Archaeology
Poverty Point Culture
This entry covers prehistoric Poverty Point culture during the Late Archaic period, 2000–800 BCE.
Archaeology
Archaeology Index
Archaeology
Tchefuncte Site
An archaeological site on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain helps researchers understand Tchefuncte culture from 600 to 200 BCE
Archaeology
Tchefuncte Culture
Tchefuncte culture flourished in Louisiana during the Early Woodland Period from 800 BCE to 1 CE.
Archaeology
Coles Creek Culture
Once covering most of Louisiana, the Coles Creek culture is known for its distinctive ceremonial mound sites.
Architecture
Architecture IndexArchitecture
Poplar Grove Plantation
The Poplar Grove Plantation house was originally built for the 1884 World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans before being transported on a barge to Port Allen.
Architecture
St. Louis Cathedral
Since 1850, the St. Louis Cathedral’s impressive three-steeple facade has become the city’s most recognizable building.
Architecture
Hotel Bentley
For the first sixty years of its existence, the Hotel Bentley was the social hub of Alexandria.
Architecture
Bloom's Arcade
Bloom's Arcade, one of Louisiana's first shopping centers, was built in Tallulah in 1930 and served as a centerpiece of the Madison Parish town’s business district for half a century.
Art
Art IndexArt
Greg Guirard
Greg Guirard's best known photographs capture the stillness of Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin, its plant and animal residents, and the character and activity of its human population.
Art
Thomas Addison Richards
Artist and travel writer Thomas Addison Richards captured unique natural features of the South, depicting the region's lofty river banks, picturesque live oaks, and lush cypress-filled swampland.
Art
James Michalopoulos
Artist James Michalopoulos's distinctive paintings of New Orleans houses and cultural icons are internationally recognized.
Art
Sister Gertrude Morgan
In 1939 Sister Gertrude Morgan moved to New Orleans, where she became a missionary and street evangelist. Music, poetry, and art were the primary tools of her ministry.
Business & Industry
Business & Industry IndexBusiness & Industry
New Orleans Tribune
America’s first Black daily newspaper, the New Orleans Tribune served as an organizing tool for Black activists as they campaigned for rights for men of African descent with an emphasis on building solidarity with the formerly enslaved.
Business & Industry
Paul Trévigne
Paul Trévigne, a free man of color, was an editor, teacher, and orator who advocated for civil rights in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Business & Industry
Festival International de Louisiane
The festival celebrates southwest Louisiana’s connections to the francophone world.
Business & Industry
Plantation Slavery in Antebellum Louisiana
Enslaved people endured brutal conditions on sugarcane and cotton plantations during the antebellum period.
Disasters
Disasters IndexDisasters
Lake Peigneur Drilling Accident
An oil drilling operation at Lake Peigneur accidentally punctured a salt dome, creating a sinkhole that swallowed barges and caused the Delcambre Canal to flow backwards.
Disasters
Yellow Fever in Louisiana
The last known epidemic of yellow fever in the United States occurred in Louisiana in 1905. Due to the intensity and frequency of these epidemics, it was often referred to as the "saffron scourge."
Disasters
Up Stairs Lounge Fire
The act of arson at the Up Stairs Lounge, a gay bar in the French Quarter, was the deadliest fire on record in New Orleans history and the largest mass killing of queer citizens in twentieth-century America.
Disasters
Hurricane Rita
Making landfall in Cameron Parish on September 24, 2005, Hurricane Rita was the fourth-most-intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded.
Folklife
Folklife IndexFolklife
Courir de Mardi Gras
The courir de Mardi Gras is the rural celebration of Mardi Gras in Louisiana, usually held in Cajun communities
Folklife
Baby Dolls
The Baby Dolls were one of the first women's street masking groups in the United States. The practice continues today as a living legacy.
Folklife
All Saints Day
All Saints Day or All Hallows Day is a Catholic tradition honoring the saints and also deceased family members each November 1.
Folklife
Lagniappe
"Lagniappe" is a vernacular word used in New Orleans to refer to a complimentary giveaway in a retail environment.
Foodways
Foodways IndexFoodways
Avery Island
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.
Foodways
Tabasco Sauce
Tabasco is a popular brand of pepper sauce products and related items manufactured by McIlhenny Company, a privately held, family-owned business headquartered on Avery Island, Louisiana.
Foodways
Réveillon
Rooted in nineteenth-century Creole traditions, the réveillon has experienced a modern-day remaking in New Orleans restaurants.
Foodways
Crawfish Boils
Crawfish boils are a springtime ritual in Louisiana.
Geography
Geography IndexGeography
Freeman and Custis Red River Expedition
An American effort to explore the Louisiana Purchase territory was hindered by a log jam on the Red River and two hundred Spanish troops.
Geography
Fontainebleau State Park
The Fontainebleau State Park bears the name of Bernard de Marigny's sugar plantation, which formerly occupied this site and was itself named after the estate of the French king Francois I.
Geography
Mandeville
Mandeville was founded in 1834, occupying part of what was formerly the sugar plantation of Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville in Louisiana.
Geography
Slidell
Surveyed and platted in 1883 for the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad, Slidell was named for John Slidell, Confederate ambassador to France and U.S. congressman.
Government, Politics & Law
Government, Politics & Law IndexGovernment, Politics & Law
Edward Douglas White Sr.
Sugar planter Edward White, a member of the Whig party, served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and as governor of Louisiana from 1835 until 1839.
Government, Politics & Law
Coastal Land Loss
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.
Government, Politics & Law
Bourbon Louisiana
The policies and ambitions of Bourbon Democrats dominated Louisiana's political and social life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Government, Politics & Law
John Bel Edwards
John Bel Edwards served as a Democratic governor of Louisiana from 2016 to 2024.
History
History IndexHistory
Mile Branch Settlement
Structures typical of Washington Parish's early rural homesteads were added to the parish's fairgrounds in 1976.
History
Grace King
New Orleans novelist and historian Grace King made the city and state of her birth an abiding theme in her work.
History
St. Francis Cabrini Church
Badly damaged by the levee failure following Hurricane Katrina, St. Francis Cabrini Church was demolished despite the efforts of preservation advocates.
History
Juan San Maló
Juan San Maló (Jean St. Malo) was the leader of a group of self-liberated formerly enslaved people who founded their own maroon resistance community in the bayous and wetlands southeast of New Orleans, in present-day St. Bernard Parish.
Literature
Literature IndexLiterature
Les Cenelles
Les Cenelles is a groundbreaking collection of original French poems published by a group of free men of color in nineteenth-century Louisiana.
Literature
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson first arrived in New Orleans in 1922 and quickly became the charismatic center of the arts scene now known as the French Quarter Renaissance.
Literature
The Double Dealer
A New Orleans-based literary journal, The Double Dealer was published over a period of five and a half years, between January 1921 and May 1926.
Literature
Rachel O'Connor
A pioneer planter in what is now West Feliciana Parish, Rachel O'Connor wrote more than one hundred letters describing antebellum plantation life in southern Louisiana.
Music
Music IndexMusic
Albert Warner
Albert Warner is best remembered as a traditional jazz and brass band trombone player from New Orleans.
Music
Kid Howard
Avery “Kid” Howard began his musical career in New Orleans, performing with the Eureka Brass Band and the Tuxedo Brass Band before going on to lead his own group, the Kid Howard Brass Band.
Music
Congo Square
Congo Square, now Armstrong Park in New Orleans’s Tremé neighborhood, served as a gathering ground for Africans in the early years of the city.
Music
Blues Music
Of the 119 musicians inducted into the national Blues Hall of Fame, roughly twenty percent are from Louisiana.
Peoples of Louisiana
Peoples of Louisiana IndexPeoples of Louisiana
Vietnamese
Vietnamese Americans are one of the newest major ethnic groups in Louisiana
Peoples of Louisiana
Caddo Nation
Caddo people began to inhabit the Red River valley approximately 2,500 years ago.
Peoples of Louisiana
Irish in New Orleans
The influence of Irish immigrants in New Orleans can still be seen in the Irish Channel neighborhood, St. Patrick's Day celebrations and churches such as St. Alphonsus.
Peoples of Louisiana
Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana
The Chitimacha Tribe is the only federally recognized tribe in Louisiana to still occupy part of its ancestral territory.
Religion & Spirituality
Religion & Spirituality IndexReligion & Spirituality
White Gospel Music
White gospel music, also known as Southern gospel, represents a widespread aspect of US culture.
Religion & Spirituality
Cercle Harmonique
Members of the Cercle Harmonique held séances and received messages from the spirit world in support of Black rights and social equality.
Religion & Spirituality
Wesley Chapel
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.
Religion & Spirituality
Sister Helen Prejean
Sister Helen Prejean is an anti-death penalty advocate in New Orleans and the author of "Dead Man Walking."
Science & Technology
Science & Technology IndexScience & Technology
Cholera in Louisiana
During the nineteenth century, cholera epidemics caused tens of thousands of deaths throughout the state of Louisiana.
Science & Technology
Freeman and Custis Red River Expedition
An American effort to explore the Louisiana Purchase territory was hindered by a log jam on the Red River and two hundred Spanish troops.
Science & Technology
Coastal Restoration
For a state experiencing land loss at an alarming rate, coastal restoration has become an urgent need.
Science & Technology
World War II Industrialization in Louisiana
The United States’ entry into World War II spurred Louisiana’s recovery from the economic doldrums of the Great Depression.
Sports & Recreation
Sports & Recreation IndexSports & Recreation
Joe Brown
Boxer Joe Brown made his professional debut at age seventeen at the Victory Arena in New Orleans.
Sports & Recreation
Ted Lyons
Vinton native Ted Lyons pitched the most winning games in Chicago White Sox history and earned induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Sports & Recreation
Pelican Bowl
The creators of the Pelican Bowl had high hopes that the event would become a holiday season college football tradition, but poor attendance and the lack of a television broadcast deal led to its swift demise.
Sports & Recreation
Eddie G. Robinson
With over four hundred wins, Coach Eddie G. Robinson led the Grambling State University Tigers for more than fifty years and is one of the most successful coaches in college football history.
