up to the presidential election of 1868, white Democratic voters in Louisiana and other Southern states feared losing their majority as newly-emancipated Black men joined the voting rolls. The stakes of the election were particularly high: a win for Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour would return Louisiana to home rule, spelling an end to local enforcement of Reconstruction-era measures to preserve the rights of newly enfranchised African Americans in the South by federal troops. On the other hand, a victory for the Republican candidate and former Union Commander Ulysses S. Grant would mean that local enforcement of Reconstruction era policies would continue—a prospect dreaded by many landowners in St. Bernard.

In an effort to secure a Seymour victory, in late October 1868 groups armed and mobilized to silence the freedmen and their newly-obtained voting rights. Some Black men were forced from their homes and murdered. Others fled to the sugarcane fields, where some hid for multiple days. Reports of freedmen killed range from thirty-five to well over one hundred, while two white people were killed in the bloodshed (one of whom died while attempting to assist victims).

Dier was surprised to have never heard of these historical atrocities, and taken aback that aside from the rare footnote, this deadly event appeared to have been entirely left out of history books. “Once I sort of started to pull off the veil of this history, I really never looked back,” he said.

He wasted no time in presenting his findings to his students. He wanted to know if they and their parents had ever heard about these events—particularly because, as he discovered through his research, many of his students shared last names with both perpetrators and victims of the massacre. Not only was the story close to home in that regard, but the 1868 killings took place over a broad section of land—including that upon which Dier grew up, and where St. Bernard Middle School stands today.

“It became one of those things where I wanted to get it into the classroom as soon as possible,” Dier explained.

The reactions from his students were mixed—some were unsurprised to learn that something of that nature occurred so close by, while others were completely shocked. The commonality was that, in part because of the proximity, they were eager to learn more. “It sort of opens up that natural curiosity that we all have, and really gets them invested,” Dier said. “So, it also gave us a lot of fodder for conversations, you know, students can actually engage in history that is their history and not history from a faraway place or anything, but history that they can take ownership of.”

Since then, Dier has written and published the first book documenting the ordeal: The 1868 St. Bernard Parish Massacre: Blood in the Cane Fields (The History Press, 2017). While researching the book, he learned that the St. Bernard Massacre was far from being a singular event—in the years following the Civil War, similar violent episodes against Black individuals took place across Louisiana. Dier notes that while he remained ignorant of this bloody swath of history until adulthood, the majority of Black Louisianians find it unsurprising.

Garnering a Global Following

Years later, in March of 2020, Dier was teaching history at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans. Like other teachers across the globe, he was challenged to adapt his educational methods to the virtual sphere. At the urging of his students, Dier began utilizing a less-conventional method for sharing the largely-unknown history they were discussing in class: TikTok, the wildly-popular social media platform for creating and sharing shortform videos. He had been creating video content for his students already, but was initially reluctant to enter the entertainment-heavy, largely-Gen-Z space. “I said, ‘Absolutely, that’s not what we’re doing.’ And then I downloaded the app,” Dier said. The rest, as they say, is history.

As he explored the seemingly-infinite network of videos, particularly those posted by other history teachers, he found himself thinking, “Wow, this is actually a pretty cool way to deliver content.” He began making one-minute videos about historical episodes not covered by the textbooks he teaches from. “Because that means that teachers might not have the resources to access it, and thus students might not have access to it,” Dier explained. “So, I think that appealed to many people, to hear about history that isn’t really taught as much.”

That Dier’s TikTok presence appealed to “many people” might be an understatement: “I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging or anything, but it is global now,” Dier said. In February 2022, Dier’s account has 113.4 thousand followers, and over 1.3 million “likes”. He gets messages from viewers in China, Dubai, Latin America, and beyond—a particularly large percentage of his followers are Chilean. “I don’t know, I did a few videos on Chilean history,” Dier explained, still marveling. “But yeah, it’s remarkable.”

Though significant social media capital is nothing to scoff at these days, Dier’s scope of recognition has extended into more concrete, official realms as well. He was invited to the White House after being named the 2020 Louisiana Teacher of the Year, chosen as a finalist for the 2020 National Teacher of the Year, and named the winner of the National Education Association’s 2021 Human and Civil Rights Award. While he admits that having his work validated is a good feeling, “I also didn’t become a teacher for that type of validation or for the accolades,” he said. “To receive them is remarkable. But again, it wasn’t my main goal, it was a product of the work.”

President of the Louisiana Association of Educators Dr. Tia Mills, on whose board Dier currently sits, applauded Dier’s willingness to meet students on their level by embracing the technology of their generation. “I think that the way that he is introducing [more difficult historical content] is very innovative. You know, with the changing of times comes the changing of thinking [about] the ways of approaching education, in different perspectives,” said Mills. “So, you have to be able to reach our children in various ways, because we have different types of learners.”

Now entering his third year on TikTok, Dier has produced an entire video series that addresses the largely untaught and undiscussed Reconstruction-Era massacres that took place in Louisiana and beyond. They include the Thibideaux Massacre of 1887, the Bossier City Massacre of 1868, and the New Orleans Massacre of 1866, among others. Dier urges viewer discretion before diving into the frequently-violent details of these events, reminding his audience that he does not “believe in sugar-coating history—especially this history.”

For most of his videos, Dier travels to the sites where the bloodshed took place, emphasizing that not only are these atrocities largely unknown, but that the locations at which they took place remain eerily unmarked—which he believes is a way of intentionally obscuring these events from the public eye. “I mean, today I passed the Roosevelt Hotel. And that’s where the New Orleans Massacre of 1866 happened. But there’s no marker. There’s nothing there, it just looks like a hotel,” Dier emphasized. “So this history is all-encompassing and all around us, yet it just is not being presented in a way that is easy for people to access. And I think that’s fascinating.”

Advocating for the Acknowledgement of Uncomfortable Truths

At Dier’s urging, the St. Bernard Parish Government is looking into allocating funds to place a historical marker at the site of the St. Bernard Massacre. The problem, according to Dier, is that such markers are expensive, and most parish governments can only afford one a year. In 2020, St. Bernard allocated a marker to commemorate Fazendeville, the Black neighborhood demolished by the National Park Service in 1965 to clear Chalmette Battlefield, where the Battle of New Orleans took place. “St. Bernard Parish just got a marker for them last year, which is why I waited until this year, because that community was pushing hard for that,” Dier told me in late December, 2021. “And they’re only sponsoring one a year. So, this year, it looks like [the St. Bernard Massacre] is the marker that they are going with, so I can only hope for the best. And if not that, I do have a few people who said they would be willing to fundraise and donate.”

In New Orleans, Dier recently appeared on a WDSU Channel 6 TV segment discussing the St. Bernard Massacre, after which he said a local business owner reached out to him, lauding his efforts and offering to buy $500 worth of his books to distribute to family and friends. “I don’t often lose my words, but honestly, I don’t have many words, other than to say thank you,” the business owner said of the news segment. “I struggled watching it. But I’m thinking that’s the idea, right?”

Dier’s work also included advocating for the Reconstruction Era to be included in Louisiana’s high school social studies curriculum—which with new standards enacted in 2022, will finally include American history prior to 1877. “Let’s be real: middle schoolers aren’t getting a full grasp and understanding of the Revolution, the Constitution, slavery and the Civil War, and Reconstruction,” said Dier. “So, if they don’t get it while they’re twelve, they’re never going to get this history ever again, if they don’t go to college.”

Mills, who in addition to serving as President of the LAE also sits on the Louisiana School & District Accountability Commission, says decisions about what goes into the curriculum and doesn’t are certainly worth discussing. “I can definitely understand for sure why he has concerns about it. And I think that it’s something that we should have a candid conversation about.”

Though teaching violent and racially-fraught episodes of Louisiana’s history is certainly not easy, Dier firmly believes in the importance of shedding light on all aspects of our nation’s past, however uncomfortable they may make us. “We can’t deny reality, and people really were killed en masse, in massacres across Louisiana. And those victims, and survivors, and their descendants deserve to have their rightful place in the curriculum and in classrooms, just as if this happened to your family or anyone that you think should be valued,” Dier said. “And to not do so is devaluing the people who paid the hefty price simply for existing, or trying to do something as simple as vote, or as simple as walk down the street, minding their business—something that we all take for granted.”

Also a history major in college, Mills agrees that educators share the burden of ensuring that history is not lost by teaching it accurately to younger generations. “I think it’s extremely crucial that [Dier] teaches that aspect of history, because if it’s not taught by our educators, then is going to be considered lost. There’s a lot of history out there that if not shared, or passed down from generation to generation, then it’s basically going to fade away. And that is something that, as an individual with a history background, I’m deeply, gravely concerned about,” Mills said. “The work that [Dier has] done in that area, you can tell that he’s extremely passionate about it.”

“If I had to sum it up,” Dier said, “Students deserve to know the truth, the victims and survivors and their descendants deserve to have justice and recognition, and it helps us move forward as a society if we have a decent understanding of our nation’s past.”

Find more information on Chris Dier and his work, as well as his and his students’ list of teacher resources, or to purchase his book The 1868 St. Bernard Parish Massacre: Blood in the Cane Fields (The History Press, 2017), at chrisdier.com. Watch his historical videos and follow him on TikTok @cmdla.