Archaeology
Marksville Culture
This entry covers the prehistoric Marksville Culture during the Middle Woodland Period, 1–400 CE.
This entry covers the prehistoric Marksville Culture during the Middle Woodland Period, 1–400 CE.
The history of the fort, mission, and settlement of Los Adaes reflects both intercolonial rivalry and cooperation among the Spanish, French, and Native Americans who lived along the border of New Spain and French Louisiana.
The Mississippian culture spanned from roughly 1050 to 1700 CE
Archaeologists at sites across Louisiana help fill in the written record through physical excavations of the past.
As one of the most prominent Mississippi River plantation owners of colonial Louisiana, Jean Noel Destrehan built a prosperous farming operation around the stately River Road manor that still bears his family name.
The antebellum Magnolia Mound plantation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana was constructed in the 1790s.
Since 1850, the St. Louis Cathedral’s impressive three-steeple facade has become the city’s most recognizable building.
The National Archives of France in Paris is an important resource for scholars of early Louisiana architecture.
For three decades, photographer Matt Anderson has focused his camera on New Orleans's musicians, cultural events, and the performing arts.
George Dunbar has been a major figure in New Orleans contemporary art for more than five decades.
Jim Blanchard has created a body of art that records the architectural masterpieces of Louisiana's previous centuries through pieces he calls "architectural archival watercolors."
James "J. P." Scott was a Louisiana folk artist who spent much of his life working on construction sites and fishing boats in the bayous around New Orleans. He is best known for his elaborate boats made from found objects, including Mardi Gras beads, toys, and seashells.
An unofficial cultural ambassador for Louisiana beginning in the 1970s, Paul Prudhomme was a Cajun chef, restauranteur, author, television star, and entrepreneur.
The United States’ entry into World War II spurred Louisiana’s recovery from the economic doldrums of the Great Depression.
The South’s first Black newspaper, L’Union was an abolitionist journal that promoted full citizenship rights for men of African descent.
Enslaved people endured brutal conditions on sugarcane and cotton plantations during the antebellum period.
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.
Once one of the most productive salt mines in the country, the Belle Isle Salt Mine was the site of numerous deadly accidents.
One of the worst environmental disasters in US history
The Westwego explosion ranks among the worst industrial disasters in modern Louisiana history and the deadliest disaster to date in the nation’s grain industry.
Since the mid-twentieth century, LGBTQ+ residents of Louisiana have contributed unique traditions to Mardi Gras celebrations.
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.
John Avery Lomax was a folklorist and musicologist who, with his son Alan Lomax, made the first recording of the Louisiana blues guitarist Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly) at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
The courir de Mardi Gras is the rural celebration of Mardi Gras in Louisiana, usually held in Cajun communities
Creole cream cheese is a silky, slightly tart cheese used in sweet and savory dishes throughout Louisiana.
Fried rice cakes known as calas were once ubiquitous among New Orleans street vendors.
Gumbo is a thick soup that could be considered the signature dish of South Louisiana.
Popularized in the late 1950s, stuffed shrimp is a signature dish of Shreveport.
The Natchitoches settlement, founded in 1714, is the oldest in the Louisiana Territory.
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.
The Neutral Strip existed outside the governance of either the United States or Spain until 1821.
The origins of the notorious adult playground
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.
The post-Civil War period in US history is known as the Reconstruction era, when the former Confederacy was brought back into the Union.
Indigenous people were enslaved alongside enslaved African people as domestic and agricultural laborers, guides, interpreters, hunters, sexual companions, and wives in colonial Louisiana.
Caesar Carpentier “C. C.” Antoine served as lieutenant governor of Louisiana from 1873 to 1877, one of only three individuals of African descent to hold the office during Reconstruction.
Woody Gagliano sounded the alarm on Louisiana’s coastal land loss crisis and worked with his colleagues for decades to remedy the problem.
The filles à la cassette (translated in English as “casket girls”) is the name given to French girls brought to Louisiana beginning in 1721 to marry colonists already living in the colony.
Freeman & Harris Café was a Black-owned restaurant that served as a pillar of Black social, cultural, and political life in Shreveport.
During World War II, central Louisiana became the site of training maneuvers to prepare the United States Army to engage in Germany’s new blitzkrieg-style warfare.
Walker Percy incorporated the culture and traditions of Louisiana in particular, and the South in general, into his literary work.
Southwestern humor is a literary genre that flourished in the southeastern United States between 1830 and 1865.
Eliza Jane Nicholson was the first woman publisher of a major daily newspaper in the United States. She was also a published poet, writing under the pen name Pearl Rivers.
Rebecca Wells is a novelist, actress, and playwright from central Louisiana.
Louisiana-born guitarist and singer George "Buddy" Guy is the major link to the electric Chicago blues sound of the 1950s and 1960s.
Jazz pianist Dolly Adams was a respected musician and band leader in New Orleans from the 1920s through the 1970s.
Frank Amacker, nicknamed “Dude,” was not only a gifted jazz musician, but also an impeccable dresser.
Louisiana has boasted a rich classical music traditional since early European exploration and settlement.
Free people of color constituted a diverse segment of Louisiana’s population and included people that were born free or enslaved, were of African or mixed racial ancestry, and were French- or English-speaking
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.
The Ishak are an Indigenous people who have lived in southwest Louisiana and southeastern Texas since precolonial times.
The Jena Band of Choctaw Indians is one of four Louisiana tribes recognized by the federal government and one of fifteen recognized by the state.
Thousands of New Orleans’s eighteenth-century residents are interred at the site of the St. Peter Street Cemetery in the French Quarter.
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.
White gospel music, also known as Southern gospel, represents a widespread aspect of US culture.
The Cypress Grove Cemetery in New Orleans has a monumental entrance gate suggesting a triumphal passage from one world to the next.
Woody Gagliano sounded the alarm on Louisiana’s coastal land loss crisis and worked with his colleagues for decades to remedy the problem.
The United States’ entry into World War II spurred Louisiana’s recovery from the economic doldrums of the Great Depression.
An American effort to explore the Louisiana Purchase territory was hindered by a log jam on the Red River and two hundred Spanish troops.
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.
Louisiana pitcher Vida Blue became an award-winning baseball player for the Oakland Athletics.
Louisiana' Tony Canzoneri secured his place among the boxing elite when he became the second fighter in history to win world championships in three different weight classes.
Will Clark hit a home run in his first major league at bat off a pitch from future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan.
Toby Hart brought New Orleans its first professional sports franchise in 1887.
One-Year Subscription (4 issues) : $25.00
Two-Year Subscription (8 issues) : $40.00