Archaeology
Pre-Clovis and Clovis Cultures
This entry covers the Pre-Clovis and Clovis cultures during the Early Paleoindian Period, 11500–9500 BCE, and Middle Paleoindian Period, 9500 BCE–8800 BCE.
This entry covers the Pre-Clovis and Clovis cultures during the Early Paleoindian Period, 11500–9500 BCE, and Middle Paleoindian Period, 9500 BCE–8800 BCE.
Louisiana boasts some of the most significant Native American earthen monuments in North America and ranks second only to Mississippi in the number of mound sites.
The LSU Campus Mounds are two Native American earthworks from the Middle Archaic Period located on the grounds of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
Thousands of New Orleans’s eighteenth-century residents are interred at the site of the St. Peter Street Cemetery in the French Quarter.
Ardoyne is the most elaborate and romantic-looking Gothic Revival residence surviving in Louisiana.
Jean-Hyacinthe Laclotte is best remembered for his painting of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans.
Architect Charles Colbert's contributions to the shaping of mid-Twentieth Century architecture in southern Louisiana are profound.
Once a German social hall in New Orleans, Turners' Hall was purchased in 2000 by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities to serve as the Louisiana Humanities Center.
One of the best-known twentieth-century southern artists, John McCrady studied and worked in New Orleans, where he established an influential art school.
Painter Ann Hornback incorporates dreamlike, surrealistic scenes of nature and animals, usually with a central female figure, into her work.
Well known in for his audaciously decorated home and lawn, David Butler fashioned whimsical, brightly painted assemblages from salvaged roofing tin to become one of the twentieth century's most widely collected self-taught artists.
Julien Hudson was the first professional African American portraitist in the South.
In the early 1900s, the Standard Oil Company of Louisiana built one of the largest refineries in the world in Baton Rouge.
For a state experiencing land loss at an alarming rate, coastal restoration has become an urgent need.
William Haney operated Haney’s Big House, a café, bar, and nightclub that showcased Black artists from across the South.
Fred Carter Jr. was an eclectic master guitarist who played on many important recordings.
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.
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.
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."
During the nineteenth century, cholera epidemics caused tens of thousands of deaths throughout the state of Louisiana.
Marc Savoy is a Cajun folklorist, musician, and master accordion maker in Eunice.
Deeply rooted in the history, spirituality, and daily activities of the Chitimacha people, basketry remains a visible expression of the Chitimacha Indian tribe’s culture and tradition.
Cajun dance halls–salles de danse– are live music venues where dancing, courtship, and community building transpire.
The diatonic button accordion is a prominent and distinguishing feature of Cajun music, first imported to Louisiana from Europe in the late nineteenth century by German Jewish immigrants.
Crawfish boils are a springtime ritual in Louisiana.
The muffuletta–a mammoth sandwich of round sesame bread layered with Genoa salami, ham, mortadella, cheese, and olive salad–is a signature dish of New Orleans.
Once peddled by street vendors who hand shaved large blocks of ice, snoballs remain a favorite frozen summertime treat.
Creole cream cheese is a silky, slightly tart cheese used in sweet and savory dishes throughout Louisiana.
A portion of Louisiana was once the western extremity of colonial Florida
The Neutral Strip existed outside the governance of either the United States or Spain until 1821.
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.
The Great Raft was a thousand-year-old logjam in the Red River that prevented transportation downriver to New Orleans.
During World War II, Allied commanders sent more than twenty thousand prisoners of war to camps in Louisiana.
The Progressive movement that swept across the United States at the turn of the twentieth century brought changes to many of the nation's social and political institutions, including those in Louisiana.
Democrat John Watkins served as a US representative from northwestern Louisiana from 1905 to 1921.
Charles "Buddy" Roemer III served as the governor of Louisiana from 1988 to 1992.
Marie Couvent, also known as Marie Justine Cirnaire, was a wealthy free woman of color in New Orleans who donated property for use as a free school.
Camp Ruston was one of five large internment facilities established in Louisiana to house captured Axis soldiers transported to the United States during World War II.
The praline, a confection made of sugar and nuts, is a representative dish of the Franco- and Afro-Creole Atlantic diasporas.
Enslaved, free Black, and white people planned an insurrection to end slavery in Spanish colonial Louisiana roughly 150 miles north of New Orleans.
New Orleans has been the subject of literature from the colonial period to the present day.
Playwright Tony Kushner, one-time resident of Lake Charles, is the author of prizewinning drama "Angels in America."
The Federal Writers Project in Louisiana produced oral histories, local guidebooks, and other writings between 1935 and 1939.
Arna Wendell Bontemps, a distinguished contributor to the writings of the Harlem Renaissance, was born in Alexandria, Louisiana.
Joseph Butler was a jazz bass player frequently heard at Preservation Hall in New Orleans's French Quarter.
Founded in 1970, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, known as Jazz Fest, draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to experience the music, cuisine, and cultural heritage of Louisiana.
Arguably the most famous Cajun song of all time, "Jolie Blonde" began as a folk melody in French Louisiana.
New Orleans-born trumpeter, composer, and jazz educator Wynton Marsalis is an accomplished musician, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, and internationally acclaimed cultural icon.
Indigenous people were enslaved alongside enslaved African people as domestic and agricultural laborers, guides, interpreters, hunters, sexual companions, and wives in colonial Louisiana.
The Quapaw Indians, whose four villages were located along the Arkansas River, were military allies and trade partners of colonial Louisianans.
The Chitimacha Tribe is the only federally recognized tribe in Louisiana to still occupy part of its ancestral territory.
Following World War II, many Indigenous Louisianans joined regional and national efforts to promote tribal sovereignty, economic justice, and educational equality.
Marie Laveau was a free woman of color born in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Laveau assumed the leadership role of a multiracial religious community for which she gave consultations and held ceremonies. During her time, she was known as "The Priestess of the Voudous"; among many other colorful titles.
Sister Helen Prejean is an anti-death penalty advocate in New Orleans and the author of "Dead Man Walking."
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.
Established in 1789, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is the oldest cemetery in the city of New Orleans.
The United States’ entry into World War II spurred Louisiana’s recovery from the economic doldrums of the Great Depression.
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.
Pete Herman, world champion bantamweight boxer, owned and operated a popular French Quarter bar until his death in 1973.
Ham Richardson was one of the top-rated mens tennis players in the world in the 1950s.
Rodney Milburn was born in Opelousas and competed successfully at Southern University in Baton Rouge before becoming the world’s best high hurdler in the early 1970s.
New Orleans sailing champion Buddy Friedrichs won a gold medal in the 1968 Summer Olympics in the Dragon Class.
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