Archaeology
Marksville Culture
This entry covers the prehistoric Marksville Culture during the Middle Woodland Period, 1–400 CE.
Archaeology
Archaeology Index
Archaeology
Watson Brake Archaeological Site
Watson Brake is a prehistoric Evans culture site in Ouachita Parish dating to 3500–2800 BCE.
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.
Archaeology
Evans Culture
This entry covers the prehistoric Evans culture during the Middle Archaic Period, 6000–2000 BCE.
Architecture
Architecture IndexArchitecture
St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church
The design of the picturesque St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Grand Coteau has been attributed to James Freret on the basis of drawings he made in 1875.
Architecture
Curtis and Davis Architects
The architectural firm Curtis and Davis designed the Superdome, Rivergate, and other notable buildings in New Orleans and throughout the state.
Architecture
Pontalba Buildings
Baroness Pontalba's buildings on Jackson Square changed the haphazard design into a viable public area.
Architecture
Grace Episcopal Church
Organized in 1827, Grace Church serves Louisiana's second oldest Episcopal parish.
Art
Art IndexArt
Dom Gregory de Wit
In 1946, Benedictine artist Dom Gregory de Wit began working on his brilliantly colored, large scale murals for the St. Joseph Abbey near Covington, Louisiana.
Art
Charles Woodward Hutson
Charles Woodward Hutson, at the time of his retirement, had trained as a lawyer, served as a Confederate soldier, a university professor, and was a critically acclaimed artist.
Art
Kevin Levine
Captain Kevin Levine, a Mississippi River Branch Pilot, has made a second career as photographing the ships and maritime structures that are integral to his work environment.
Art
Samuel Blessing
Of the hundreds of photographers in New Orleans during the second half of the nineteenth century, Samuel T. Blessing stands out for his longevity, production, and business acumen.
Business & Industry
Business & Industry IndexBusiness & Industry
Festival International de Louisiane
The festival celebrates southwest Louisiana’s connections to the francophone world.
Business & Industry
Freeman & Harris Café
Freeman & Harris Café was a Black-owned restaurant that served as a pillar of Black social, cultural, and political life in Shreveport.
Business & Industry
Belle Isle Salt Mine Collapse
Once one of the most productive salt mines in the country, the Belle Isle Salt Mine was the site of numerous deadly accidents.
Business & 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.
Disasters
Disasters IndexDisasters
Mechanics’ Institute Massacre of 1866
Following the Civil War, an attempt to amend the state’s constitution to grant Black men the vote provoked a deadly reaction from white supremacists, sparking national outrage and significant reforms.
Disasters
Hurricane Ike
Hurricane Ike’s size and timing was a sobering reminder that Louisiana was underprepared for another storm on the scale of Hurricane Katrina.
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
George Prince Ferry Disaster
The 1976 George Prince ferry disaster between Destrehan and Luling was the deadliest ferry disaster in US history and a touchstone for a new set of safety protocols for ferry travel.
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
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
Chitimacha Baskets
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.
Foodways
Foodways IndexFoodways
King Cake
A round, braided cake consumed during the Carnival season across Louisiana, especially in New Orleans.
Foodways
Muffuletta Sandwich
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.
Foodways
Freeman & Harris Café
Freeman & Harris Café was a Black-owned restaurant that served as a pillar of Black social, cultural, and political life in Shreveport.
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.
Geography
Geography IndexGeography
Florida Parishes of Louisiana
A portion of Louisiana was once the western extremity of colonial Florida
Geography
Neutral Strip
The Neutral Strip existed outside the governance of either the United States or Spain until 1821.
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
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.
Government, Politics & Law
Government, Politics & Law IndexGovernment, Politics & Law
Alvin King
Alvin King served as governor of Louisiana for five months during a political power struggle between Huey P. Long and Lieutenant Governor Paul Cyr.
Government, Politics & Law
Battle of Lake Pontchartrain
The Battle of Lake Pontchartrain took place during the American Revolutionary War and ended British control of inland lakes and waterways near Spanish New Orleans.
Government, Politics & Law
Opelousas Massacre of 1868
The deadliest episode of Reconstruction-era racial violence, the Opelousas Massacre of 1868 left more than two hundred Black people dead and established a near century-long precedent of Black voter suppression in St. Landry Parish.
Government, Politics & Law
Bobby Jindal
Bobby Jindal, the fifty-fifth governor of Louisiana, served from 2008 to 2016.
History
History IndexHistory
William Charles Cole Claiborne
William Charles Cole Claiborne was the first territorial and state governor of Louisiana in its transitional years from the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 to statehood in 1812.
History
Women in Colonial Louisiana
Women constituted a valuable asset in colonial Louisiana.
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
Slaughterhouse Case
The US Supreme Court ruling in the Slaughterhouse Case was the first interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment by the high court and resulted in diminished civil rights protection for citizens.
Literature
Literature IndexLiterature
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.
Literature
Caroline Dormon
Caroline Dormon made monumental contributions to the conservation of Louisiana's natural and cultural resources. A passion for native plants and old-growth forests, coupled with a strong feeling of kinship with Native Americans, shaped Dormon's life and work.
Literature
Cookbooks
Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, several Louisiana cookbooks collected the diverse cooking styles of Creole New Orleanians. Crescent City cookbooks continued to represent Louisiana throughout the next century.
Literature
Native American Literature in Louisiana
Native American culture has influenced Louisiana for at least six thousand years. Today, Louisiana is home to four federally-recognized tribes: Chitimacha, Tunica-Biloxi, Coushatta, and the Jena Band of Choctaw.
Music
Music IndexMusic
Preservation Hall
New Orleans's Preservation Hall is a traditional jazz music venue in the French Quarter and the historic center of a worldwide revival of traditional New Orleans jazz.
Music
Louis Gallaud
Louis Gallaud, a pianist from the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans, is known for the memorable recordings he made with Punch Miller.
Music
The Residents
The Residents are an anonymous experimental art collective encompassing a music group, art project, theater troupe, and social experiment that evades genre classification.
Music
Louis Prima
Louis Prima was an Italian American composer, singer, trumpet player and bandleader from New Orleans.
Peoples of Louisiana
Peoples of Louisiana IndexPeoples of Louisiana
Native American Civil Rights Movement in Louisiana
Following World War II, many Indigenous Louisianans joined regional and national efforts to promote tribal sovereignty, economic justice, and educational equality.
Peoples of Louisiana
Alexandre de Batz
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.
Peoples of Louisiana
Les Petites Nations
Approximately forty ethnically and politically distinct North American Indigenous polities located in the Gulf Coast region and lower Mississippi River valley made up les petites nations.
Peoples of Louisiana
Father Paul Du Ru
A Jesuit priest was the first to establish Catholic missions among the Indigenous peoples of the Gulf South.
Religion & Spirituality
Religion & Spirituality IndexReligion & Spirituality
Marie Tranchepain
Marie Tranchepain was the first Mother Superior of New Orleans’s Ursulines and an early female diarist.
Religion & Spirituality
Ascension of Our Lord Catholic Church Cemetery
This Catholic cemetery in Donaldsonville was laid out in a grid plan shortly after the church parish was founded in 1772.
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
Judaism in Louisiana
Jewish people have greatly contributed to Louisiana’s culture and economy as philanthropists, civic and educational leaders, business owners, and art patrons.
Science & Technology
Science & Technology IndexScience & 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
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.
Science & Technology
Cholera in Louisiana
During the nineteenth century, cholera epidemics caused tens of thousands of deaths throughout the state of Louisiana.
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
John Dane III
Louisianan John Dane III is a competitive sailor who has won championships at the helm of numerous sailing vessels.
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
Bill Russell
Born in Monroe, Bill Russell was the first African American coach in the NBA and a vocal member of the civil rights movement.
Sports & Recreation
J. D. Mooney
Jockey J. D. Mooney was the son of a riverboat captain and horse breeder from New Orleans.