Archaeology
Evans Culture
This entry covers the prehistoric Evans culture during the Middle Archaic Period, 6000–2000 BCE.
Archaeology
Archaeology Index
Archaeology
Archaeology of the New Orleans Area
In New Orleans archaeological explorations span 2,500 years of history
Archaeology
LSU Campus Mounds
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.
Archaeology
Troyville Culture
Dating to the Late Woodland Period, from 400 to 700 CE, the Troyville Culture is named for an archaeological site in Catahoula Parish.
Architecture
Architecture IndexArchitecture
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.
Architecture
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.
Architecture
Richard Koch
Louisiana architect and preservationist Richard Koch worked with the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in the state during the Great Depression.
Architecture
Old Arsenal Museum
The Old Arsenal was constructed in 1838 for the Baton Rouge military post, the main ordinance depot for the southwestern United States.
Art
Art IndexArt
Raymond Sedatol
A native of the Atchafalaya Basin, master boat builder Raymond Sedatol constructed traditional watercraft such as pirogues and rowing skiffs in the manner of his Cajun ancestors.
Art
Luis Cruz Azaceta
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.
Art
Francois Jacques Fleischbein
Though he painted a variety of subjects, German-born painter François Jacques Fleischbein is best known as portraitist who worked in New Orleans between 1834 and 1868.
Art
Eugene Delcroix
New Orleans photographer Eugene Delcroix's work ranges from studio portraiture to scenes of murky cypress swamps and French Quarter ironwork.
Business & Industry
Business & Industry IndexBusiness & Industry
Higgins Industries
During World War II, Higgins Industries designed 92 percent of US Navy vessels, the majority of which were produced by workers in New Orleans.
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
Rayne, Frog Capital
Rayne, a city in Acadia Parish, is nicknamed the “Frog Capital of the World” for its history as a former titan in the bullfrog exporting industry.
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.
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
Nutria in Louisiana
Imported in the early twentieth century for their fur, nutria have exploded into an invasive species that contributes to coastal erosion.
Disasters
Hurricane Andrew
After wreaking havoc on Florida, Hurricane Andrew made landfall in Louisiana and caused widespread devastation.
Disasters
Grabow Riot (Massacre)
Labor union meeting results in death and arrest of timber workers.
Folklife
Folklife IndexFolklife
Darryl Reeves
Darryl Reeves is a master blacksmith who hand-forges decorative and functional ironwork for many of New Orleans' historic homes and public buildings.
Folklife
Marc Savoy
Marc Savoy is a Cajun folklorist, musician, and master accordion maker in Eunice.
Folklife
Creole Folktales
Many Louisiana Creole folktales represent a convergence of African and European culture.
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.
Foodways
Foodways IndexFoodways
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
Zwolle Tamales
Zwolle tamales, a popular food from northwest Louisiana’s Sabine Parish, trace their origin to the region’s Indigenous cultures.
Foodways
Crawfish Étouffée
One of Louisiana’s renowned dishes, crawfish étouffée is typically comprised of crawfish cooked in its own juices with other seasonings and served over rice.
Foodways
Crawfish Boils
Crawfish boils are a springtime ritual in Louisiana.
Geography
Geography IndexGeography
Florida Parishes of Louisiana
A portion of Louisiana was once the western extremity of colonial Florida
Geography
Sherwood “Woody” Gagliano
Woody Gagliano sounded the alarm on Louisiana’s coastal land loss crisis and worked with his colleagues for decades to remedy the problem.
Geography
Red River Raft
The Great Raft was a thousand-year-old logjam in the Red River that prevented transportation downriver to New Orleans.
Geography
Neutral Strip
The Neutral Strip existed outside the governance of either the United States or Spain until 1821.
Government, Politics & Law
Government, Politics & Law IndexGovernment, Politics & Law
Jean Jacques Blaise d'Abbadie
Jean Jacques Blaise D'Abbadie, an experienced naval officer and administrator, was one of three officials that Louis XV sent to govern French Colonial Louisiana in 1763.
Government, Politics & Law
Jean-François-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny
Dumont de Montigny is best remembered for writing a colorful, suspenseful, and often humorous memoir about his experience as an officer, farmer, and explorer in eighteenth-century French colonial Louisiana.
Government, Politics & Law
Clay Shaw
Clay Shaw is the only person tried on charges related to an alleged conspiracy in the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Government, Politics & Law
Coartación
Coartación was a legal framework during Spanish colonial rule in Louisiana that allowed enslaved people to purchase their freedom.
History
History IndexHistory
Ozeme Carriere
Ozeme Carriere led one thousand guerilla fighters, including enslaved people and free people of color, in resisting the Confederate draft.
History
Oramel Simpson
Former Louisiana senator Oramel Simpson became the state's governor following the death of Henry Fuqua in 1926.
History
Delphine Lalaurie
Delphine Macarty Lalaurie, of antebellum New Orleans, was notorious for the cruel treatment the people she enslaved.
History
Great American Steamboat Race
A river race aimed to raise spirits in the war-battered South
Literature
Literature IndexLiterature
Local Color Fiction
Local color fiction was a literature genre popular with American readers between 1870 and 1900.
Literature
James Lee Burke
James Lee Burke is the author of detective fiction set in Louisiana.
Literature
Dorothy Dix
Dorothy Dix, the pseudonym of Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, was a writer and immensely popular advice columnist in the early twentieth century.
Literature
Creole Literature
Few other movements in the American literary scene evoke exotic images rivaling those conjured by Louisiana's Creole writers.
Music
Music IndexMusic
Liberty Theatre
The historic theater in Eunice entertained generations as a movie theater, vaudeville house, and home of Rendez-vous des Cajuns.
Music
Joe James
From 1925 until his death in 1964, Joe James was the regular pianist in Kid Thomas’s 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
Winnsboro Easter Rock
Held on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, this women-led vigil includes counterclockwise percussive foot movement and call-and-response singing.
Peoples of Louisiana
Peoples of Louisiana IndexPeoples of Louisiana
Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb
The Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb is Louisiana’s second-largest tribe, with more than seven thousand enrolled citizens.
Peoples of Louisiana
Italians
Between 1880 and 1914, New Orleans was a principal port of entry for Italians migrating to the United States.
Peoples of Louisiana
Ishak Indigenous People
The Ishak are an Indigenous people who have lived in southwest Louisiana and southeastern Texas since precolonial times.
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.
Religion & Spirituality
Religion & Spirituality IndexReligion & 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.
Religion & Spirituality
St. Mark's Community Center
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.
Religion & Spirituality
St. Joseph Altars
Catholic Louisianans of Sicilian descent erect altars laden with fresh produce, baked goods, and other foods to honor Saint Joseph.
Religion & Spirituality
St. Louis Cemeteries No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3
Established in 1789, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is the oldest cemetery in the city of New Orleans.
Science & Technology
Science & Technology IndexScience & 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.
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 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
Coastal Restoration
For a state experiencing land loss at an alarming rate, coastal restoration has become an urgent need.
Sports & Recreation
Sports & Recreation IndexSports & Recreation
Vida Blue
Louisiana pitcher Vida Blue became an award-winning baseball player for the Oakland Athletics.
Sports & Recreation
Ron Guidry
Louisiana native Ron Guidry's performance with the New York Yankees in the 1978 season stands decades later as one of the greatest pitching achievements in modern baseball history.
Sports & Recreation
Ham Richardson
Ham Richardson was one of the top-rated mens tennis players in the world in the 1950s.
Sports & Recreation
Linda Tuero
New Orleans's Linda Tuero was a collegiate and professional tennis champion in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
