Archaeology
Marksville Culture
This entry covers the prehistoric Marksville Culture during the Middle Woodland Period, 1–400 CE.
This entry covers the prehistoric Marksville Culture during the Middle Woodland Period, 1–400 CE.
This entry covers prehistoric Caddo culture during the Late Woodland and Mississippi Periods, 900–1700 CE.
Watson Brake is a prehistoric Evans culture site in Ouachita Parish dating to 3500–2800 BCE.
Coincoin, a formerly enslaved woman freed in colonial Natchitoches, is an icon of American slavery and Louisiana’s Creole culture.
Established in 1787, Destrehan Plantation is the oldest documented plantation in the lower Mississippi Valley.
The LeBeau House plantation occupies one of the narrow lots typical of The Island, the area between the Mississippi and False rivers.
Oaklawn Manor, on Bayou Teche, was originally owned by Irish-born lawyer Alexander Porter whose ancestry gave this area the name Irish Bend.
The West Feliciana Parish Courthouse was built to replace its mid-nineteenth-century predecessor, which had been damaged in the Civil War.
Alvyk Boyd Cruise was a multitalented artist and historian in New Orleans during the mid-twentieth century.
Walter Inglis Anderson, born in New Orleans, expressed his unique artistic vision in murals, watercolors, oils, sketches, sculpture, rugs, wallpaper, and furniture, among other art forms.
Cuban-born New Orleans artist Luis Cruz Azaceta creates monumental assemblages of barricades and photo constructions of urban blight, representing both hope and decay within American culture.
Like many painters of his time, Francisco Bernard spent the winters in New Orleans and traveled as an itinerant portrait painter during the summer.
The festival celebrates southwest Louisiana’s connections to the francophone world.
The Singer Submarine Company operated a naval yard on the banks of Cross Bayou that built five Confederate submarines, four of which were sunk before seeing combat.
Natchitoches’s savory hand pies are filled with a mixture of ground pork and beef in a seasoned gravy.
One of the worst environmental disasters in US history
The Grand 16 Theater Shooting was a 2015 mass shooting in Lafayette that left three dead and injured nine, catapulting the city into a national discussion about gun control.
Louisiana hurricanes have played an essential role in the state’s history from colonization through the present and are as memorable as the places and people they impact.
Located along the Mississippi River in southeast Louisiana, Cancer Alley is home to the highest concentration of heavy industry in the United States, with residents reporting high rates of cancer, heart disease, respiratory illnesses, and autoimmune disease.
A rainy weekend in August 2016 unexpectedly left behind more than three times the amount of rain dropped by Hurricane Katrina, damaging 146,000 homes in fifty-six of Louisiana’s sixty-four parishes.
Declared locally extinct in 1963, the brown pelican population rebounded in the state due to efforts by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
All Saints Day or All Hallows Day is a Catholic tradition honoring the saints and also deceased family members each November 1.
The Campeche chair, a leather or caned sling seat supported by a non-folding cross-frame, was in widespread use in the United States and New Spain in the first half of the nineteenth century.
At Boat Blessings, a Catholic priest blesses a community’s shrimp boats before the start of shrimp season
Beignets, or pockets of fried dough served with powdered sugar, are an iconic New Orleans treat.
An unofficial cultural ambassador for Louisiana beginning in the 1970s, Paul Prudhomme was a Cajun chef, restauranteur, author, television star, and entrepreneur.
Traditionally served on Mondays in New Orleans, red beans and rice is an economical dish that has become a staple throughout Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.
Located in Iberia Parish, Avery Island, the largest of five salt domes along the Louisiana coast, is the home of the McIlhenny Company, maker of Tabasco brand products for more than 140 years.
A portion of Louisiana was once the western extremity of colonial Florida
Mandeville was founded in 1834, occupying part of what was formerly the sugar plantation of Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville in Louisiana.
The Neutral Strip existed outside the governance of either the United States or Spain until 1821.
The Natchitoches settlement, founded in 1714, is the oldest in the Louisiana Territory.
Manuel Luis Gayoso served as governor of the Spanish colonies of Louisiana and West Florida from 1797 until his death in 1799.
Following World War II, many Indigenous Louisianans joined regional and national efforts to promote tribal sovereignty, economic justice, and educational equality.
The French Civil Code of 1804 standardized civil law in France, becoming a model legal framework for jurisdictions around the world, including Louisiana.
Dave Treen served as governor of Louisiana from 1980 to 1984, losing his bid for a second term to Edwin Edwards in 1983.
Explorer, astronomer, and administrator Antonio de Ulloa was the first Spanish governor of Louisiana, serving from 1766 to 1768.
Probably best known today for being the only African American to serve as governor of a southern state during Reconstruction, P. B. S. Pinchback was a politician of enormous talent and remarkable longevity.
The Thibodaux Massacre was the resulting violence of a three-week strike in the sugar-producing region of Lafourche, Terrebonne, St. Mary, and Iberia parishes.
French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, is perhaps best known for giving the region and ultimately the state its name: Louisiana.
Clara Solomon is best known for her diary, which chronicles her experiences in New Orleans during the Civil War.
Wilmer Mills was a poet deeply rooted in the rural Protestant culture of the Plains, an area located between St. Francisville and Baton Rouge.
New Orleans born writer Shirley Ann Grau is noted for her depictions of southern landscapes and Louisiana folkways in her fiction.
Representations of Louisiana’s Creole population are as varied and complex as the definition of the term itself.
Known as “Kid” all her life to her family and re-named “Memphis Minnie” by the recording industry, New Orleans native Lizzie Douglas was a prominent and pioneering guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, and blues recording artist.
Jazz historian Dick Allen was instrumental in the founding of the William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane and was a curator of the archive from 1958 to 1980.
Blind since his birth in New Orleans, Henry Butler transcended life in the public housing projects to earn advanced music degrees and become a respected pianist and vocalist.
The rhythm and blues (R&B) music heritage in Louisiana includes a wide variety of styles, beginning in the 1940s and continuing until today.
The term "Creole" has long generated confusion and controversy. The word invites debate because it possesses several meanings, some of which concern the innately sensitive subjects of race and ethnicity.
Alexandre de Batz created the earliest known images of Native Americans in the lower Mississippi valley from sketches he rendered while surveying Louisiana in the eighteenth century.
Following World War II, many Indigenous Louisianans joined regional and national efforts to promote tribal sovereignty, economic justice, and educational equality.
Cajuns are the descendants of Acadian exiles from what are now the maritime provinces of Canada–Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island–who migrated to southern Louisiana.
The Cypress Grove Cemetery in New Orleans has a monumental entrance gate suggesting a triumphal passage from one world to the next.
One of the first Black Protestant churches in Louisiana, Wesley Chapel played pivotal roles in social and political movements, from teaching freed Black women to read after the Civil War to engaging in the civil rights movement.
A round, braided cake consumed during the Carnival season across Louisiana, especially in New Orleans.
St. Mark's Community Center, a settlement house run by Methodist deaconesses, opened its doors in New Orleans in 1909 and continues to operate today.
During the nineteenth century, cholera epidemics caused tens of thousands of deaths throughout the state of Louisiana.
The gradual loss of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands is a slow-moving disaster largely set in motion by a series of human interventions in natural processes.
Woody Gagliano sounded the alarm on Louisiana’s coastal land loss crisis and worked with his colleagues for decades to remedy the problem.
Louisiana hurricanes have played an essential role in the state’s history from colonization through the present and are as memorable as the places and people they impact.
John Franks dominated the sport of horse racing for over twenty years and became one of the leading stable owners and breeders in the country.
New Orleans's Linda Tuero was a collegiate and professional tennis champion in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
New Orleans’s basketball team is named for Louisiana’s state bird, the brown pelican.
Willie Pastrano made his professional boxing debut in 1951 after lying about his age to secure a license.
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