There's no doubt that racism played a role, but a lot of the bitterness was more related to the fact that a huge influx of people, some of them very desperate, arrived and worked in the shrimping industry for low wages and in terrible conditions. This cut the rest of of the labor market off at the knees.

Suddenly a lot of people who had had the job for years, and had maybe been doing it for generations as a family trade, either lost their job or were unable to carry it out profitably.