Archaeology
Tchefuncte Site
An archaeological site on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain helps researchers understand Tchefuncte culture from 600 to 200 BCE
Archaeology
Archaeology Index
Archaeology
Caddo Culture
This entry covers prehistoric Caddo culture during the Late Woodland and Mississippi Periods, 900–1700 CE.
Archaeology
Plaquemine Culture
This entry covers the Plaquemine culture in the Lower Mississippi River Valley during the Mississippi period, 1200 to 1700 CE
Archaeology
Poverty Point
Poverty Point in Louisiana, one of the most significant archaeological sites in in the world, dates to 3,500 years and represents the largest, most complex settlement of its kind in North America.
Architecture
Architecture IndexArchitecture
Centenary State Historic Site
The Centenary State Historic Site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
Architecture
Weiss, Dreyfous and Seiferth
The architectural firm of Weiss, Dreyfous and Seiferth is best known for designing public buildings in the 1930s, many of which were commissioned by Governor Huey Long.
Architecture
L'Hermitage Plantation
L'Hermitage Plantation in Darrow, Louisiana, stands as a nearly 200 year-old classical revival style home.
Architecture
Camp Ruston
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.
Art
Art IndexArt
E. J. Bellocq
Photographer E. J. Bellocq gained fame after his death for his portraits of prostitutes in Storyville.
Art
Jeffrey Cook
New Orleans artist Jeffrey Cook toured the world in his twenties as a dancer before returning to the city to focus on creating sculpture from cast-off materials.
Art
Marshall Joseph Smith Jr.
Marshall Joseph Smith, Jr., a landscape and genre painter, is also credited as the founder the carnival organization Proteus, for which he designed parades and tableaux.
Art
George L. Viavant
George Viavant was widely acclaimed for his specialty in nature morte paintings, a style which boomed in popularity nationwide in the late nineteenth century.
Business & Industry
Business & Industry IndexBusiness & Industry
Samuel Zemurray
Samuel Zemurray was key to creating a global banana industry that generated great wealth, often at the expense of Latin American laborers, democracy, and economic development.
Business & Industry
Coastal Restoration
For a state experiencing land loss at an alarming rate, coastal restoration has become an urgent need.
Business & Industry
Louisiana Film Industry
An early participant in the industrialization of film exhibition, distribution, and production, Louisiana adopted the moniker “Hollywood South” in the early twenty-first century.
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.
Disasters
Disasters IndexDisasters
Cholera in Louisiana
During the nineteenth century, cholera epidemics caused tens of thousands of deaths throughout the state of Louisiana.
Disasters
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in Louisiana and the subsequent levee failures resulted in one of the worst disasters in United States history.
Disasters
Hurricanes in Louisiana
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.
Disasters
Hurricane Camille
Hurricane Camille struck coastal Mississippi in mid-August of 1969, marking the first designated Category 5 storm and one of Louisiana’s most storied tropical weather events.
Folklife
Folklife IndexFolklife
Accordion Making
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.
Folklife
Legend of Evangeline
The legend of a displaced Acadian couple, Evangeline has played an important role in Louisiana history and culture despite its fictional nature.
Folklife
Traiteurs
Healers draw on a folk tradition that dates to the eighteenth century and includes Creole, Native American, Cajun, and European influences.
Folklife
Native American Basketry
A hallmark of southeastern Indian societies, cane basketry traditions persist in fewer than ten contemporary tribal communities in the southeastern United States, including three in Louisiana.
Foodways
Foodways IndexFoodways
St. Joseph Altars
Catholic Louisianans of Sicilian descent erect altars laden with fresh produce, baked goods, and other foods to honor Saint Joseph.
Foodways
Lucky Dogs
The wiener-shaped Lucky Dog hot dog pushcarts in New Orleans’s French Quarter were the inspiration for the fictional Paradise Vendors in John Kennedy Toole's novel “A Confederacy of Dunces.”
Foodways
Po-Boy Sandwich
The so-called poor boy (po-boy) sandwich originated from the Martin Brothers' French Market Restaurant and Coffee Stand in New Orleans during the 1929 streetcar strike.
Foodways
Bread Pudding
Stale loaves of bread get a sweet rebirth in this popular baked dessert.
Geography
Geography IndexGeography
Red River Raft
The Great Raft was a thousand-year-old logjam in the Red River that prevented transportation downriver to New Orleans.
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
Bayou Teche
Before railroads and highways, Bayou Teche served as an important transportation route deep into the fertile interior of south-central 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
Oliver O. Provosty
Oliver O. Provosty served as the chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1922.
Government, Politics & Law
Charles A. O'Niell
Charles A. O'Niell served as the chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court from 1922 to 1949.
Government, Politics & Law
Joseph A. Breaux
Joseph A. Breaux served as the chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court from 1904 to 1914.
Government, Politics & Law
John B. Fournet
John B. Fournet served as the chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court from 1949 to 1970.
History
History IndexHistory
Jim Crow & Segregation
In the late nineteenth century, the implementation of Jim Crow—or racial segregation—laws institutionalized white supremacy and Black inferiority throughout the South.
History
Marie Baude
Baude was a free African woman who traveled from Senegambia to Louisiana in the eighteenth century.
History
Henry Miller Shreve
Henry Miller Shreve—the namesake of Shreveport—is most remembered for removing the Red River Raft.
History
Willie Rainach
Politician Willie Rainach was one of Louisiana's most vigorous opponents of desegregation.
Literature
Literature IndexLiterature
French Quarter Renaissance
In the 1920s, a bohemian scene emerged in the French Quarter of New Orleans that contributed to its preservation and revitalization as a tourist destination.
Literature
Hamilton Basso
New Orleans-born Hamilton Basso was an influential novelist and journalist, as well as part of the southern literary renaissance.
Literature
Walker Percy
Walker Percy incorporated the culture and traditions of Louisiana in particular, and the South in general, into his literary work.
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.
Music
Music IndexMusic
Professor Longhair
Henry Roeland Byrd, also known as Professor Longhair, was a New Orleans rhythm & blues pianist who came to personify the city's cultural renaissance of the 1970s.
Music
Jimmy Swaggart
Called the "King of Honky Tonk Heaven" by Newsweek in 1982, Ferriday's Jimmy Swaggart was America's most popular televangelist in the 1980s.
Music
Mystikal
Michael "Mystikal"Tyler is one of the best-known rappers from New Orleans. While his early recordings featured agile, rapid-fire vocal performances, his work in the 1990s moved closer to the conventions of the local bounce style, a dance-oriented genre.
Music
Birdman
Bryan "Baby" Williams, more widely known by the stage name Birdman, is a Grammy-nominated rapper, record-label executive and co-founder of the famed New Orleans recording company Cash Money Records.
Peoples of Louisiana
Peoples of Louisiana IndexPeoples of Louisiana
Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana
The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana is the largest of four federally recognized tribal governments in Louisiana.
Peoples of Louisiana
Climate Migration
Climate migration occurs when people move away from home due to extreme environmental conditions worsened or caused by climate change, such as hurricanes, coastal erosion, sea level rise, flooding, and fires.
Peoples of Louisiana
Creoles
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.
Peoples of Louisiana
Quapaw Tribe
The Quapaw Indians, whose four villages were located along the Arkansas River, were military allies and trade partners of colonial Louisianans.
Religion & Spirituality
Religion & Spirituality IndexReligion & Spirituality
King Cake
A round, braided cake consumed during the Carnival season across Louisiana, especially in New Orleans.
Religion & Spirituality
Jimmy Swaggart
Called the "King of Honky Tonk Heaven" by Newsweek in 1982, Ferriday's Jimmy Swaggart was America's most popular televangelist in the 1980s.
Religion & Spirituality
Cypress Grove Cemetery
The Cypress Grove Cemetery in New Orleans has a monumental entrance gate suggesting a triumphal passage from one world to the next.
Religion & Spirituality
St. Peter Street Cemetery
Thousands of New Orleans’s eighteenth-century residents are interred at the site of the St. Peter Street Cemetery in the French Quarter.
Science & Technology
Science & Technology IndexScience & 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 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.
Science & Technology
Flint-Goodridge Hospital
Flint-Goodridge Hospital opened in 1896 to serve New Orleans’s Black community and provide medical training for Black nurses and physicians at a time when other hospitals denied services to Black people.
Science & Technology
Hurricanes in Louisiana
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.
Sports & Recreation
Sports & Recreation IndexSports & Recreation
Emmett Toppino
Martin Emmett Toppino was a champion sprinter from New Orleans who won a gold medal at the 1932 Olympics as a member of the US 400-meter relay team.
Sports & Recreation
Joe Martina
In 1924 New Orleans pitcher Oyster Joe Martina led the Washington Senators baseball team against the New York Giants to win the World Series.
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
Pete Herman
Pete Herman, world champion bantamweight boxer, owned and operated a popular French Quarter bar until his death in 1973.
