Louisiana welcome sign at Madison Parish visitor center IMG 7059

Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

in the

Deep South The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and slavery prior to the American Civil War. Following the w ...

and South Central regions of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is bordered by the state of

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by b ...

to the west,

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage la ...

to the north,

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Missis ...

to the east, and the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United St ...

to the south. A large part of its eastern boundary is demarcated by the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

. Louisiana is the only U.S. state with political subdivisions termed

parishes A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

, which are equivalent to counties, making it one of only two U.S. states not subdivided into counties (the other being

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...

and its

boroughs A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle A ...

). The state's capital is

Baton Rouge Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana's most populous parish—the equivalent of counties ...

, and its largest city is

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

multilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Eu ...

heritage, being so strongly influenced by a mixture of 18th century

Louisiana French Louisiana French ( frc, français de la Louisiane; lou, françé la lwizyàn) is an umbrella term for the dialects and varieties of the French language spoken traditionally by French Louisianians in colonial Lower Louisiana. As of today Louisi ...

, Dominican Creole,

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

French Canadian French Canadians (referred to as Canadiens mainly before the twentieth century; french: Canadiens français, ; feminine form: , ), or Franco-Canadians (french: Franco-Canadiens), refers to either an ethnic group who trace their ancestry to Fre ...

, Acadian, Native American, and

West African West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Maurita ...

cultures that they are considered to be exceptional in the U.S. before the American purchase of the territory in 1803, the present–day U.S. state of Louisiana had been both a French colony and a

one. In addition, colonists imported various

peoples as slaves in the 18th century. Many came from peoples of the same region of West Africa, thus concentrating their culture;

Filipinos Filipinos ( tl, Mga Pilipino) are the people who are citizens of or native to the Philippines. The majority of Filipinos today come from various Austronesian ethnolinguistic groups, all typically speaking either Filipino, English and/or other ...

also arrived during colonial Louisiana. In the post–Civil War environment, Anglo Americans increased the pressure for

Anglicization Anglicisation is the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by English culture or British culture, or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-English becomes English. It can also refer to the influen ...

, and in 1921, English was for a time made the sole language of instruction in Louisiana schools before a policy of multilingualism was revived in 1974.Louisiana Official Site on Languages
, accessed August 22, 2016 There has never been an official language in Louisiana, and the state constitution enumerates "the right of the people to preserve, foster, and promote their respective historic, linguistic, and cultural origins." Based on national averages, Louisiana frequently ranks low among the U.S. in terms of health, education, development, and high in measures of poverty. In 2018, Louisiana was ranked as the least healthy state in the country, with high levels of drug-related deaths. It also has had the highest

homicide rate The list of countries by UNODC homicide rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 100,000 individuals per year. A mortality rate of 30 (out of 100,000) in a population of 100,000 would mean 30 deaths per year in that entire population, or ...

in the United States since at least the 1990s.Murder Rates Nationally and By State
. By

Death Penalty Information Center The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) is a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on disseminating studies and reports related to the death penalty. Founded in 1990, DPIC is primarily focused on the application of ...

. Much of the state's lands were formed from

sediment Sediment is a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of wind, water, or ice or by the force of gravity acting on the particles. For example, sand a ...

washed down the

, leaving enormous deltas and vast areas of coastal marsh and

swamp A swamp is a forested wetland.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in ...

. These contain a rich southern biota; typical examples include birds such as

ibis The ibises () (collective plural ibis; classical plurals ibides and ibes) are a group of long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae, that inhabit wetlands, forests and plains. "Ibis" derives from the Latin and Ancient Greek word ...

es and

egret Egrets ( ) are herons, generally long-legged wading birds, that have white or buff plumage, developing fine plumes (usually milky white) during the breeding season. Egrets are not a biologically distinct group from herons and have the same buil ...

s. There are also many species of

tree frog A tree frog (or treefrog) is any species of frog that spends a major portion of its lifespan in trees, known as an arboreal state. Several lineages of frogs among the Neobatrachia have given rise to treefrogs, although they are not closely rela ...

s such as the state recognized American green tree frog and fish such as

sturgeon Sturgeon is the common name for the 27 species of fish belonging to the family Acipenseridae. The earliest sturgeon fossils date to the Late Cretaceous, and are descended from other, earlier acipenseriform fish, which date back to the Early ...

and

paddlefish Paddlefish (family Polyodontidae) are a family of ray-finned fish belonging to order Acipenseriformes, and one of two living groups of the order alongside sturgeons (Acipenseridae). They are distinguished from other fish by their titular elong ...

. In more elevated areas, fire is a natural process in the landscape and has produced extensive areas of

longleaf pine The longleaf pine (''Pinus palustris'') is a pine species native to the Southeastern United States, found along the coastal plain from East Texas to southern Virginia, extending into northern and central Florida. In this area it is also known as ...

forest and wet

savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...

s. These support an exceptionally large number of plant species, including many species of terrestrial

orchid Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant. Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowering ...

s and carnivorous plants. Louisiana has more Native American tribes than any other southern state, including four that are federally recognized, ten that are state recognized, and four that have not received recognition.

Etymology

Louisiana was named after

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Ve ...

, King of France from 1643 to 1715. When

René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (; November 22, 1643 – March 19, 1687), was a 17th-century French explorer and fur trader in North America. He explored the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, the Mississippi River, ...

claimed the territory drained by the

for France, he named it . The suffix –ana (or –ane) is a Latin suffix that can refer to "information relating to a particular individual, subject, or place." Thus, roughly, Louis + ana carries the idea of "related to Louis." Once part of the

French colonial empire The French colonial empire () comprised the overseas colonies, protectorates and mandate territories that came under French rule from the 16th century onward. A distinction is generally made between the "First French Colonial Empire", that existe ...

, the

Louisiana Territory The Territory of Louisiana or Louisiana Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4, 1805, until June 4, 1812, when it was renamed the Missouri Territory. The territory was formed out of th ...

stretched from present–day Mobile Bay to just north of the present–day

Canada–United States border The border between Canada and the United States is the longest international border in the world. The terrestrial boundary (including boundaries in the Great Lakes, Atlantic, and Pacific coasts) is long. The land border has two sections: Can ...

, including a small part of what are now the Canadian

provinces A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outsi ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Terri ...

and

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a province in western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dak ...

History

Pre–colonial history

Watson Brake Aerial Illustration HRoe 2014

The area of Louisiana is the place of origin of the

Mound Builders A number of pre-Columbian cultures are collectively termed "Mound Builders". The term does not refer to a specific people or archaeological culture, but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks erected for an extended period of more than 5 ...

culture during the Middle Archaic period, in the

4th millennium BC The 4th millennium BC spanned the years 4000 BC to 3001 BC. Some of the major changes in human culture during this time included the beginning of the Bronze Age and the invention of writing, which played a major role in starting recorded history. ...

. The sites of Caney and Frenchman's Bend have been securely dated to 5600–5000 BP (about 3700–3100 BC), demonstrating that seasonal hunter-gatherers from around this time organized to build complex earthwork constructions in what is now northern Louisiana. The Watson Brake site near present-day Monroe has an eleven-mound complex, it was built about 5400 BP (3500 BC). These discoveries overturned previous assumptions in archaeology that such complex mounds were built only by cultures of more settled peoples who were dependent on maize cultivation. The Hedgepeth Site in Lincoln Parish is more recent, dated to 5200–4500 BP (3300–2600 BC). Poverty Point Aerial HRoe 2014

Nearly 2,000 years later,

Poverty Point Poverty Point State Historic Site/Poverty Point National Monument (french: Pointe de Pauvreté; 16 WC 5) is a prehistoric earthwork constructed by the Poverty Point culture, located in present-day northeastern Louisiana, though evidence of ...

was built; it is the largest and best-known Late Archaic site in the state. The city of modern–day Epps developed near it. The

Poverty Point culture The Poverty Point culture is the archaeological culture of a prehistoric indigenous peoples who inhabited a portion of North America's lower Mississippi Valley and surrounding Gulf coast from about 1730 – 1350 BC. Archeologists have identified ...

may have reached its peak around 1500 BC, making it the first complex culture, and possibly the first tribal culture in North America. It lasted until approximately 700 BC. The Poverty Point culture was followed by the Tchefuncte and Lake Cormorant cultures of the Tchula period, local manifestations of Early

Woodland period In the classification of archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BCE to European contact in the eastern part of North America, with some archaeolog ...

. The Tchefuncte culture were the first people in the area of Louisiana to make large amounts of pottery. These cultures lasted until AD 200. The Middle Woodland period started in Louisiana with the

Marksville culture The Marksville culture was an archaeological culture in the lower Lower Mississippi valley, Yazoo valley, and Tensas valley areas of present-day Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and extended eastward along the Gulf Coast to the Mobile Bay ar ...

in the southern and eastern part of the state, reaching across the Mississippi River to the east around Natchez, and the

Fourche Maline culture Fourche ( ) is a town in Perry County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 59 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Little Rock–North Little Rock– Conway Metropolitan Statistical Area. Geography Fourche is located at (34.993 ...

in the northwestern part of the state. The Marksville culture was named after the Marksville Prehistoric Indian Site in

Avoyelles Parish Avoyelles (french: Paroisse des Avoyelles) is a parish located in central eastern Louisiana on the Red River where it effectively becomes the Atchafalaya River and meets the Mississippi River. As of the 2010 census, the population was 42,0 ...

These cultures were contemporaneous with the Hopewell cultures of present-day

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

and

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockfo ...

, and participated in the Hopewell Exchange Network. Trade with peoples to the southwest brought the bow and

arrow An arrow is a fin-stabilized projectile launched by a bow. A typical arrow usually consists of a long, stiff, straight shaft with a weighty (and usually sharp and pointed) arrowhead attached to the front end, multiple fin-like stabilizers c ...

. The first burial mounds were built at this time. Political power began to be consolidated, as the first

platform mound Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system o ...

s at ritual centers were constructed for the developing hereditary political and religious leadership. By 400 the

Late Woodland period In the classification of archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BCE to European contact in the eastern part of North America, with some archaeo ...

had begun with the Baytown culture,

Troyville culture The Troyville culture is an archaeological culture in areas of Louisiana and Arkansas in the Lower Mississippi valley in the Southeastern Woodlands. It was a Baytown Period culture and lasted from 400 to 700 CE during the Late Woodland period ...

, and Coastal Troyville during the Baytown period and were succeeded by the

Coles Creek culture Coles Creek culture is a Late Woodland archaeological culture in the Lower Mississippi valley in the Southeastern Woodlands. It followed the Troyville culture. The period marks a significant change in the cultural history of the area. Population ...

s. Where the Baytown peoples built dispersed settlements, the Troyville people instead continued building major earthwork centers. Population increased dramatically and there is strong evidence of a growing cultural and political complexity. Many Coles Creek sites were erected over earlier Woodland period

mortuary A morgue or mortuary (in a hospital or elsewhere) is a place used for the storage of human corpses awaiting identification (ID), removal for autopsy, respectful burial, cremation or other methods of disposal. In modern times, corpses have c ...

mounds. Scholars have speculated that emerging elites were symbolically and physically appropriating dead ancestors to emphasize and project their own authority. The

Mississippian period The Mississippian ( , also known as Lower Carboniferous or Early Carboniferous) is a subperiod in the geologic timescale or a subsystem of the geologic record. It is the earlier of two subperiods of the Carboniferous period lasting from roughly ...

in Louisiana was when the Plaquemine and the

Caddoan Mississippian culture The Caddoan Mississippian culture was a prehistoric Native American culture considered by archaeologists as a variant of the Mississippian culture. The Caddoan Mississippians covered a large territory, including what is now Eastern Oklahoma, Wes ...

s developed, and the peoples adopted extensive maize agriculture, cultivating different strains of the plant by saving seeds, selecting for certain characteristics, etc. The Plaquemine culture in the lower

Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana began in 1200 and continued to about 1600. Examples in Louisiana include the Medora site, the archaeological

type site In archaeology, a type site is the site used to define a particular archaeological culture or other typological unit, which is often named after it. For example, discoveries at La Tène and Hallstatt led scholars to divide the European Iron Age ...

for the culture in West Baton Rouge Parish whose characteristics helped define the culture, the Atchafalaya Basin Mounds in St. Mary Parish, the

Fitzhugh Mounds Fitzhugh Mounds is an archaeological site in Madison Parish, Louisiana from the Plaquemine\ Mississippian period dating to approximately 1200–1541 CE. It is the type site for the ''Fitzhugh Phase(1350-1500)'' of the Tensas Basin Plaquemine Missi ...

in Madison Parish, the Scott Place Mounds in Union Parish, and the

Sims site The Sims site ( 16SC2), also known as Sims Place site, is an archaeological site located in Saint Charles Parish, Louisiana, near the town of Paradis. The location is a multi-component mound and village complex with platform mounds and extensi ...

in St. Charles Parish. Plaquemine culture was contemporaneous with the Middle Mississippian culture that is represented by its largest settlement, the Cahokia site in Illinois east of

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

. At its peak Cahokia is estimated to have had a population of more than 20,000. The Plaquemine culture is considered ancestral to the historic

Natchez Natchez may refer to: Places * Natchez, Alabama, United States * Natchez, Indiana, United States * Natchez, Louisiana, United States * Natchez, Mississippi, a city in southwestern Mississippi, United States * Grand Village of the Natchez, a sit ...

and

Taensa The Taensa (also Taënsas, Tensas, Tensaw, and ''Grands Taensas'' in French) were a Native American people whose settlements at the time of European contact in the late 17th century were located in present-day Tensas Parish, Louisiana. The meani ...

peoples, whose descendants encountered Europeans in the colonial era. By 1000 in the northwestern part of the state, the Fourche Maline culture had evolved into the Caddoan Mississippian culture. The Caddoan Mississippians occupied a large territory, including what is now eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas, northeast

, and northwest Louisiana. Archaeological evidence has demonstrated that the cultural continuity is unbroken from prehistory to the present. The

Caddo The Caddo people comprise the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, a federally recognized tribe headquartered in Binger, Oklahoma. They speak the Caddo language. The Caddo Confederacy was a network of Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands, who ...

and related Caddo-language speakers in prehistoric times and at first European contact were the direct ancestors of the modern

Caddo Nation of Oklahoma The Caddo people comprise the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, a federally recognized tribe headquartered in Binger, Oklahoma. They speak the Caddo language. The Caddo Confederacy was a network of Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands, who ...

of today. Significant Caddoan Mississippian archaeological sites in Louisiana include Belcher Mound Site in

Caddo Parish Caddo Parish ( French: ''Paroisse de Caddo'') is a parish located in the northwest corner of the U.S. state of Louisiana. According to the 2020 U.S. census, the parish had a population of 237,848. The parish seat is Shreveport, which developed ...

and Gahagan Mounds Site in Red River Parish. Many current place names in Louisiana, including Atchafalaya, Natchitouches (now spelled Natchitoches), Caddo, Houma,

Tangipahoa The Tangipahoa were a Native American tribe that lived just north of Lake Pontchartrain and between the Pearl River and the Mississippi River. Etymology The name Tangipahoa is derived from the Muskogean words ''(tonche pahoha)'' which translate ...

, and

Avoyel The Avoyel or Avoyelles were a small Native American tribe who at the time of European contact inhabited land near the mouth of the Red River at its confluence with the Atchafalaya River near present-day Marksville, Louisiana. Also called variou ...

(as Avoyelles), are transliterations of those used in various Native American languages.

Exploration and colonization by Europeans

The first European explorers to visit Louisiana came in 1528 when a Spanish expedition led by

Pánfilo de Narváez Pánfilo de Narváez (; 147?–1528) was a Spanish ''conquistador'' and soldier in the Americas. Born in Spain, he first embarked to Jamaica in 1510 as a soldier. He came to participate in the conquest of Cuba and led an expedition to Camagüe ...

located the mouth of the Mississippi River. In 1542,

Hernando de Soto Hernando de Soto (; ; 1500 – 21 May, 1542) was a Spanish explorer and ''conquistador'' who was involved in expeditions in Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula. He played an important role in Francisco Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Empire ...

's expedition skirted to the north and west of the state (encountering Caddo and Tunica groups) and then followed the Mississippi River down to the

in 1543. Spanish interest in Louisiana faded away for a century and a half. In the late 17th century, French and French Canadian expeditions, which included sovereign, religious and commercial aims, established a foothold on the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. With its first settlements, France laid claim to a vast region of North America and set out to establish a commercial empire and French nation stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. In 1682, the French explorer

Robert Cavelier de La Salle The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, h ...

named the region Louisiana to honor

King Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Ver ...

of France. The first permanent settlement, Fort Maurepas (at what is now

Ocean Springs, Mississippi Ocean Springs is a city in Jackson County, Mississippi, United States, approximately east of Biloxi and west of Gautier. It is part of the Pascagoula, Mississippi Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 17,225 at the 2000 U.S. Census. ...

, near

Biloxi Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in and one of two county seats of Harrison County, Mississippi, United States (the other being the adjacent city of Gulfport). The 2010 United States Census recorded the population as 44,054 and in 2019 the estimated popu ...

), was founded in 1699 by

Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville (16 July 1661 – 9 July 1706) or Sieur d'Iberville was a French soldier, explorer, colonial administrator, and trader. He is noted for founding the colony of Louisiana in New France. He was born in Montreal to French ...

, a French military officer from Canada. By then the French had also built a small fort at the mouth of the Mississippi at a settlement they named La Balise (or La Balize), "seamark" in French. By 1721 they built a wooden lighthouse-type structure here to guide ships on the river. A royal ordinance of 1722—following the Crown's transfer of the

Illinois Country The Illinois Country (french: Pays des Illinois ; , i.e. the Illinois people)—sometimes referred to as Upper Louisiana (french: Haute-Louisiane ; es, Alta Luisiana)—was a vast region of New France claimed in the 1600s in what is n ...

's governance from Canada to Louisiana—may have featured the broadest definition of Louisiana: all land claimed by France south of the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...

between the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...

and the

Alleghenies The Allegheny Mountain Range (; also spelled Alleghany or Allegany), informally the Alleghenies, is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada and posed a significant barrier to land travel in less develo ...

. A generation later, trade conflicts between Canada and Louisiana led to a more defined boundary between the French colonies; in 1745, Louisiana governor general Vaudreuil set the northern and eastern bounds of his domain as the Wabash valley up to the mouth of the Vermilion River (near present-day

Danville, Illinois Danville is a city in and the county seat of Vermilion County, Illinois. As of the 2010 census, its population was 33,027. As of 2019, the population was an estimated 30,479. History The area that is now Danville was once home to the Miami, ...

); from there, northwest to ''le Rocher'' on the

Illinois River The Illinois River ( mia, Inoka Siipiiwi) is a principal tributary of the Mississippi River and is approximately long. Located in the U.S. state of Illinois, it has a drainage basin of . The Illinois River begins at the confluence of the D ...

, and from there west to the mouth of the Rock River (at present day

Rock Island, Illinois Rock Island is a city in and the county seat of Rock Island County, Illinois, United States. The original Rock Island, from which the city name is derived, is now called Arsenal Island. The population was 37,108 at the 2020 census. Located on ...

). Thus,

Vincennes Vincennes (, ) is a commune in the Val-de-Marne department in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. It is next to but does not include the Château de Vincennes and Bois de Vincennes, which are attache ...

and Peoria were the limit of Louisiana's reach; the outposts at

Ouiatenon Ouiatenon ( mia, waayaahtanonki) was a dwelling place of members of the Wea tribe of Native Americans. The name ''Ouiatenon'', also variously given as ''Ouiatanon'', ''Oujatanon'', ''Ouiatano'' or other similar forms, is a French rendering of ...

(on the upper Wabash near present-day

Lafayette, Indiana Lafayette ( , ) is a city in and the county seat of Tippecanoe County, Indiana, United States, located northwest of Indianapolis and southeast of Chicago. West Lafayette, Indiana, West Lafayette, on the other side of the Wabash River, is home t ...

), Chicago, Fort Miamis (near present-day

Fort Wayne, Indiana Fort Wayne is a city in and the county seat of Allen County, Indiana, United States. Located in northeastern Indiana, the city is west of the Ohio border and south of the Michigan border. The city's population was 263,886 as of the 2020 Censu ...

), and

Prairie du Chien Prairie du Chien () is a city in and the county seat of Crawford County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 5,506 at the 2020 census. Its ZIP Code is 53821. Often referred to as Wisconsin's second oldest city, Prairie du Chien was est ...

, Wisconsin, operated as dependencies of Canada. The settlement of Natchitoches (along the Red River in present-day northwest Louisiana) was established in 1714 by

Louis Juchereau de St. Denis Louis Antoine Juchereau de St. Denis (September 17, 1676 – June 11, 1744) was a French-Canadian soldier and explorer best known for his exploration and development of the Louisiana (New France) and Spanish Texas regions. He commanded a small gar ...

, making it the oldest permanent European settlement in the modern state of Louisiana. The French settlement had two purposes: to establish trade with the Spanish in

via the Old San Antonio Road, and to deter Spanish advances into Louisiana. The settlement soon became a flourishing river port and crossroads, giving rise to vast cotton kingdoms along the river that were worked by imported African slaves. Over time, planters developed large plantations and built fine homes in a growing town. This became a pattern repeated in New Orleans and other places, although the commodity crop in the south was primarily sugar cane. Atchafalaya Basin

Louisiana's French settlements contributed to further exploration and outposts, concentrated along the banks of the Mississippi and its major tributaries, from Louisiana to as far north as the region called the

, around present-day

. The latter was settled by French colonists from Illinois. Initially, Mobile and then

served as the capital of La Louisiane. Recognizing the importance of the Mississippi River to trade and military interests, and wanting to protect the capital from severe coastal storms, France developed New Orleans from 1722 as the seat of civilian and military authority south of the Great Lakes. From then until the United States acquired the territory in the

Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase (french: Vente de la Louisiane, translation=Sale of Louisiana) was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, or appr ...

of 1803, France and Spain jockeyed for control of New Orleans and the lands west of the Mississippi. In the 1720s, German immigrants settled along the Mississippi River, in a region referred to as the

German Coast The German Coast (French: ''Côte des Allemands'', Spanish: ''Costa Alemana'', German: ''Deutsche Küste'') was a region of early Louisiana settlement located above New Orleans, and on the west bank of the Mississippi River. Specifically, fro ...

. France ceded most of its territory east of the Mississippi to

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

in 1763, in the aftermath of Britain's victory in the Seven Years' War (generally referred to in North America as the

French and Indian War The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes. At the s ...

). This included the lands along the Gulf Coast and north of Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi River, which became known as British West Florida. The rest of Louisiana west of the Mississippi, as well as the "isle of New Orleans," had become a colony of Spain by the

Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762) The Treaty of Fontainebleau was a secret agreement of 1762 in which the Kingdom of France ceded Louisiana to Spain. The treaty followed the last battle in the French and Indian War in North America, the Battle of Signal Hill in September 1762, ...

. The transfer of power on either side of the river would be delayed until later in the decade. In 1765, during Spanish rule, several thousand Acadians from the French colony of

Acadia Acadia (french: link=no, Acadie) was a colony of New France in northeastern North America which included parts of what are now the Maritime provinces, the Gaspé Peninsula and Maine to the Kennebec River. During much of the 17th and early 18t ...

(now

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Most of the population are native Engl ...

, New Brunswick, and

Prince Edward Island Prince Edward Island (PEI; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is the smallest province in terms of land area and population, but the most densely populated. The island has several nicknames: "Garden of the Gulf", ...

) made their way to Louisiana after having been expelled from Acadia by the British government after the French and Indian War. They settled chiefly in the southwestern Louisiana region now called Acadiana. The governor Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga, eager to gain more settlers, welcomed the Acadians, who became the ancestors of Louisiana's Cajuns. Spanish Canary Islanders, called

Isleños Isleños (Spanish: ) are the inhabitants of the Canary Islands, and by extension the descendants of Canarian settlers and immigrants to present-day Louisiana, Texas, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and other parts of the ...

, emigrated from the Canary Islands of Spain to Louisiana under the Spanish crown between 1778 and 1783. In 1800, France's

Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...

reacquired Louisiana from Spain in the Treaty of San Ildefonso, an arrangement kept secret for two years.

Expansion of slavery

Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville (; ; February 23, 1680 – March 7, 1767), also known as Sieur de Bienville, was a French colonial administrator in New France. Born in Montreal, he was an early governor of French Louisiana, appointed four ...

brought the first two African slaves to Louisiana in 1708, transporting them from a French colony in the West Indies. In 1709, French financier Antoine Crozat obtained a monopoly of commerce in

La Louisiane Louisiana (french: La Louisiane; ''La Louisiane Française'') or French Louisiana was an administrative district of New France. Under French control from 1682 to 1769 and 1801 (nominally) to 1803, the area was named in honor of King Louis XI ...

, which extended from the

to what is now

. According to historian Hugh Thomas, "that concession allowed him to bring in a cargo of blacks from Africa every year". Physical conditions, including disease, were so harsh there was high mortality among both the colonists and the slaves, resulting in continuing demand and importation of slaves. Starting in 1719, traders began to import slaves in higher numbers; two French ships, the ''Du Maine'' and the ''Aurore'', arrived in New Orleans carrying more than 500 black slaves coming from Africa. Previous slaves in Louisiana had been transported from French colonies in the West Indies. By the end of 1721, New Orleans counted 1,256 inhabitants, of whom about half were slaves. In 1724, the French government issued a law called the

Code Noir The (, ''Black code'') was a decree passed by the French King Louis XIV in 1685 defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire. The decree restricted the activities of free people of color, mandated the conversion of all ...

("Black Code" in English) which regulated the interaction of whites (blancs) and blacks (noirs) in its colony of Louisiana (which was much larger than the current state of Louisiana). The law consisted of 57 articles, which regulated religion in the colony, outlawed "interracial" marriages (those between people of different skin color, the varying shades of which were also defined by law), restricted

manumission Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing enslaved people by their enslavers. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that ...

, outlined legal punishment of slaves for various offenses, and defined some obligations of owners to their slaves. The main intent of the French government was to assert control over the slave system of agriculture in Louisiana and to impose restrictions on slaveowners there. In practice, the Code Noir was exceedingly difficult to enforce from afar. Some priests continued to perform interracial marriage ceremonies, for example, and some slaveholders continued to manumit slaves without permission while others punished slaves brutally. Article II of the Code Noir of 1724 required owners to provide their slaves with religious education in the state religion,

Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

. Sunday was to be a day of rest for slaves. On days off, slaves were expected to feed and take care of themselves. During the 1740s economic crisis in the colony, owners had trouble feeding their slaves and themselves. Giving them time off also effectively gave more power to slaves, who started cultivating their own gardens and crafting items for sale as their own property. They began to participate in the economic development of the colony while at the same time increasing independence and self-subsistence. Article VI of the Code Noir forbade mixed marriages, forbade but did little to protect slave women from rape by their owners, overseers or other slaves. On balance, the code benefitted the owners but had more protections and flexibility than did the institution of slavery in the southern

Thirteen Colonies The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies, the Thirteen American Colonies, or later as the United Colonies, were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Founded in the 17th and 18th centuri ...

. The Louisiana Black Code of 1806 made the cruel punishment of slaves a crime, but owners and overseers were seldom prosecuted for such acts. Fugitive slaves, called

maroons Maroons are descendants of Africans in the Americas who escaped from slavery and formed their own settlements. They often mixed with indigenous peoples, eventually evolving into separate creole cultures such as the Garifuna and the Mascogos. ...

, could easily hide in the backcountry of the bayous and survive in small settlements. The word "maroon" comes from the Spanish "cimarron", meaning "fugitive cattle." In the late 18th century, the last Spanish governor of the Louisiana territory wrote: Free Woman of Color with daughter NOLA Collage

Free Woman of Color with daughter NOLA Collage

When the United States purchased Louisiana in 1803, it was soon accepted that enslaved Africans could be brought to Louisiana as easily as they were brought to neighboring

, though it violated U.S. law to do so.Hugh Thomas, ''The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870'', Simon and Schuster, 1997, p. 548. Despite demands by United States Rep.

James Hillhouse James Hillhouse (October 20, 1754 – December 29, 1832) was an American lawyer, real estate developer, and politician from New Haven, Connecticut. He represented the state in both chambers of the US Congress. From February to March 1801, Hill ...

and by the pamphleteer

Thomas Paine Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; – In the contemporary record as noted by Conway, Paine's birth date is given as January 29, 1736–37. Common practice was to use a dash or a slash to separate the old-style year from the new-style year. In th ...

to enforce existing federal law against slavery in the newly acquired territory, slavery prevailed because it was the source of great profits and the lowest-cost labor. At the start of the 19th century, Louisiana was a small producer of sugar with a relatively small number of slaves, compared to

Saint-Domingue Saint-Domingue () was a French colony in the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, in the area of modern-day Haiti, from 1659 to 1804. The name derives from the Spanish main city in the island, Santo Domingo, which came to refe ...

and the West Indies. It soon thereafter became a major sugar producer as new settlers arrived to develop plantations.

William C. C. Claiborne William Charles Cole Claiborne ( 1773–1775 – November 23, 1817) was an American politician, best known as the first non-colonial governor of Louisiana. He also has the distinction of possibly being the youngest member of the United Sta ...

, Louisiana's first United States governor, said African slave labor was needed because white laborers "cannot be had in this unhealthy climate." Hugh Thomas wrote that Claiborne was unable to enforce the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, which the U.S. and Great Britain enacted in 1807. The United States continued to protect the domestic slave trade, including the coastwise trade—the transport of slaves by ship along the Atlantic Coast and to New Orleans and other Gulf ports. By 1840, New Orleans had the biggest slave market in the United States, which contributed greatly to the economy of the city and of the state. New Orleans had become one of the wealthiest cities, and the third largest city, in the nation. The ban on the African slave trade and importation of slaves had increased demand in the domestic market. During the decades after the American Revolutionary War, more than one million enslaved African Americans underwent forced migration from the Upper South to the Deep South, two thirds of them in the slave trade. Others were transported by their owners as slaveholders moved west for new lands. With changing agriculture in the Upper South as planters shifted from tobacco to less labor-intensive mixed agriculture, planters had excess laborers. Many sold slaves to traders to take to the Deep South. Slaves were driven by traders overland from the Upper South or transported to New Orleans and other coastal markets by ship in the

coastwise slave trade The coastwise slave trade existed along the eastern coastal areas of the United States in the antebellum years prior to 1861. Shiploads and boatloads of slaves in the domestic trade were transported from place to place on the waterways. Hundreds of ...

. After sales in New Orleans, steamboats operating on the Mississippi transported slaves upstream to markets or plantation destinations at Natchez and Memphis. Interestingly, for a slave-state, Louisiana harbored escaped Filipino slaves from the

Manila Galleon fil, Galyon ng Maynila , english_name = Manila Galleon , duration = From 1565 to 1815 (250 years) , venue = Between Manila and Acapulco , location = New Spain (Spanish Empire) ...

s. The members of the Filipino community were then commonly referred to as ''Manila men,'' or ''Manilamen,'' and later ''Tagalas'', as they were free when they created the oldest settlement of Asians in the United States in the village of

Saint Malo, Louisiana Saint Malo () was a small fishing village that existed along the shore of Lake Borgne in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana as early as the mid-eighteenth century until it was destroyed by the 1915 New Orleans hurricane. Located along Bayou Saint Malo, ...

, the inhabitants of which, even joined the United States in the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States, United States of America and its Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom ...

against the British Empire while they were being led by the French-American

Jean Lafitte Jean Lafitte ( – ) was a French pirate and privateer who operated in the Gulf of Mexico in the early 19th century. He and his older brother Pierre spelled their last name Laffite, but English language documents of the time used "Lafitte". Th ...

Dominican Creole asylum and influence

Agostino_Brunias_-_The_linen_market_at_Saint-Domingue,_1804

Spanish occupation of Louisiana lasted from 1769 to 1800. Beginning in the 1790s, waves of immigration took place from St. Dominican refugees, following a

slave rebellion A slave rebellion is an armed uprising by enslaved people, as a way of fighting for their freedom. Rebellions of enslaved people have occurred in nearly all societies that practice slavery or have practiced slavery in the past. A desire for freed ...

that started during the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are consider ...

in 1791. Over the next decade, thousands of refugees landed in Louisiana from the island, including Europeans,

Dominican Creoles Saint Dominicans (french: Saint-Domingais), or simply Dominicans (french: Domingais), also known as Saint Dominguans, or Dominguans, are the people who lived in the West Indies, West Indian French colony of Saint-Domingue before the Haitian Revo ...

, and Africans, some of the latter brought in by each free group. They greatly increased the French-speaking population in New Orleans and Louisiana, as well as the number of Africans, and the slaves reinforced African culture in the city.

Anglo-American Anglo-Americans are people who are English-speaking inhabitants of Anglo-America. It typically refers to the nations and ethnic groups in the Americas that speak English as a native language, making up the majority of people in the world who spe ...

officials initially made attempts to keep out the additional

Creoles of color The Creoles of color are a historic ethnic group of Creole people that developed in the former French and Spanish colonies of Louisiana (especially in the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, and Northwestern Florida i.e. Pensacola, Flor ...

, but the

Louisiana Creoles Louisiana Creoles (french: Créoles de la Louisiane, lou, Moun Kréyòl la Lwizyàn, es, Criollos de Luisiana) are people descended from the inhabitants of colonial Louisiana before it became a part of the United States during the period of bo ...

wanted to increase the Creole population: more than half of the St. Dominican refugees eventually settled in Louisiana, and the majority remained in

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Pierre Clément de Laussat (

Governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political r ...

, 1803) said: "Saint-Domingue was, of all our colonies in the Antilles, the one whose mentality and customs influenced Louisiana the most." Anonymous portrait of Jean Lafitte, early 19th century, Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas

Anonymous portrait of Jean Lafitte, early 19th century, Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas

Purchase by the United States

When the United States won its independence from Great Britain in 1783, one of its major concerns was having a European power on its western boundary, and the need for unrestricted access to the Mississippi River. As American settlers pushed west, they found that the

Appalachian Mountains The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. They ...

provided a barrier to shipping goods eastward. The easiest way to ship produce was to use a

flatboat A flatboat (or broadhorn) was a rectangular flat-bottomed boat with square ends used to transport freight and passengers on inland waterways in the United States. The flatboat could be any size, but essentially it was a large, sturdy tub with ...

to float it down the

and Mississippi rivers to the port of New Orleans, where goods could be put on ocean-going vessels. The problem with this route was that the Spanish owned both sides of the Mississippi below

. Napoleon's ambitions in Louisiana involved the creation of a new empire centered on the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean S ...

sugar trade Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double s ...

. By the terms of the

Treaty of Amiens The Treaty of Amiens (french: la paix d'Amiens, ) temporarily ended hostilities between France and the United Kingdom at the end of the War of the Second Coalition. It marked the end of the French Revolutionary Wars; after a short peace it se ...

of 1802, Great Britain returned control of the islands of

Martinique Martinique ( , ; gcf, label=Martinican Creole, Matinik or ; Kalinago language, Kalinago: or ) is an island and an Overseas department and region, overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France. An integral part of ...

and

Guadeloupe Guadeloupe (; ; gcf, label= Antillean Creole, Gwadloup, ) is an archipelago and overseas department and region of France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands—Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, La Désirade, and the t ...

to the French. Napoleon looked upon Louisiana as a depot for these sugar islands, and as a buffer to U.S. settlement. In October 1801 he sent a large military force to take back Saint-Domingue, then under control of Toussaint Louverture after the

Haitian Revolution The Haitian Revolution (french: révolution haïtienne ; ht, revolisyon ayisyen) was a successful insurrection by self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, now the sovereign state of Haiti. The revolt began on 2 ...

. When the army led by Napoleon's brother-in-law Leclerc was defeated, Napoleon decided to sell Louisiana. Louisiane 1800

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...

, third president of the United States, was disturbed by Napoleon's plans to re-establish French colonies in North America. With the possession of New Orleans, Napoleon could close the Mississippi to U.S. commerce at any time. Jefferson authorized Robert R. Livingston, U.S. minister to France, to negotiate for the purchase of the city of New Orleans, portions of the east bank of the Mississippi, and free navigation of the river for U.S. commerce. Livingston was authorized to pay up to $2million. An official transfer of Louisiana to French ownership had not yet taken place, and Napoleon's deal with the Spanish was a poorly kept secret on the frontier. On October 18, 1802, however, Juan Ventura Morales, acting intendant of Louisiana, made public the intention of Spain to revoke the right of deposit at New Orleans for all cargo from the United States. The closure of this vital port to the United States caused anger and consternation. Commerce in the west was virtually blockaded. Historians believe the revocation of the right of deposit was prompted by abuses by the Americans, particularly smuggling, and not by French intrigues as was believed at the time. President Jefferson ignored public pressure for war with France, and appointed

James Monroe James Monroe ( ; April 28, 1758July 4, 1831) was an American statesman, lawyer, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825. A member of the Democratic-Republican Party, Monroe was ...

a special envoy to Napoleon, to assist in obtaining New Orleans for the United States. Jefferson also raised the authorized expenditure to $10million. However, on April 11, 1803, French foreign minister Talleyrand surprised Livingston by asking how much the United States was prepared to pay for the entirety of Louisiana, not just New Orleans and the surrounding area (as Livingston's instructions covered). Monroe agreed with Livingston that Napoleon might withdraw this offer at any time (leaving them with no ability to obtain the desired New Orleans area), and that approval from President Jefferson might take months, so Livingston and Monroe decided to open negotiations immediately. By April 30, they closed a deal for the purchase of the entire Louisiana territory of for sixty million

Francs The franc is any of various units of currency. One franc is typically divided into 100 centimes. The name is said to derive from the Latin inscription ''francorum rex'' (King of the Franks) used on early French coins and until the 18th cent ...

(approximately $15million). Part of this sum, $3.5million, was used to forgive debts owed by France to the United States. The payment was made in United States bonds, which Napoleon sold at face value to the Dutch firm of Hope and Company, and the British banking house of Baring, at a discount of per each $100 unit. As a result, France received only $8,831,250 in cash for Louisiana. English banker Alexander Baring conferred with Marbois in Paris, shuttled to the United States to pick up the bonds, took them to Britain, and returned to France with the money—which Napoleon used to wage war against Baring's own country. Flickr - USCapitol - Louisiana Purchase, 1803

Flickr - USCapitol - Louisiana Purchase, 1803

When news of the purchase reached the United States, Jefferson was surprised. He had authorized the expenditure of $10million for a port city, and instead received treaties committing the government to spend $15million on a land package which would double the size of the country. Jefferson's political opponents in the

Federalist Party The Federalist Party was a conservative political party which was the first political party in the United States. As such, under Alexander Hamilton, it dominated the national government from 1789 to 1801. Defeated by the Jeffersonian Republ ...

argued the Louisiana purchase was a worthless desert, and that the U.S. constitution did not provide for the acquisition of new land or negotiating treaties without the consent of the federal legislature. What really worried the opposition was the new states which would inevitably be carved from the Louisiana territory, strengthening western and southern interests in

U.S. Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washi ...

, and further reducing the influence of New England Federalists in national affairs. President Jefferson was an enthusiastic supporter of westward expansion, and held firm in his support for the treaty. Despite Federalist objections, the

U.S. Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

ratified the Louisiana treaty on October 20, 1803. By statute enacted on October 31, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson was authorized to take possession of the territories ceded by France and provide for initial governance. A transfer ceremony was held in New Orleans on November 29, 1803. Since the Louisiana territory had never officially been turned over to the French, the Spanish took down their flag, and the French raised theirs. The following day, General James Wilkinson accepted possession of New Orleans for the United States. A similar ceremony was held in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which ...

on March 9, 1804, when a French tricolor was raised near the river, replacing the Spanish national flag. The following day,

Captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

Amos Stoddard Amos Stoddard (October 26, 1762 – May 11, 1813) was a career United States Army officer who served in both the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, in which he was mortally wounded. In 1804, Stoddard was the Commandant of the militar ...

of the First U.S. Artillery marched his troops into town and had the American flag run up the fort's flagpole. The Louisiana territory was officially transferred to the United States government, represented by

Meriwether Lewis Meriwether Lewis (August 18, 1774 – October 11, 1809) was an American explorer, soldier, politician, and public administrator, best known for his role as the leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery, with ...

. The Louisiana Territory, purchased for less than three cents an acre, doubled the size of the United States overnight, without a war or the loss of a single American life, and set a precedent for the purchase of territory. It opened the way for the eventual expansion of the United States across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. Shortly after the United States took possession, the area was divided into two territories along the 33rd parallel north on March 26, 1804, thereby organizing the

Territory of Orleans The Territory of Orleans or Orleans Territory was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from October 1, 1804, until April 30, 1812, when it was admitted to the Union as the State of Louisiana. History In 180 ...

to the south and the

District of Louisiana The District of Louisiana, or Louisiana District, was an official and temporary United States government designation for the portion of the Louisiana Purchase that had not been organized into the Territory of Orleans or "Orleans Territory" (the p ...

(subsequently formed as the

) to the north.

Statehood

Louisiana became the eighteenth U.S. state on April 30, 1812; the Territory of Orleans became the State of Louisiana and the Louisiana Territory was simultaneously renamed the

Missouri Territory The Territory of Missouri was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from June 4, 1812, until August 10, 1821. In 1819, the Territory of Arkansas was created from a portion of its southern area. In 1821, a southe ...

. At its creation, the state of Louisiana did not include the area north and east of the Mississippi River known as the

Florida Parishes The Florida Parishes ( es, Parroquias de Florida, french: Paroisses de Floride), on the east side of the Mississippi River—an area also known as the Northshore or Northlake region—are eight parishes in the southeastern portion of the U.S. sta ...

. On April 14, 1812, Congress had authorized Louisiana to expand its borders to include the Florida Parishes, but the border change required approval of the state legislature, which it did not give until August 4. For the roughly three months in between, the northern border of eastern Louisiana was the course of Bayou Manchac and the middle of

Lake Maurepas Lake Maurepas ( ; french: Lac Maurepas) is located in southeastern Louisiana, approximately halfway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, directly west of Lake Pontchartrain. Toponymy Lake Maurepas was named for Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, c ...

and

Lake Pontchartrain Lake Pontchartrain ( ) is an estuary located in southeastern Louisiana in the United States. It covers an area of with an average depth of . Some shipping channels are kept deeper through dredging. It is roughly oval in shape, about from wes ...

. From 1824 to 1861, Louisiana moved from a political system based on personality and ethnicity to a distinct two-party system, with Democrats competing first against Whigs, then

Know Nothing The Know Nothing party was a nativist political party and movement in the United States in the mid-1850s. The party was officially known as the "Native American Party" prior to 1855 and thereafter, it was simply known as the "American Party". ...

s, and finally only other Democrats.

Secession and the Civil War

'Signing the Ordinance of Secession of Louisiana, January 26, 1861', oil on canvas painting by Enoch Wood Perry, Jr

According to the 1860 census, 331,726 people were enslaved, nearly 47% of the state's total population of 708,002. The strong economic interest of elite whites in maintaining the slave society contributed to Louisiana's decision to secede from the Union on January 26, 1861. It followed other U.S. states in seceding after the election of

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation throu ...

as president of the United States. Louisiana's secession was announced on January 26, 1861, and it became part of the Confederate States of America. The state was quickly defeated in the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policie ...

, a result of Union strategy to cut the Confederacy in two by controlling the

. Federal troops captured New Orleans on April 25, 1862. Because a large part of the population had Union sympathies (or compatible commercial interests), the federal government took the unusual step of designating the areas of Louisiana under federal control as a state within the Union, with its own elected representatives to the U.S. Congress.

Post–Civil War to mid–20th century

Following the American Civil War and emancipation of slaves, violence rose in the southern U.S. as the war was carried on by insurgent private and paramilitary groups. During the initial period after the war, there was a massive rise in black participation in terms of voting and holding political office. Louisiana saw the United States' first and second black governors with

Oscar Dunn Oscar James Dunn (1822 – November 22, 1871) served as a Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana during the era of Reconstruction and was the first African American to act as governor of a U.S. state. In 1868, Dunn became the first elected black ...

and P.B.S. Pinchback, both taking the office after serving as Lieutenant Governors (Dunn having been elected to the post of Lieutenant Governor while Pinchback was appointed after being elected as a member of the state Senate and President Pro Tempore of that body), with 125 black members of the state legislature being elected during this time, while Charles E. Nash was elected to represent the state's 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Eventually former Confederates came to dominate the state legislature after the end of

Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Union ...

and federal occupation in the late 1870s, and black codes were implemented to regulate

freedmen A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, enslaved people were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their captor-owners), emancipation (granted freedom a ...

and increasingly restricted the right to vote. They refused to extend voting rights to African Americans who had been free before the war and had sometimes obtained education and property (as in New Orleans). Following the

Memphis riots of 1866 The Memphis massacre of 1866 was a series of violent events that occurred from May 1 to 3, 1866 in Memphis, Tennessee. The racial violence was ignited by political and social racism following the American Civil War, in the early stages of Rec ...

and the

New Orleans riot The New Orleans Massacre of 1866 occurred on July 30, when a peaceful demonstration of mostly Black Freedmen was set upon by a mob of white rioters, many of whom had been soldiers of the recently defeated Confederate States of America, leading ...

the same year, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed that provided suffrage and full citizenship for freedmen. Congress passed the

Reconstruction Act The Reconstruction Acts, or the Military Reconstruction Acts, (March 2, 1867, 14 Stat. 428-430, c.153; March 23, 1867, 15 Stat. 2-5, c.6; July 19, 1867, 15 Stat. 14-16, c.30; and March 11, 1868, 15 Stat. 41, c.25) were four statutes passed duri ...

, establishing military districts for those states where conditions were considered the worst, including Louisiana. It was grouped with

in what was administered as the

Fifth Military District The Fifth Military District of the U.S. Army was one of five temporary administrative units of the U.S. War Department that existed in the American South from 1867 to 1870. The district was stipulated by the Reconstruction Acts during the Reconstru ...

. African Americans began to live as citizens with some measure of equality before the law. Both freedmen and people of color who had been free before the war began to make more advances in education, family stability and jobs. At the same time, there was tremendous social volatility in the aftermath of war, with many whites actively resisting defeat and the free labor market. White

insurgents An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion against authority waged by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irreg ...

mobilized to enforce

white supremacy White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White su ...

, first in

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cath ...

chapters. By 1877, when federal forces were withdrawn, white Democrats in Louisiana and other states had regained control of state legislatures, often by paramilitary groups such as the

White League The White League, also known as the White Man's League, was a white paramilitary terrorist organization started in the Southern United States in 1874 to intimidate freedmen into not voting and prevent Republican Party political organizing. Its ...

, which suppressed black voting through intimidation and violence. Following Mississippi's example in 1890, in 1898, the white Democratic, planter-dominated legislature passed a new constitution that effectively disfranchised people of color by raising barriers to voter registration, such as

poll taxes A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. Head taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments fr ...

, residency requirements and

literacy tests A literacy test assesses a person's literacy skills: their ability to read and write have been administered by various governments, particularly to immigrants. In the United States, between the 1850s and 1960s, literacy tests were administered t ...

. The effect was immediate and long lasting. In 1896, there were 130,334 black voters on the rolls and about the same number of white voters, in proportion to the state population, which was evenly divided. Negro boy sitting on sugarcane truck, Morganza, Louisiana

Negro boy sitting on sugarcane truck, Morganza, Louisiana

The state population in 1900 was 47% African American: a total of 652,013 citizens. Many in New Orleans were descendants of Creoles of color, the sizeable population of free people of color before the Civil War. By 1900, two years after the new constitution, only 5,320 black voters were registered in the state. Because of disfranchisement, by 1910 there were only 730 black voters (less than 0.5 percent of eligible African-American men), despite advances in education and literacy among blacks and people of color. Blacks were excluded from the political system and also unable to serve on juries. White Democrats had established one-party Democratic rule, which they maintained in the state for decades deep into the 20th century until after congressional passage of the 1965

Voting Rights Act The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movem ...

provided federal oversight and enforcement of the constitutional right to vote. CrowleyConcertBand1938RussellLee

In the early decades of the 20th century, thousands of African Americans left Louisiana in the Great Migration north to industrial cities for jobs and education, and to escape Jim Crow society and

lynchings Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...

. The

boll weevil The boll weevil (''Anthonomus grandis'') is a beetle that feeds on cotton buds and flowers. Thought to be native to Central Mexico, it migrated into the United States from Mexico in the late 19th century and had infested all U.S. cotton-growing ...

infestation and agricultural problems cost many sharecroppers and farmers their jobs. The mechanization of agriculture also reduced the need for laborers. Beginning in the 1940s, blacks went west to California for jobs in its expanding defense industries. During some of the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagion ...

, Louisiana was led by Governor

Huey Long Huey Pierce Long Jr. (August 30, 1893September 10, 1935), nicknamed "the Kingfish", was an American politician who served as the 40th governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and as a United States senator from 1932 until his assassination ...

. He was elected to office on populist appeal. His public works projects provided thousands of jobs to people in need, and he supported education and increased suffrage for poor whites, but Long was criticized for his allegedly demagogic and autocratic style. He extended patronage control through every branch of Louisiana's state government. Especially controversial were his plans for wealth redistribution in the state. Long's rule ended abruptly when he was

assassinated Assassination is the murder of a prominent or important person, such as a head of state, head of government, politician, world leader, member of a royal family or CEO. The murder of a celebrity, activist, or artist, though they may not have a ...

in the state capitol in 1935.

Mid–20th century to present

Mobilization for World War II created jobs in the state. But thousands of other workers, black and white alike, migrated to California for better jobs in its burgeoning defense industry. Many African Americans left the state in the

Second Great Migration In the context of the 20th-century history of the United States, the Second Great Migration was the migration of more than 5 million African Americans from the South to the Northeast, Midwest and West. It began in 1940, through World War II, ...

, from the 1940s through the 1960s to escape social oppression and seek better jobs. The mechanization of agriculture in the 1930s had sharply cut the need for laborers. They sought skilled jobs in the defense industry in California, better education for their children, and living in communities where they could vote. On November 26, 1958, at Chennault Air Force Base, a USAF B-47 bomber with a

nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

on board developed a fire while on the ground. The aircraft wreckage and the site of the accident were contaminated after a limited explosion of non-nuclear material. In the 1950s the state created new requirements for a citizenship test for voter registration. Despite opposition by the States' Rights Party (Dixiecrats), downstate black voters had begun to increase their rate of registration, which also reflected the growth of their middle classes. In 1960 the state established the Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission, to investigate civil rights activists and maintain segregation. Despite this, gradually black voter registration and turnout increased to 20% and more, and it was 32% by 1964, when the first national civil rights legislation of the era was passed. The percentage of black voters ranged widely in the state during these years, from 93.8% in

Evangeline Parish Evangeline Parish (french: Paroisse d'Évangéline) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 33,984. The parish seat is Ville Platte. History The parish was created out of lands formerly ...

to 1.7% in Tensas Parish, for instance, where there were intense white efforts to suppress the vote in the black-majority parish.Edward Blum and Abigail Thernstrom, "Executive Summary"
, ''Bullock-Gaddie Expert Report on Louisiana'', February 10, 2006, p.1, American Enterprise Institute, accessed March 19, 2008 Violent attacks on civil rights activists in two mill towns were catalysts to the founding of the first two chapters of the Deacons for Defense and Justice in late 1964 and early 1965, in Jonesboro and Bogalusa, respectively. Made up of veterans of World War II and the

Korean War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Korean War , partof = the Cold War and the Korean conflict , image = Korean War Montage 2.png , image_size = 300px , caption = Clockwise from top:{{ ...

, they were armed self-defense groups established to protect activists and their families. Continued violent white resistance in Bogalusa to blacks trying to use public facilities in 1965, following passage of the

Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requi ...

, caused the federal government to order local police to protect the activists. Other chapters were formed in Mississippi and Alabama. By 1960 the proportion of African Americans in Louisiana had dropped to 32%. The 1,039,207 black citizens were still suppressed by segregation and disfranchisement. African Americans continued to suffer disproportionate discriminatory application of the state's voter registration rules. Because of better opportunities elsewhere, from 1965 to 1970, blacks continued to migrate out of Louisiana, for a net loss of more than 37,000 people. Based on official census figures, the African American population in 1970 stood at 1,085,109, a net gain of more than 46,000 people compared to 1960. During the latter period, some people began to migrate to cities of the

New South New South, New South Democracy or New South Creed is a slogan in the history of the American South first used after the American Civil War. Reformers used it to call for a modernization of society and attitudes, to integrate more fully with th ...

for opportunities. Since that period, blacks entered the political system and began to be elected to office, as well as having other opportunities. On May 21, 1919, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving women full rights to vote, was passed at a national level, and was made the law throughout the United States on August 18, 1920. Louisiana finally ratified the amendment on June 11, 1970. Katrina-new-orleans-flooding3-2005

Due to its location on the Gulf Coast, Louisiana has regularly suffered the effects of tropical storms and damaging hurricanes. On August 29, 2005, New Orleans and many other low-lying parts of the state along the

were hit by the catastrophic

Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the cos ...

. It caused widespread damage due to breaching of levees and large-scale flooding of more than 80% of the city. Officials had issued warnings to evacuate the city and nearby areas, but tens of thousands of people, mostly African Americans, stayed behind, many of them stranded. Many people died and survivors suffered through the damage of the widespread floodwaters. In July 2016 the

shooting of Alton Sterling On July 5, 2016, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was shot and killed by two Baton Rouge Police Department officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The officers, who were attempting to control Sterling's arms, shot Sterling while Sterling a ...

sparked protests throughout the state capital of Baton Rouge. In August 2016, an unnamed storm dumped trillions of gallons of rain on southern Louisiana, including the cities of Denham Springs,

, Gonzales, St. Amant and

Lafayette Lafayette or La Fayette may refer to: People * Lafayette (name), a list of people with the surname Lafayette or La Fayette or the given name Lafayette * House of La Fayette, a French noble family ** Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757� ...

, causing catastrophic flooding. An estimated 110,000 homes were damaged and thousands of residents were displaced. In 2019, three Louisiana black churches were set on fire. The suspect used gasoline, destroying each church completely. Holden Matthews, 21 years old, was charged with the destruction of the churches. The first case of COVID-19 in Louisiana was announced on March 9, 2020. Since the first confirmed case as of October 27, 2020, there had been 180,069 confirmed cases; 5,854 people have died of COVID-19. Louisiana entered phase one of re-opening the state on May 15. On June 4, Governor

John Bel Edwards John Bel Edwards (born September 16, 1966) is an American politician and attorney serving as the 56th governor of Louisiana since 2016. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the Democratic leader of the Louisiana House of R ...

signed an order moving to phase two. Gov. Edwards extended phase two until September 11, and phase three began with speculation on October 9.

Geography

Honey Island Swamp, Louisiana (paulmannix)

Bald Eagle Nest Trail at South Toledo Bend State Park

Louisiana is bordered to the west by

; to the north by

; to the east by

; and to the south by the

. The state may properly be divided into two parts, the uplands of the north (the region of

North Louisiana North Louisiana (french: Louisiane du Nord), also known locally as Sportsman's Paradise, (a name sometimes attributed to the state as a whole) is a region in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The region has two metropolitan areas: Shreveport-Bossier C ...

), and the

alluvial Alluvium (from Latin ''alluvius'', from ''alluere'' 'to wash against') is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. Alluv ...

along the coast (the

Central Louisiana Central Louisiana (Cenla), also known as the Crossroads, is a region of the U.S. state of Louisiana. The largest communities in the region as of the 2010 Census were Alexandria (47,893), Natchitoches (18,323) and Pineville (14,555). Central ...

, Acadiana,

, and

Greater New Orleans The New Orleans metropolitan area, designated the New Orleans–Metairie metropolitan statistical area by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, or simply Greater New Orleans (french: Grande Nouvelle-Orléans, es, Gran Nueva Orleans), is a m ...

regions). The alluvial region includes low swamp lands, coastal marshlands and beaches, and barrier islands that cover about . This area lies principally along the Gulf of Mexico and the

, which traverses the state from north to south for a distance of about and empties into the Gulf of Mexico; also in the state are the Red River; the

Ouachita River The Ouachita River ( ) is a river that runs south and east through the United States, U.S. U.S. state, states of Arkansas and Louisiana, joining the Tensas River to form the Black River (Louisiana), Black River near Jonesville, Louisiana. It ...

and its branches; and other minor streams (some of which are called bayous). The breadth of the alluvial region along the Mississippi is 10–60 miles (15–100 km), and along the other rivers, the alluvial region averages about 10 miles (15 km) across. The Mississippi River flows along a ridge formed by its natural deposits (known as a

levee A levee (), dike (American English), dyke (Commonwealth English), embankment, floodbank, or stop bank is a structure that is usually earthen and that often runs parallel to the course of a river in its floodplain or along low-lying coastlin ...

), from which the lands decline toward a river beyond at an average fall of six feet per mile (3m/km). The alluvial lands along other streams present similar features. The higher and contiguous hill lands of the north and northwestern part of the state have an area of more than . They consist of prairie and woodlands. The elevations above sea level range from 10 feet (3m) at the coast and swamp lands to 50–60 feet (15–18m) at the prairie and alluvial lands. In the uplands and hills, the elevations rise to

Driskill Mountain Driskill Mountain (also referred to as Mount Driskill) is the highest natural summit in Louisiana, with an elevation of above sea level.Heinrich, P. V. (2001)Louisiana Geofacts PDF version, 1.6 MB''Public Information Series'' 6, Louisiana Geol ...

, the highest point in the state only 535 feet (163m) above sea level. From 1932 to 2010 the state lost 1,800 square miles due to rises in sea level and

erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is distin ...

. The Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) spends around $1billion per year to help shore up and protect Louisiana

shore A shore or a shoreline is the fringe of land at the edge of a large body of water, such as an ocean, sea, or lake. In physical oceanography, a shore is the wider fringe that is geologically modified by the action of the body of water pas ...

line and land in both federal and state funding. Besides the waterways named, there are the

Sabine The Sabines (; lat, Sabini; it, Sabini, all exonyms) were an Italic people who lived in the central Apennine Mountains of the ancient Italian Peninsula, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome. The Sabines divi ...

, forming the western boundary; and the

Pearl A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is composed of calcium carb ...

, the eastern boundary; the Calcasieu, the Mermentau, the

Vermilion Vermilion (sometimes vermillion) is a color, color family, and pigment most often made, since antiquity until the 19th century, from the powdered mineral cinnabar (a form of mercury sulfide, which is toxic) and its corresponding color. It is ...

Bayou Teche Bayou Teche (Louisiana French: ''Bayou Têche'') is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed June 20, 2011 waterway of great cultural significance in south central Louisiana in t ...

, the Atchafalaya, the Boeuf, Bayou Lafourche, the Courtableau River, Bayou D'Arbonne, the Macon River, the Tensas,

Amite River The Amite River (french: Rivière Amite) is a tributary of Lake Maurepas in Mississippi and Louisiana in the United States. It is about long. It starts as two forks in southwestern Mississippi and flows south through Louisiana, passing Greater ...

, the Tchefuncte, the Tickfaw, the

Natalbany River The Natalbany River drains into Lake Maurepas in Louisiana in the United States. It is about long.U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 8, 2019 Etymology It is spec ...

, and a number of other smaller streams, constituting a natural system of navigable waterways, aggregating over long. The state also has political jurisdiction over the approximately -wide portion of

subsea Subsea technology involves fully submerged ocean equipment, operations, or applications, especially when some distance offshore, in deep ocean waters, or on the seabed. The term ''subsea'' is frequently used in connection with oceanography, mari ...

land of the inner continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico. Through a peculiarity of the

political geography Political geography is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures. Conventionally, for the purposes of analysis, po ...

of the United States, this is substantially less than the -wide jurisdiction of nearby states Texas and Florida, which, like Louisiana, have extensive Gulf coastlines. The southern coast of Louisiana in the United States is among the fastest-disappearing areas in the world. This has largely resulted from human mismanagement of the coast (see Wetlands of Louisiana). At one time, the land was added to when spring floods from the Mississippi River added sediment and stimulated marsh growth; the land is now shrinking. There are multiple causes. Artificial levees block spring flood water that would bring fresh water and sediment to marshes. Swamps have been extensively logged, leaving canals and ditches that allow salt water to move inland. Canals dug for the oil and gas industry also allow storms to move sea water inland, where it damages swamps and marshes. Rising sea waters have exacerbated the problem. Some researchers estimate that the state is losing a landmass equivalent to 30 football fields every day. There are many proposals to save coastal areas by reducing human damage, including restoring natural floods from the Mississippi. Without such restoration, coastal communities will continue to disappear. And as the communities disappear, more and more people are leaving the region.Tidwell, Michael. ''Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast''. Vintage Departures: New York, 2003 . Since the coastal

wetlands A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free ( anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The ...

support an economically important coastal

fishery Fishery can mean either the enterprise of raising or harvesting fish and other aquatic life; or more commonly, the site where such enterprise takes place ( a.k.a. fishing ground). Commercial fisheries include wild fisheries and fish farms, ...

, the loss of wetlands is adversely affecting this industry. The Gulf of Mexico 'dead zone' off the coast of Louisiana is the largest recurring hypoxic zone in the United States. It was in 2017, the largest ever recorded.

Geology

The Gulf of Mexico did not exist 250 million years ago when there was but one supercontinent,

Pangea Pangaea or Pangea () was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. It assembled from the earlier continental units of Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia during the Carboniferous approximately 335 million y ...

. As Pangea split apart, the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico opened. Louisiana slowly developed, over millions of years, from water into land, and from north to south. The oldest rocks are exposed in the north, in areas such as the

Kisatchie National Forest Kisatchie National Forest, the only National forest in Louisiana, United States, is located in the forested piney hills and hardwood bottoms of seven central and northern parishes. It is part of the Cenozoic uplands (some of Louisiana's olde ...

. The oldest rocks date back to the early

Cenozoic Era The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configurat ...

, some 60 million years ago. The history of the formation of these rocks can be found in D. Spearing's ''Roadside Geology of Louisiana''. The youngest parts of the state were formed during the last 12,000 years as successive deltas of the Mississippi River: the Maringouin, Teche, St. Bernard, Lafourche, the modern Mississippi, and now the Atchafalaya. The sediments were carried from north to south by the Mississippi River. In between the tertiary rocks of the north, and the relatively new sediments along the coast, is a vast belt known as the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

Terraces. Their age and distribution can be largely related to the rise and fall of sea levels during past ice ages. In general, the northern terraces have had sufficient time for rivers to cut deep channels, while the newer terraces tend to be much flatter. Salt domes are also found in Louisiana. Their origin can be traced back to the early

when the shallow ocean had high rates of evaporation. There are several hundred salt domes in the state; one of the most familiar is Avery Island, Louisiana. Salt domes are important not only as a source of salt; they also serve as underground traps for oil and gas.

Climate

Louisiana has a

humid subtropical climate A humid subtropical climate is a zone of climate characterized by hot and humid summers, and cool to mild winters. These climates normally lie on the southeast side of all continents (except Antarctica), generally between latitudes 25° and 40° ...

( Köppen climate classification ''Cfa''), with long, hot, humid summers and short, mild winters. The subtropical characteristics of the state are due to its low latitude, low lying topography, and the influence of the Gulf of Mexico, which at its farthest point is no more than away. Rain is frequent throughout the year, although from April to September is slightly wetter than the rest of the year, which is the state's

wet season The wet season (sometimes called the Rainy season) is the time of year when most of a region's average annual rainfall occurs. It is the time of year where the majority of a country's or region's annual precipitation occurs. Generally, the se ...

. There is a dip in precipitation in October. In summer, thunderstorms build during the heat of the day and bring intense but brief, tropical downpours. In winter, rainfall is more frontal and less intense. Summers in southern Louisiana have high temperatures from June through September averaging or more, and overnight lows averaging above . At times, temperatures in the 90s°F(), combined with dew points in the upper 70s°F(), create sensible temperatures over . The humid, thick, jungle-like heat in southern Louisiana is a famous subject of countless stories and movies. Temperatures are generally warm in the winter in the southern part of the state, with highs around New Orleans, Baton Rouge, the rest of southern Louisiana, and the Gulf of Mexico averaging . The northern part of the state is mildly cool in the winter, with highs averaging . The overnight lows in the winter average well above freezing throughout the state, with the average near the Gulf and an average low of in the winter in the northern part of the state. On occasion, cold fronts from low-pressure centers to the north, reach Louisiana in winter. Low temperatures near occur on occasion in the northern part of the state but rarely do so in the southern part of the state.

Snow Snow comprises individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes. It consists of frozen crystalline water throughout ...

is rare near the Gulf of Mexico, although residents in the northern parts of the state might receive a dusting of snow a few times each decade. Louisiana's highest recorded temperature is in Plain Dealing on August 10, 1936, while the coldest recorded temperature is at Minden on February 13, 1899. Louisiana is often affected by

tropical cyclone A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depend ...

s and is very vulnerable to strikes by major

hurricanes A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depe ...

, particularly the

lowlands Upland and lowland are conditional descriptions of a plain based on elevation above sea level. In studies of the ecology of freshwater rivers, habitats are classified as upland or lowland. Definitions Upland and lowland are portions of p ...

around and in the New Orleans area. The unique geography of the region, with the many bayous, marshes and inlets, can result in water damage across a wide area from major hurricanes. The area is also prone to frequent thunderstorms, especially in the summer. The entire state averages over 60 days of thunderstorms a year, more than any other state except Florida. Louisiana averages 27

tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, althou ...

es annually. The entire state is vulnerable to a tornado strike, with the extreme southern portion of the state slightly less so than the rest of the state. Tornadoes are more common from January to March in the southern part of the state, and from February through March in the northern part of the state.

Publicly owned land

Owing to its location and geology, the state has high biological diversity. Some vital areas, such as southwestern prairie, have experienced a loss in excess of 98 percent. The pine flatwoods are also at great risk, mostly from

fire suppression Wildfire suppression is a range of firefighting tactics used to suppress wildfires. Firefighting efforts in wild land areas require different techniques, equipment, and training from the more familiar structure fire fighting found in populated a ...

and urban sprawl. There is not yet a properly organized system of natural areas to represent and protect Louisiana's biological diversity. Such a system would consist of a protected system of core areas linked by biological corridors, such as Florida is planning. Louisiana contains a number of areas which, to varying degrees, prevent people from using them. In addition to

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propertie ...

areas and a

United States National Forest In the United States, national forest is a classification of protected and managed federal lands. National forests are largely forest and woodland areas owned collectively by the American people through the federal government, and managed by t ...

, Louisiana operates a system of

state parks State parks are parks or other protected areas managed at the sub-national level within those nations which use "state" as a political subdivision. State parks are typically established by a state to preserve a location on account of its natural ...

, state historic sites, one state preservation area, one

state forest A state forest or national forest is a forest that is administered or protected by some agency of a sovereign or federated state, or territory. Background The precise application of the terms vary by jurisdiction. For example: * In Australia, ...

, and many

Wildlife Management Area A Wildlife Management Area (WMA) is a protected area set aside for the conservation of wildlife and for recreational activities involving wildlife. New Zealand There are 11 Wildlife Management Areas in New Zealand: * Horsham Downs Wildlife Man ...

s. One of Louisiana's largest government-owned areas is Kisatchie National Forest. It is some 600,000 acres in area, more than half of which is

flatwoods Flatwoods, pineywoods, pine savannas and longleaf pine-wiregrass ecosystem are terms that refer to an ecological community in the southeastern coastal plain of North America. Flatwoods are an ecosystem maintained by wildfire or prescribed fire a ...

vegetation, which supports many rare plant and animal species. These include the

Louisiana pinesnake The Louisiana pine snake (''Pituophis ruthveni'') is a species of large, non venomous, constrictor in the family Colubridae. This powerful snake is notable because of its large eggs and small clutch sizes. The Louisiana pine snake is indigen ...

and

red-cockaded woodpecker The red-cockaded woodpecker (''Leuconotopicus borealis'') is a woodpecker endemic to the southeastern United States. Description The red-cockaded woodpecker is small to mid-sized species, being intermediate in size between North America's two ...

. The system of government-owned cypress swamps around

is another large area, with southern

wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free ( anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The ...

species including egrets, alligators, and sturgeon. At least 12 core areas would be needed to build a "protected areas system" for the state; these would range from southwestern prairies, to the Pearl River Floodplain in the east, to the Mississippi River alluvial swamps in the north. Additionally, the state operates a system of 22 state parks, 17 state historic sites and one state preservation area; in these lands, Louisiana maintains a diversity of fauna and flora.

National Park Service

Historic or scenic areas managed, protected, or otherwise recognized by the National Park Service include: *

Atchafalaya National Heritage Area Atchafalaya National Heritage Area is a federally designated National Heritage Area encompassing parts of fourteen parishes along the Atchafalaya River in the U.S. State of Louisiana. The heritage area extends the length of the Atchafalaya Bas ...

in Ascension Parish; * Cane River National Heritage Area near Natchitoches; * Cane River Creole National Historical Park near Natchitoches; *

Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve (french: Parc historique national et réserve Jean Lafitte) protects the natural and cultural resources of Louisiana's Mississippi River Delta region. It is named after French pirate Jean Lafitt ...

, headquartered in New Orleans, with units in St. Bernard Parish, Barataria (Crown Point), and Acadiana (Lafayette); * Poverty Point National Monument at Delhi, Louisiana; and * Saline Bayou, a designated

National Wild and Scenic River The National Wild and Scenic Rivers System was created by the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968 (Public Law 90-542), enacted by the U.S. Congress to preserve certain rivers with outstanding natural, cultural, and recreational values in a free- ...

near Winn Parish in northern Louisiana.

U.S. Forest Service

is Louisiana's only national forest. It includes more than 600,000 acres in central and northern Louisiana with large areas of flatwoods and longleaf pine forest.

Major cities

Louisiana contains 308 incorporated municipalities, consisting of four consolidated city-parishes, and 304 cities, towns, and villages. Louisiana's municipalities cover only 7.9% of the state's land mass but are home to 45.3% of its population. The majority of urban Louisianians live along the coast or in northern Louisiana. The oldest permanent settlement in the state is Nachitoches. Baton Rouge, the state capital, is the second-largest city in the state. The most populous city is New Orleans. As defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, Louisiana contains nine metropolitan statistical areas. Major areas include

, Greater Baton Rouge,

, and Shreveport–Bossier City.

Demographics

Louisiana is the second-most populous of the

South Central United States The South Central United States or South Central states is a region in the south central portion of the Southern United States. It evolved out of the Old Southwest, which originally was the western portion of the South. The states of Arkansas, ...

after

. The majority of the state's growing population lives in southern Louisiana, spread throughout

, the

, and Acadiana, while Central and

have been losing population. At the

2020 United States census The United States census of 2020 was the twenty-fourth decennial United States census. Census Day, the reference day used for the census, was April 1, 2020. Other than a pilot study during the 2000 census, this was the first U.S. census to off ...

, Louisiana had an apportioned population of 4,661,468. Its resident population was 4,657,757 as of 2020. The

United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of the ...

estimated that the population of Louisiana was 4,648,794 on July 1, 2019, a 2.55% increase since the

2010 United States census The United States census of 2010 was the twenty-third United States national census. National Census Day, the reference day used for the census, was April 1, 2010. The census was taken via mail-in citizen self-reporting, with enumerators servin ...

. In 2010, the state of Louisiana had a population of 4,533,372, up from 76,556 in

1810 Events January–March * January 1 – Major-General Lachlan Macquarie officially becomes Governor of New South Wales. * January 4 – Australian seal hunter Frederick Hasselborough discovers Campbell Island, in the Subantarctic. * Janu ...

. According to

immigration Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, an ...

statistics in 2018, approximately four percent of Louisianians were immigrants, while another four percent were native-born U.S. citizens with at least one immigrant parent. The majority of Louisianian immigrants came from Mexico (16%), Honduras (15%), Vietnam (10%), the Philippines (5%), and Guatemala (4%). Among the immigrant population in 2014, an estimated 64,500 were undocumented; Louisiana's undocumented immigrant population earned more than a billion U.S. dollars and paid $136million in taxes. The undocumented immigrant population increased to 70,000 in 2016 and comprised two percent of the state population. New Orleans has been defined as a

sanctuary city Sanctuary city (; ) refers to municipal jurisdictions, typically in North America, that limit their cooperation with the national government's effort to enforce immigration law. Leaders of sanctuary cities say they want to reduce fear of depor ...

. The population density of the state is 104.9 people per square mile. The center of population of Louisiana is located in

Pointe Coupee Parish Pointe Coupee Parish ( or ; french: Paroisse de la Pointe-Coupée) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 22,802; in 2020, its population was 20,758. The parish seat is New Roads. Poi ...

, in the city of New Roads. According to the 2010 United States census, 5.4% of the population age5 and older spoke

at home, up from 3.5% in 2000; and 4.5% spoke French (including

and

Louisiana Creole Louisiana Creole ( lou, Kréyòl Lalwizyàn, links=no) is a French-based creole language spoken by fewer than 10,000 people, mostly in the state of Louisiana. It is spoken today by people who may racially identify as White, Black, mixed, and ...

), down from 4.8% in 2000.

Race and ethnicity

Several American Indian tribes such as the Atakapa and

were the primary residents of Louisiana before European colonization, concentrated along the Red River and Gulf of Mexico. At the beginning of French and Spanish colonization of Louisiana,

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...

and black Americans began to move into the area. From French and Spanish rule in Louisiana, they were joined by

and

Germans , native_name_lang = de , region1 = , pop1 = 72,650,269 , region2 = , pop2 = 534,000 , region3 = , pop3 = 157,000 3,322,405 , region4 = , pop4 = ...

, both slave and free, who settled in enclaves within the Greater New Orleans region and Acadiana. By the 19th and 20th centuries, the state's population fluctuated between white and black Americans; 47% of the population was black or African American in 1900. The black or African American population declined following migration to states including New York and California in efforts to flee Jim Crow regulations. At the end of the 20th century, Louisiana's population has experienced diversification again, and its non-Hispanic or non-Latino American white population has been declining. Since 2020, the black or African American population have made up the largest non-white share of youths.

Hispanic and Latino Americans Hispanic and Latino Americans ( es, Estadounidenses hispanos y latinos; pt, Estadunidenses hispânicos e latinos) are Americans of Spaniards, Spanish and/or Latin Americans, Latin American ancestry. More broadly, these demographics include a ...

have also increased as the second-largest racial and ethnic composition in the state, making up nearly 7% of Louisiana's population at the 2020 census. As of 2018, the largest single Hispanic and Latino American ethnicity were

Mexican Americans Mexican Americans ( es, mexicano-estadounidenses, , or ) are Americans of full or partial Mexican heritage. In 2019, Mexican Americans comprised 11.3% of the US population and 61.5% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexic ...

(2.0%), followed by

Puerto Ricans Puerto Ricans ( es, Puertorriqueños; or boricuas) are the people of Puerto Rico, the inhabitants, and citizens of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and their descendants. Overview The culture held in common by most Puerto Ricans is referred t ...

(0.3%) and

Cuban Americans Cuban Americans ( es, cubanoestadounidenses or ''cubanoamericanos'') are Americans who trace their cultural heritage to Cuba regardless of phenotype or ethnic origin. The word may refer to someone born in the United States of Cuban descent or ...

(0.2%). Other Hispanic and Latino Americans altogether made up 2.6% of Louisiana's Hispanic or Latino American population. The

Asian American Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous peopl ...

and

multiracial Mixed race people are people of more than one race or ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed race people in a variety of contexts, including ''multiethnic'', ''polyethnic'', occasionally ''bi-eth ...

communities have also experienced rapid growth, with many of Louisiana's multiracial population identifying as Cajun or

. At the 2019

American Community Survey The American Community Survey (ACS) is a demographics survey program conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. It regularly gathers information previously contained only in the long form of the decennial census, such as ancestry, citizenship, educat ...

, the largest ancestry groups of Louisiana were African American (31.4%), French (9.6%), German (6.2%),

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

(4.6%),

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional It ...

(4.2%), and Scottish (0.9%). African American and French heritage have been dominant since colonial Louisiana. As of 2011, 49.0% of Louisiana's population younger than age1 were minorities.

Religion

As an ethnically and culturally diverse state, pre-colonial, colonial and present-day Louisianians have adhered to a variety of religions and spiritual traditions; pre-colonial and colonial Louisianian peoples practiced various

Native American religions Native American religions are the spiritual practices of the Native Americans in the United States. Ceremonial ways can vary widely and are based on the differing histories and beliefs of individual nations, tribes and bands. Early European ...

alongside Christianity through the establishment of

and French missions; and other faiths including

Haitian Vodou Haitian Vodou is an African diasporic religion that developed in Haiti between the 16th and 19th centuries. It arose through a process of syncretism between several traditional religions of West and Central Africa and Roman Catholicism. There i ...

and

Louisiana Voodoo Louisiana Voodoo (french: Vaudou louisianais, es, Vudú de Luisiana), also known as New Orleans Voodoo, is an African diaspora religions, African diasporic religion which originated in Louisiana, now in the southern United States. It arose thr ...

were introduced to the state and are practiced to the present day. In the colonial and present-day

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sov ...

of Louisiana, Christianity grew to become its most predominant religion, representing 84% of the adult population in 2014 and 76.5% in 2020, during two separate studies by the

Pew Research Center The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan American think tank (referring to itself as a "fact tank") based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the wo ...

and

Public Religion Research Institute The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) is an American nonprofit, nonpartisan research and education organization that conducts public opinion polls on a variety of topics, specializing in the quantitative and qualitative study of politica ...

. Among its Christian population—and in common with other southern U.S. states—the majority, particularly in the north of the state, belong to various Protestant denominations. Protestant Christians made up 57% of the state's adult population at the 2014 Pew Research Center study, and 53% at the 2020 Public Religion Research Institute's study. Protestants are concentrated in North Louisiana, Central Louisiana, and the northern tier of the Florida Parishes. According to the 2014 study, Louisiana's largest Protestant Christian denominations were the

Southern Baptist Convention The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination, and the largest Protestant and second-largest Christian denomination in the United States. The word ...

, National Baptist Convention USA, National Baptist Convention of America,

Progressive National Baptist Convention The Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC), incorporated as the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc., is a mainline predominantly African-American Baptist denomination emphasizing civil rights and social justice. The headquarte ...

, American Baptist Churches USA, non/interdenominational Evangelicals and

mainline Protestant The mainline Protestant churches (also called mainstream Protestant and sometimes oldline Protestant) are a group of Protestant denominations in the United States that contrast in history and practice with evangelical, fundamentalist, and charism ...

s, the Assemblies of God USA,

Church of God in Christ The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) is a Holiness–Pentecostal Christian denomination, and the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States. Although an international and multi-ethnic religious organization, it has a predominantly ...

, African Methodist Episcopal and Christian Methodist Episcopal churches, and the

United Methodist Church The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant denomination based in the United States, and a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a leader in evangelical ...

. According to a prior study by

Association of Religion Data Archives The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) is a free source of online information related to American and international religion. One of the primary goals of the archive is to democratize access to academic information on religion by making th ...

in 2010, the Southern Baptist Convention had 709,650 members, and the United Methodist Church had 146,848; non-denominational Protestant churches had 195,903 members. In another study by the Association of Religion Data Archives in 2020, the Southern Baptists remained the state's largest Protestant denomination (648,734), followed by the United Methodists (128,108); non-denominational Protestants increased to 357,465. National Missionary Baptists reported 67,518 members, and the National Baptist Convention USA had a statewide membership of 61,997, making them the largest historically and predominantly African American church bodies in the state. In this study,

Pentecostals Pentecostalism or classical Pentecostalism is a Protestant Charismatic Christian movement

were the largest Protestant traditions outside of the Baptists and Methodists; the Assemblies of God USA (45,773) was the state's largest Pentecostal body followed by the Church of God in Christ (32,116). The

Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America The Episcopal Church, based in the United States with additional dioceses elsewhere, is a member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It is a mainline Protestant denomination and is divided into nine provinces. The presiding bishop of ...

had 23,922 members, and the remaining largest Protestant denominations were the Churches of Christ (22,833), Progressive National Baptists (22,756), National Baptists of America (22,034), and Full Gospel Baptists (9,772). Because of French and Spanish heritage, and their descendants the Creoles, and later Irish, Italian, Portuguese and German immigrants, southern Louisiana and Greater New Orleans are predominantly Catholic in contrast; according to the 2020 Public Religion Research Institute study, 22% of the adult population were Catholic. Since Creoles were the first settlers, planters and leaders of the territory, they have traditionally been well represented in politics; for instance, most of the early governors were Creole Catholics, instead of Protestants. As Catholics continue to constitute a significant fraction of Louisiana's population, they have continued to be influential in state politics. The high proportion and influence of the Catholic population makes Louisiana distinct among southern states. The

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans ( la, Archidioecesis Novae Aureliae, french: Archidiocèse de la Nouvelle-Orléans, es, Arquidiócesis de Nueva Orleans) is an ecclesiastical division of the Roman Catholic Church spanning Jefferso ...

, Diocese of Baton Rouge, and Diocese of Lafayette in Louisiana are the largest Catholic jurisdictions in the state, located within the Greater New Orleans, Greater Baton Rouge, and Lafayette metropolitan statistical areas.

Outside of

Christendom Christendom historically refers to the Christian states, Christian-majority countries and the countries in which Christianity dominates, prevails,SeMerriam-Webster.com : dictionary, "Christendom"/ref> or is culturally or historically intertwin ...

, Louisiana was among the southern states with a significant Jewish population before the 20th century; Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia also had influential Jewish populations in some of their major cities from the 18th and 19th centuries. The earliest Jewish colonists were

Sephardic Jews Sephardic (or Sephardi) Jews (, ; lad, Djudíos Sefardíes), also ''Sepharadim'' , Modern Hebrew: ''Sfaradim'', Tiberian: Səp̄āraddîm, also , ''Ye'hude Sepharad'', lit. "The Jews of Spain", es, Judíos sefardíes (or ), pt, Judeus sefa ...

who immigrated to the

. Later in the 19th century, German Jews began to immigrate, followed by those from eastern Europe and the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Jewish communities have been established in the state's larger cities, notably New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The most significant of these is the Jewish community of the New Orleans area. In 2000, before the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, its population was about 12,000. Dominant Jewish movements in the state include Orthodox and

Reform Judaism Reform Judaism, also known as Liberal Judaism or Progressive Judaism, is a major Jewish denomination that emphasizes the evolving nature of Judaism, the superiority of its ethical aspects to its ceremonial ones, and belief in a continuous searc ...

; Reform Judaism was the largest Jewish tradition in the state according to the Association of Religion Data Archives in 2020, representing some 5,891 Jews. Prominent Jews in Louisiana's political leadership have included Whig (later Democrat)

Judah P. Benjamin Judah Philip Benjamin, QC (August 6, 1811 – May 6, 1884) was a United States senator from Louisiana, a Cabinet officer of the Confederate States and, after his escape to the United Kingdom at the end of the American Civil War, an English ...

(1811–1884), who represented Louisiana in the

before the American Civil War and then became the Confederate secretary of state; Democrat-turned-Republican

Michael Hahn George Michael Decker Hahn (November 24, 1830 – March 15, 1886), was an attorney, politician, publisher and planter in New Orleans, Louisiana. He served twice in Congress during two widely separated periods, elected first as a Unionist Democ ...

who was elected as governor, serving 1864–1865 when Louisiana was occupied by the Union Army, and later elected in 1884 as a U.S. congressman; Democrat

Adolph Meyer Adolph Meyer (October 19, 1842 – March 8, 1908) was a member of the U. S. House of Representatives representing the state of Louisiana. He served nine terms as a Democrat from 1891 until his death in office in 1908. Biography Meyer was bo ...

(1842–1908),

Confederate Army The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting ...

officer who represented the state in the

U.S. House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...

from 1891 until his death in 1908; Republican secretary of state

Jay Dardenne John Leigh "Jay" Dardenne, Jr. (born February 6, 1954) is an American lawyer and politician from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who is serving as commissioner of administration for Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards. A Republican, Dardenne served as ...

(1954–), and Republican ( Democrat before 2011)

attorney general In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...

Buddy Caldwell James David Caldwell Sr., known as Buddy Caldwell (born May 20, 1946), is an American attorney and politician from the state of Louisiana. He served as Attorney General of Louisiana. Caldwell lost his 2015 reelection bid to Jeff Landry. In 201 ...

(1946–). Other non-Christian and non-Jewish religions with a continuous, historical presence in the state have been

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ...

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...

and Hinduism. In the

Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area The Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area, officially designated Shreveport–Bossier City by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, or simply Greater Shreveport, is a metropolitan statistical area in northwestern Louisiana that covers t ...

, Muslims made up an estimated 14% of Louisiana's total Muslim population as of 2014. In 2020, the Association of Religion Data Archives estimated there were 24,732 Muslims living in the state. The largest Islamic denominations in the major metropolises of Louisiana were

Sunni Islam Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word ''Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagree ...

, non-denominational Islam and Quranism,

Shia Islam Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, most n ...

, and the

Nation of Islam The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political organization founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. A black nationalist organization, the NOI focuses its attention on the African diaspora, especially on African ...

. Among Louisiana's irreligious community, 2% affiliated with

Atheism Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of Deity, deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that ther ...

and 13% claimed no religion as of 2014; an estimated 10% of the state's population practiced nothing in particular at the 2014 study. According to the Public Religion Research Institute in 2020, 19% were religiously unaffiliated.

Economy

MSC Marina docked at Port of New Orleans

Louisiana's population, agricultural products, abundance of oil and natural gas, and southern Louisiana's medical and technology corridors have contributed to its growing and diversifying economy. In 2014, Louisiana was ranked as one of the most small business friendly states, based on a study drawing upon data from more than 12,000 small business owners. The state's principal agricultural products include seafood (it is the biggest producer of

crawfish Crayfish are freshwater crustaceans belonging to the clade Astacidea, which also contains lobsters. In some locations, they are also known as crawfish, craydids, crawdaddies, crawdads, freshwater lobsters, mountain lobsters, rock lobsters, mu ...

in the world, supplying approximately 90%), cotton,

soybean The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean, which has numerous uses. Traditional unfermented food uses of soybeans include soy milk, from which tofu an ...

s, cattle,

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, perennial grass (in the genus '' Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fibrous stalks ...

, poultry and eggs, dairy products, and rice. Among its energy and other industries, chemical products, petroleum and coal products, processed foods, transportation equipment, and paper products have contributed to a significant portion of the state's GSP. Tourism and gaming are also important elements in the economy, especially in Greater New Orleans. The

Port of South Louisiana The Port of South Louisiana (french: Port de la Louisiane du Sud) extends 54 miles (87 km) along the Mississippi River between New Orleans, Louisiana and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, centering approximately at LaPlace, Louisiana, which serves as t ...

, located on the

between New Orleans and

, was the largest volume shipping port in the

Western Hemisphere The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the antimeridian. The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Politically, the term W ...

and 4th largest in the world, as well as the largest

bulk cargo Bulk cargo is commodity cargo that is transported unpackaged in large quantities. Description Bulk cargo refers to material in either liquid or granular, particulate form, as a mass of relatively small solids, such as petroleum/crude oil, ...

port in the U.S. in 2004. The Port of South Louisiana continued to be the busiest port by tonnage in the U.S. through 2018. South Louisiana was number 15 among world ports in 2016. Tabasco-varieties

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Shreveport Shreveport ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the third most populous city in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge, respectively. The Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area, with a population of 393,406 in 2020, is th ...

, and

are home to a thriving film industry. State financial incentives since 2002 and aggressive promotion have given Louisiana the nickname "Hollywood South." Because of its distinctive culture within the United States, only

is Louisiana's rival in popularity as a setting for reality television programs. In late 2007 and early 2008, a film studio was scheduled to open in

Tremé Tremé ( ) is a neighborhood in New Orleans, Louisiana. "Tremé" is often rendered as Treme, and the neighborhood is sometimes called by its more formal French name, Faubourg Tremé; it is listed in the New Orleans City Planning Districts as Tre ...

, with state-of-the-art production facilities, and a film training institute.

Tabasco sauce Tabasco is an American brand of hot sauce made from vinegar, tabasco peppers ('' Capsicum frutescens'' var. ''tabasco''), and salt. It is produced by McIlhenny Company of Avery Island in south Louisiana, having been created over 150 years ago ...

, which is marketed by one of the United States' biggest producers of hot sauce, the McIlhenny Company, originated on Avery Island. From 2010 to 2020, Louisiana's

gross state product Gross regional domestic product (GRDP), gross domestic product of region (GDPR), or gross state product (GSP) is a statistic that measures the size of a region's economy. It is the aggregate of gross value added (GVA) of all resident producer unit ...

increased from $213.6billion to $253.3billion, the 26th highest in the United States at the time. As of 2020, its GSP is greater than the GDPs of

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...

Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = National seal , national_motto = "Firm and Happy f ...

, and

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country ...

. Ranking 41st in the United States with a per capita personal income of $30,952 in 2014, its residents per capita income decreased to $28,662 in 2019. The median household income was $51,073, while the national average was $65,712 at the 2019

. In July 2017, the state's unemployment rate was 5.3%; it decreased to 4.4% in 2019. Louisiana has three personal

income tax An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) in respect of the income or profits earned by them (commonly called taxable income). Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times the taxable income. Tax ...

brackets, ranging from 2% to 6%. The state

sales tax A sales tax is a tax paid to a governing body for the sales of certain goods and services. Usually laws allow the seller to collect funds for the tax from the consumer at the point of purchase. When a tax on goods or services is paid to a govern ...

rate is 4.45%, and

can levy additional sales tax on top of this. The state also has a

use tax A use tax is a type of tax levied in the United States by numerous state governments. It is essentially the same as a sales tax but is applied not where a product or service was sold but where a merchant bought a product or service and then con ...

, which includes 4% to be distributed to local governments. Property taxes are assessed and collected at the local level. Louisiana is a subsidized state, and Louisiana taxpayers receive more federal funding per dollar of federal taxes paid compared to the average state. Per dollar of federal tax collected in 2005, Louisiana citizens received approximately $1.78 in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state fourth highest nationally and represents a rise from 1995 when Louisiana received $1.35 per dollar of taxes in federal spending (ranked seventh nationally). Neighboring states and the amount of federal spending received per dollar of federal tax collected were: Texas ($0.94), Arkansas ($1.41), and Mississippi ($2.02). Federal spending in 2005 and subsequent years since has been exceptionally high due to the recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

Culture

Louisiana is home to many cultures; especially notable are the distinct cultures of the

and

Cajuns The Cajuns (; French: ''les Cadjins'' or ''les Cadiens'' ), also known as Louisiana ''Acadians'' (French: ''les Acadiens''), are a Louisiana French ethnicity mainly found in the U.S. state of Louisiana. While Cajuns are usually described as ...

, descendants of French and Spanish settlers in colonial Louisiana.

African culture

The French colony of ''La Louisiane'' struggled for decades to survive. Conditions were harsh, the climate and soil were unsuitable for certain crops the colonists knew, and they suffered from regional tropical diseases. Both colonists and the slaves they imported had high mortality rates. The settlers kept importing slaves, which resulted in a high proportion of native Africans from West Africa, who continued to practice their culture in new surroundings. As described by historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, they developed a marked Afro-Creole culture in the colonial era. At the turn of the 18th century and in the early 1800s, New Orleans received a major influx of White and mixed-race refugees fleeing the violence of the

, many of whom brought their slaves with them. This added another infusion of African culture to the city, as more slaves in

were from Africa than in the United States. They strongly influenced the African-American culture of the city in terms of dance, music and religious practices.

Creole culture

Creole culture is an amalgamation of French, African, Spanish (and other European), and Native American cultures. Creole comes from the Portuguese word ''crioulo''; originally it referred to a colonist of European (specifically French) descent who was born in the New World, in comparison to immigrants from France. The oldest Louisiana manuscript to use the word "Creole", from 1782, applied it to a slave born in the French colony. But originally it referred more generally to the French colonists born in Louisiana. Over time, there developed in the French colony a relatively large group of

Creoles of Color The Creoles of color are a historic ethnic group of Creole people that developed in the former French and Spanish colonies of Louisiana (especially in the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, and Northwestern Florida i.e. Pensacola, Flor ...

(''gens de couleur libres''), who were primarily descended from African slave women and French men (later other Europeans became part of the mix, as well as some Native Americans). Often the French would free their concubines and

mixed-race Mixed race people are people of more than one race or ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed race people in a variety of contexts, including ''multiethnic'', ''polyethnic'', occasionally ''bi-ethn ...

children, and pass on social capital to them. They might educate sons in France, for instance, and help them enter the French Army for a career. They also settled capital or property on their mistresses and children. The free people of color gained more rights in the colony and sometimes education; they generally spoke French and were Roman Catholic. Many became artisans and property owners. Over time, the term "Creole" became associated with this class of Creoles of color, many of whom achieved freedom long before the American Civil War. Wealthy French Creoles generally maintained town houses in

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Cajuns immigrated mostly from west central France to New France, where they settled in the Atlantic provinces of

New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...

, Nova Scotia and

, known originally as the French colony of

. After the British defeated France in the

(

Seven Years' War The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was a global conflict that involved most of the European Great Powers, and was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Other concurrent conflicts include the French and Indian War (1754– ...

) in 1763, France ceded its territory east of the Mississippi River to Britain. After the Acadians refused to swear an oath of loyalty to the British Crown, they were expelled from Acadia, and made their way to places such as France, Britain, and New England. Other Acadians covertly remained in

British North America British North America comprised the colonial territories of the British Empire in North America from 1783 onwards. English colonisation of North America began in the 16th century in Newfoundland, then further south at Roanoke and Jamestown, ...

or moved to New Spain. Many Acadians settled in southern Louisiana in the region around

and the LaFourche Bayou country. They developed a distinct rural culture there, different from the French Creole colonists of New Orleans. Intermarrying with others in the area, they developed what was called Cajun music, cuisine and culture.

Isleño culture

A third distinct culture in Louisiana is that of the Isleños. Its members are descendants of colonists from the Canary Islands who settled in

Spanish Louisiana Spanish Louisiana ( es, link=no, la Luisiana) was a governorate and administrative district of the Viceroyalty of New Spain from 1762 to 1801 that consisted of a vast territory in the center of North America encompassing the western basin of ...

between 1778 and 1783 and intermarried with other communities such as

Frenchman The French people (french: Français) are an ethnic group and nation primarily located in Western Europe that share a common French culture, history, and language, identified with the country of France. The French people, especially the nati ...

, Acadians, Creoles,

Spaniards Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance ethnic group native to Spain. Within Spain, there are a number of national and regional ethnic identities that reflect the country's complex history, including a number of different languages, both ...

, and other groups, mainly through the 19th and early 20th centuries. In Louisiana, the Isleños originally settled in four communities which included Galveztown, Valenzuela, Barataria, and San Bernardo. Of those settlements, Valenzuela and San Bernardo were the most successful as the other two were plagued with both disease and flooding. The large migration of Acadian refugees to Bayou Lafourche led to the rapid gallicization of the Valenzuela community while the community of San Bernardo ( Saint Bernard) was able to preserve much of its unique culture and language into the 21st century. This being said, the transmission of Spanish and other customs has completely halted in St. Bernard with those having competency in Spanish being octogenarians. Through the centuries, the various Isleño communities of Louisiana have kept alive different elements of their Canary Islander heritage while also adopting and building upon the customs and traditions of the communities that surround them. Today two heritage associates exist for the communities: Los Isleños Heritage and Cultural Society of St. Bernard as well as the Canary Islanders Heritage Society of Louisiana. The Fiesta de los Isleños is celebrated annually in St. Bernard Parish which features heritage performances from local groups and the Canary Islands.

Languages

According to a 2010 study by the Modern Language Association among persons aged five years and older, 91.26% of Louisiana residents speak only English at home, 3.45% speak French (standard French, French Creole, or Cajun French), 3.30% speak Spanish, and 0.59% speak Vietnamese. Historically, Native American peoples in the area at the time of European encounter were seven tribes distinguished by their languages:

, Tunica,

, Houma,

Choctaw The Choctaw (in the Choctaw language, Chahta) are a Native American people originally based in the Southeastern Woodlands, in what is now Alabama and Mississippi. Their Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choctaw people are ...

, Atakapa, and

Chitimacha The Chitimacha ( ; or ) are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans who live in the U.S. state of Louisiana, mainly on their reservation in St. Mary Parish near Charenton on Bayou Teche. They are the only Indigenous people in the s ...

. Other Native American peoples migrated into the region, escaping from European pressure from the east. Among these were the

Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = " Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County , LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham , area_total_km2 = 135,7 ...

, Biloxi, Koasati, and Ofo peoples. Only

Koasati The Coushatta ( cku, Koasati, Kowassaati or Kowassa:ti) are a Muskogean-speaking Native American people now living primarily in the U.S. states of Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. When first encountered by Europeans, they lived in the territo ...

still has native speakers in Louisiana (Choctaw, Alabama and possibly Caddo are still spoken in other states), although several tribes are working to revitalize their languages. Starting in the 1700s, French colonists began to settle along the coast and founded New Orleans. They established French culture and language institutions. They imported thousands of slaves from tribes of West Africa, who spoke several different languages. In the creolization process, the slaves developed a Louisiana Creole dialect incorporating both French and African forms, which colonists adopted to communicate with them, and which persisted beyond slavery. In the 20th century, there were still people of mixed race, particularly, who spoke Louisiana Creole French. During the 19th century after the

by the United States, English gradually gained prominence for business and government due to the shift in population with settlement by numerous Americans who were English speakers. Many ethnic French families continued to use French in private. Slaves and some free people of color also spoke Louisiana Creole French. The State Constitution of 1812 gave English official status in legal proceedings, but use of French remained widespread. Subsequent state constitutions reflect the diminishing importance of French. The 1868 constitution, passed during the

Reconstruction era The Reconstruction era was a period in American history following the American Civil War (1861–1865) and lasting until approximately the Compromise of 1877. During Reconstruction, attempts were made to rebuild the country after the blood ...

before Louisiana was re-admitted to the Union, banned laws requiring the publication of legal proceedings in languages other than English. Subsequently, the legal status of French recovered somewhat, but it never regained its pre-

prominence. Several unique dialects of French, Creole, and English are spoken in Louisiana. Dialects of the French language are:

Colonial French Louisiana French ( frc, français de la Louisiane; lou, françé la lwizyàn) is an umbrella term for the dialects and varieties of the French language spoken traditionally by French Louisianians in colonial Lower Louisiana. As of today Louisi ...

and Houma French.

Louisiana Creole French Louisiana Creole ( lou, Kréyòl Lalwizyàn, links=no) is a French-based creole language spoken by fewer than 10,000 people, mostly in the state of Louisiana. It is spoken today by people who may racially identify as White, Black, mixed, and N ...

is the term for one of the Creole languages. Two unique dialects developed of the English language: Louisiana English, a French-influenced variety of English in which dropping of postvocalic /r/ is common; and what is informally known as

Yat Yat or jat (Ѣ ѣ; italics: ) is the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet and the Rusyn alphabet. There is also another version of yat, the iotified yat (majuscule: , minuscule: ), which is a Cyrillic character combining a ...

, which resembles the New York City dialect sometimes with southern influences, particularly that of historical Brooklyn. Both accents were influenced by large communities of immigrant Irish and Italians, but the Yat dialect, which developed in New Orleans, was also influenced by French and Spanish.

was the dominant language of white settlers in

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is border ...

during the French colonial period; it was spoken primarily by the French Creoles (native-born). In addition to this dialect, the mixed-race people and slaves developed

, with a base in West African languages. The limited years of Spanish rule at the end of the 18th century did not result in widespread adoption of the Spanish language. French and Louisiana Creole are still used in modern-day Louisiana, often in family gatherings. English and its associated dialects became predominant after the

of 1803, after which the area became dominated by numerous English speakers. In some regions, English was influenced by French, as seen with Louisiana English.

, although mistakenly named Cajun French by some Cajuns, has persisted alongside English. Renewed interest in the French language in Louisiana has led to the establishment of Canadian-modeled

French immersion French immersion is a form of bilingual education in which students who do not speak French as a first language will receive instruction in French. In most French-immersion schools, students will learn to speak French and learn most subjects s ...

schools, as well as bilingual signage in the historic French neighborhoods of New Orleans and

. In addition to private organizations, since 1968 the state has maintained the

Council for the Development of French in Louisiana The Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL; french: le Conseil pour le développement du français en Louisiane) is Louisiana's Office of Francophone Affairs (french: Agence des affaires francophones). It is a state agency wh ...

(CODOFIL), which promotes use of the French language in the state's tourism, economic development, culture, education and international relations. In 2018, Louisiana became the first U.S. state to join the

Organisation internationale de la Francophonie The (OIF; sometimes shortened to the Francophonie, french: La Francophonie , but also called International Organisation of in English-language context) is an international organization representing countries and regions where French is a ...

as an observer. Since Louisiana joined the Francophonie, new organizations have launched to help revitalize Louisiana French and Creole, including the Nous Foundation.

Education

Louisiana State University (aerial view)

Louisiana is home to over 40 public and private colleges and universities including

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 near ...

in Baton Rouge, the

University of Louisiana at Lafayette The University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL Lafayette, University of Louisiana, ULL, or UL) is a Public university, public research university in Lafayette, Louisiana. It has the largest enrollment within the nine-campus University of Louisian ...

in Lafayette, and Tulane University in New Orleans. Louisiana State University is the largest and most comprehensive university in Louisiana; the University of Louisiana at Lafayette is the second largest by enrollment. The University of Louisiana at Lafayette became an R1 university in December 2021. Tulane University is a major private research university and the wealthiest university in Louisiana with an endowment over $1.1billion. Tulane is also highly regarded for its academics nationwide, consistently ranked in the top 50 on '' U.S. News & World Report's'' list of best national universities. Louisiana's two oldest and largest HBCUs (

historically black colleges and universities Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving the African-American community. Mo ...

) are

Southern University Southern University and A&M College (Southern University, Southern, SUBR or SU) is a public historically black land-grant university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is the largest historically black college or university (HBCU) in Louisiana, a ...

in Baton Rouge and

Grambling State University Grambling State University (GSU, Grambling, or Grambling State) is a public historically black university in Grambling, Louisiana. Grambling State is home of the Eddie G. Robinson Museum and is listed on the Louisiana African American Herita ...

in Grambling. Both these

Southwestern Athletic Conference The Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) is a collegiate athletic conference headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, which is made up of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the Southern United States. It participates in t ...

(SWAC) schools compete against each other in football annually in the much anticipated Bayou Classic during Thanksgiving weekend in the Superdome. Of note among the education system, the

Louisiana Science Education Act Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is border ...

was a controversial law passed by the

Louisiana Legislature The Louisiana State Legislature (french: Législature d'État de Louisiane) is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is a bicameral body, comprising the lower house, the Louisiana House of Representatives with 105 represe ...

on June 11, 2008, and signed into law by Governor

Bobby Jindal Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (born June 10, 1971) is an American politician who served as the 55th Governor of Louisiana from 2008 to 2016. The only living former Louisiana governor, Jindal also served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives a ...

on June 25. The act allowed public school teachers to use supplemental materials in the science classroom which are critical of established science on such topics as the theory of evolution and global warming. In 2000, of all of the states, Louisiana had the highest percentage of students in private schools. Danielle Dreilinger of ''

The Times Picayune ''The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate'' is an American newspaper published in New Orleans, Louisiana, since January 25, 1837. The current publication is the result of the 2019 acquisition of ''The Times-Picayune'' (itself a result of th ...

'' wrote in 2014 that "Louisiana parents have a national reputation for favoring private schools." The number of students in enrolled in private schools in Louisiana declined by 9% from circa 2000–2005 until 2014, due to the proliferation of

charter schools A charter school is a school that receives government funding but operates independently of the established state school system in which it is located. It is independent in the sense that it operates according to the basic principle of auto ...

, the 2008 recession and

. Ten parishes in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans area had a combined 17% decline in private school enrollment in that period. This prompted private schools to lobby for

school vouchers A school voucher, also called an education voucher in a voucher system, is a certificate of government funding for students at schools chosen by themselves or their parents. Funding is usually for a particular year, term, or semester. In some cou ...

. Louisiana's school voucher program is known as the Louisiana Scholarship Program. It was available in the New Orleans area beginning in 2008 and in the rest of the state beginning in 2012. In 2013, the number of students using

to attend private schools was 6,751, and for 2014 it was projected to over 8,800. As per a ruling from

Ivan Lemelle Ivan L. R. Lemelle (born 1950) is a Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Early life and education Born in Opelousas, Louisiana, Lemelle received a Bachelor of Science d ...

, a U.S. district judge, the federal government has the right to review the charter school placements to ensure they do not further racial segregation.

Transportation

The

Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) is a state government organization in the United States, in charge of maintaining public transportation, roadways, bridges, canals, select levees, floodplain management, port facil ...

is the state government organization in charge of maintaining

public transportation Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typica ...

, roadways, bridges,

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface fl ...

s, select

s, floodplain management, port facilities, commercial vehicles, and aviation which includes 69 airports.

Roads

Interstate highways

United States highways

In 2011, Louisiana ranked among the five deadliest states for debris/litter-caused vehicle accidents per total number of registered vehicles and population size. Figures derived from the

NHTSA The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA ) is an agency of the U.S. federal government, part of the Department of Transportation. It describes its mission as "Save lives, prevent injuries, reduce vehicle-related crashes" rel ...

show at least 25 persons in Louisiana were killed per year in motor vehicle collisions with non-fixed objects, including debris, dumped litter, animals and their carcasses.

Rail

Six Class I freight railroads operate in Louisiana:

BNSF Railway BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three Transcontinental railroad, tr ...

Canadian National Railway The Canadian National Railway Company (french: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN i ...

CSX Transportation CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of track. ...

Kansas City Southern Railway The Kansas City Southern Railway Company is an American Class I railroad. Founded in 1887, it operates in 10 midwestern and southeastern U.S. states: Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and ...

Norfolk Southern Railway The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31, ...

, and

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pac ...

. A number of Class II and Class III railroads also carry freight.

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada. ...

, the national passenger railroad, operates three long-distance rail routes through Louisiana. All three originate at

New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal (NOUPT) is an intermodal facility in New Orleans, Louisiana, US. Located at 1001 Loyola Avenue, it is served by Amtrak, Greyhound Lines, Megabus, and NORTA with direct connections to the Rampart–St. Cl ...

. The ''

Crescent A crescent shape (, ) is a symbol or emblem used to represent the lunar phase in the first quarter (the "sickle moon"), or by extension a symbol representing the Moon itself. In Hinduism, Lord Shiva is often shown wearing a crescent moon on hi ...

'' serves then runs northeast to via , , , and The ''

City of New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Sunset Limited The ''Sunset Limited'' is an Amtrak passenger train that for most of its history has operated between New Orleans and Los Angeles, over the nation's second transcontinental route. However, up until Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it operated betwe ...

'' serves , , , and on its route west to via , , , and . Before

, the ''Sunset Limited'' ran as far east as .

Mass transit

Predominantly serving

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

New Orleans Regional Transit Authority The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA or NORTA) is a public transportation agency based in New Orleans. The agency was established by the Louisiana State Legislature in 1979, and has operated bus and historic streetcar service througho ...

is the largest transit agency in the state. Other transit organizations are

St. Bernard Urban Rapid Transit St. Bernard Urban Rapid Transit (SBURT) is the operator of public transportation in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, a suburban portion of New Orleans. The agency services 45,000 people, with over 92,000 annual unlinked trips in 2017. Although SBUR ...

, Jefferson Transit, Capital Area Transit System, Lafayette Transit System, Shreveport Area Transit System, and Monroe Transit, among others. During the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition, there was a gondola system built to go across the

, called

Mississippi Aerial River Transit The Mississippi Aerial River Transit, or simply MART, was a gondola lift transport system spanning the Mississippi River in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. It was constructed for the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition. After the fair, this s ...

, but was closed less than a year later. The Louisiana Transportation Authority (under the

) was created in 2001 to "promote, plan, finance, develop, construct, control, regulate, operate and maintain any tollway or transitway to be constructed within its jurisdiction. Development, construction, improvement, expansion, and maintenance of an efficient, safe, and well-maintained intermodal transportation system is essential to promote Louisiana's economic growth and the ability of Louisiana's business and industry to compete in regional, national, and global markets and to provide a high quality of life for the people of Louisiana."

Air

Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport ( French: ''Aéroport international Louis Armstrong de La Nouvelle-Orléans'') is an international airport under Class B airspace in Kenner, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is ...

(MSY) is the busiest airport in Louisiana by an order of magnitude. It is also the second lowest-lying international airport in the world, at just above sea level. There are six other primary airports in the state: Baton Rouge Metropolitan, Shreveport Regional, Lafayette Regional, Alexandria International, Monroe Regional, and Lake Charles Regional. A total of 69 public-use airports exist in Louisiana.

Waterways

The

Gulf Intracoastal Waterway The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway is the portion of the Intracoastal Waterway located along the Gulf Coast of the United States. It is a navigable inland waterway running approximately from Carrabelle, Florida, to Brownsville, Texas. The water ...

is an important means of transporting commercial goods such as petroleum and petroleum products, agricultural produce, building materials and manufactured goods. In 2018, the state sued the federal government to repair erosion along the waterway.

Law and government

In 1849, the state moved the capital from New Orleans to

. Donaldsonville,

Opelousas :''Opelousas is also a common name of the flathead catfish.'' Opelousas (french: Les Opélousas; Spanish: ''Los Opeluzás'') is a small city and the parish seat of St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, United States. Interstate 49 and U.S. Route 190 ...

, and

have briefly served as the seat of Louisiana state government. The

Louisiana State Capitol The Louisiana State Capitol (french: Capitole de l'État de Louisiane) is the seat of government for the U.S. state of Louisiana and is located in downtown Baton Rouge. The capitol houses the chambers for the Louisiana State Legislature, made up ...

and the Louisiana Governor's Mansion are both located in Baton Rouge. The

Louisiana Supreme Court The Supreme Court of Louisiana (french: Cour suprême de Louisiane) is the highest court and court of last resort in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The modern Supreme Court, composed of seven justices, meets in the French Quarter of New Orlea ...

, however, did not move to Baton Rouge but remains headquartered in New Orleans. The current Louisiana governor is Democrat

. The current

United States senators The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and power ...

are Republicans John Neely Kennedy and Bill Cassidy. Louisiana has six

congressional district Congressional districts, also known as electoral districts and legislative districts, electorates, or wards in other nations, are divisions of a larger administrative region that represent the population of a region in the larger congressional bod ...

s and is represented in the

by five Republicans and one Democrat. Louisiana had eight votes in the Electoral College for the 2020 election. In a 2020 study, Louisiana was ranked as the 24th hardest state for citizens to vote in. The Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola - located near the border to Mississippi - is the largest maximum-security prison in the United States.

Administrative divisions

Louisiana is divided into 64

(the equivalent of counties in most other states). *

List of parishes in Louisiana The U.S. state of Louisiana is divided into 64 parishes ( French: ''paroisses'', Spanish: ''parroquias'') in the same manner that Alaska is divided into boroughs, and the remaining 48 other states are divided into counties. Louisiana's usage of ...

Louisiana census statistical areas The U.S. currently has 25 statistical areas that have been delineated by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). On March 6, 2020, the OMB delineated six combined statistical areas, nine metropolitan statistical areas, and ten micropolitan ...

Most parishes have an elected government known as the Police Jury, dating from the colonial days. It is the legislative and executive government of the parish, and is elected by the voters. Its members are called Jurors, and together they elect a president as their chairman. A more limited number of parishes operate under

home rule Home rule is government of a colony, dependent country, or region by its own citizens. It is thus the power of a part (administrative division) of a state or an external dependent country to exercise such of the state's powers of governance wit ...

charters, electing various forms of government. This include mayor–council, council–manager (in which the council hires a professional operating manager for the parish), and others.

Civil law

The Louisiana political and legal structure has maintained several elements from the times of French and Spanish governance. One is the use of the term "

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or ...

" (from the French: ''paroisse'') in place of " county" for administrative subdivision. Another is the legal system of civil law based on French, German, and Spanish

legal code A code of law, also called a law code or legal code, is a systematic collection of statutes. It is a type of legislation that purports to exhaustively cover a complete system of laws or a particular area of law as it existed at the time the cod ...

s and ultimately

Roman law Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (c. 449 BC), to the '' Corpus Juris Civilis'' (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor Just ...

, as opposed to English common law. Louisiana's civil law system is what the majority of

sovereign state A sovereign state or sovereign country, is a political entity represented by one central government that has supreme legitimate authority over territory. International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, defined terr ...

s in the world use, especially in Europe and its former colonies, excluding those that derive their legal systems from the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...

. However, it is incorrect to equate the

Louisiana Civil Code The ''Louisiana Civil Code'' (LCC) constitutes the core of private law in the State of Louisiana. The Louisiana Civil Code is based on a more diverse set of sources than the laws of the other 49 states of the United States: substantive law betw ...

with the Napoleonic Code. Although the Napoleonic Code and Louisiana law draw from common legal roots, the Napoleonic Code was never in force in Louisiana, as it was enacted in 1804, after the United States had purchased and annexed Louisiana in 1803. While the Louisiana Civil Code of 1808 has been continuously revised and updated since its enactment, it is still considered the controlling authority in the state. Differences are found between Louisianian civil law and the common law found in the other U.S. states. While some of these differences have been bridged due to the strong influence of common law tradition, the civil law tradition is still deeply rooted in most aspects of Louisiana private law. Thus property, contractual, business entities structure, much of civil procedure, and family law, as well as some aspects of criminal law, are still based mostly on traditional Roman legal thinking.

Marriage

In 1997, Louisiana became the first state to offer the option of a traditional marriage or a

covenant marriage Covenant marriage is a legally distinct kind of marriage in three states ( Arizona, Arkansas, and Louisiana) of the United States, in which the marrying spouses agree to obtain pre-marital counseling and accept more limited grounds for later seekin ...

. In a covenant marriage, the couple waives their right to a "no-fault" divorce after six months of separation, which is available in a traditional marriage. To divorce under a covenant marriage, a couple must demonstrate cause. Marriages between ascendants and descendants, and marriages between collaterals within the fourth degree (i.e., siblings, aunt and nephew, uncle and niece, first cousins) are prohibited. Same-sex marriages were prohibited by statute, but the

U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

declared such bans unconstitutional in 2015, in its ruling in ''

Obergefell v. Hodges ''Obergefell v. Hodges'', ( ), is a landmark LGBT rights case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection ...

''. Same-sex marriages are now performed statewide. Louisiana is a community property state.

Elections

United States presidential election in Louisiana, 2016

From 1898 to 1965, a period when Louisiana had effectively disfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites by provisions of a new constitution, this was essentially a one-party state dominated by white Democrats. Elites had control in the early 20th century, before populist

came to power as governor. In multiple acts of resistance, blacks left behind the segregation, violence and oppression of the state and moved out to seek better opportunities in northern and western industrial cities during the Great Migrations of 1910–1970, markedly reducing their proportion of population in Louisiana. The franchise for whites was expanded somewhat during these decades, but blacks remained essentially disfranchised until after the

civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United ...

of the mid-20th century, gaining enforcement of their constitutional rights through passage by Congress of the

Voting Rights Act of 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights moveme ...

. Since the 1960s, when civil rights legislation was passed under President

Lyndon Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...

to protect voting and civil rights, most African Americans in the state have affiliated with the Democratic Party. In the same years, many white social conservatives have moved to support Republican Party candidates in national, gubernatorial and statewide elections. In 2004,

David Vitter David Bruce Vitter (born May 3, 1961) is an American lobbyist, lawyer, and politician who served as United States Senator for Louisiana from 2005 to 2017. A Republican, Vitter served in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1992 to 199 ...

was the first Republican in Louisiana to be popularly elected as a U.S. senator. The previous Republican senator, John S. Harris, who took office in 1868 during Reconstruction, was chosen by the state legislature under the rules of the 19th century. Louisiana is unique among U.S. states in using a system for its state and local elections similar to that of modern France. All candidates, regardless of party affiliation, run in a

nonpartisan blanket primary A nonpartisan blanket primary is a primary election in which all candidates for the same elected office run against each other at once, regardless of the political party. Partisan elections are, on the other hand, segregated by political party ...

(or "jungle primary") on

Election Day Election day or polling day is the day on which general elections are held. In many countries, general elections are always held on a Saturday or Sunday, to enable as many voters as possible to participate; while in other countries elections ar ...

. If no candidate has more than 50% of the vote, the two candidates with the highest vote totals compete in a runoff election approximately one month later. This run-off method does not take into account party identification; therefore, it is not uncommon for a Democrat to be in a runoff with a fellow Democrat or a Republican to be in a runoff with a fellow Republican. Congressional races have also been held under the jungle primary system. All other states (except Washington, California, and

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and ...

) use single-party primaries followed by a general election between party candidates, each conducted by either a

plurality voting system Plurality voting refers to electoral systems in which a candidate, or candidates, who poll more than any other counterpart (that is, receive a plurality), are elected. In systems based on single-member districts, it elects just one member pe ...

runoff voting Runoff voting can refer to: * Two-round system, a voting system used to elect a single winner, whereby only two candidates from the first round continue to the second round, where one candidate will win. * Instant-runoff voting, an electoral system ...

, to elect senators, representatives, and statewide officials. Between 2008 and 2010, federal

congressional A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of a ...

elections were run under a closed primary system—limited to registered party members. However, upon the passage of House Bill 292, Louisiana again adopted a nonpartisan blanket primary for its federal congressional elections. Louisiana has six seats in the

, five of which are currently held by Republicans and one by a Democrat. Though the state historically flips between Republican and Democratic governors, Louisiana is not classified as a

swing state In American politics, the term swing state (also known as battleground state or purple state) refers to any state that could reasonably be won by either the Democratic or Republican candidate in a statewide election, most often referring to pre ...

in presidential elections, as it has consistently voted for the Republican candidate by solid margins since backing Democrat Bill Clinton in 1996. The state's two U.S. senators are Bill Cassidy (R) and John Neely Kennedy (R).

Law enforcement

Louisiana's statewide police force is the

Louisiana State Police The Louisiana State Police (French: Police d’Etat de Louisiane) is the state police agency of Louisiana, which has jurisdiction anywhere in the state, headquartered in Baton Rouge. It falls under the authority of the Louisiana Department of Pub ...

. It began in 1922 with the creation of the Highway Commission. In 1927, a second branch, the Bureau of Criminal Investigations, was formed. In 1932, the State Highway Patrol was authorized to carry weapons. On July 28, 1936, the two branches were consolidated to form the Louisiana Department of State Police; its motto was "courtesy, loyalty, service". In 1942, this office was abolished and became a division of the Department of Public Safety, called the Louisiana State Police. In 1988, the Criminal Investigation Bureau was reorganized. Its troopers have statewide jurisdiction with power to enforce all laws of the state, including city and parish ordinances. Each year, they patrol over 12 million miles (20 million km) of roadway and arrest about 10,000 impaired drivers. The State Police are primarily a traffic enforcement agency, with other sections that delve into trucking safety, narcotics enforcement, and gaming oversight. Spanish Town Mardi Gras 2015 - 15922509443

Spanish Town Mardi Gras 2015 - 15922509443

The elected sheriff in each parish is the chief law enforcement officer in the parish. They are the keepers of the local parish prisons, which house felony and misdemeanor prisoners. They are the primary criminal patrol and first responder agency in all matters criminal and civil. They are also the official tax collectors in each parish. The sheriffs are responsible for general law enforcement in their respective parishes. Orleans Parish is an exception, as the general law enforcement duties fall to the New Orleans Police Department. Before 2010, Orleans Parish was the only parish to have two sheriff's offices. Orleans Parish divided sheriffs' duties between criminal and civil, with a different elected sheriff overseeing each aspect. In 2006, a bill was passed which eventually consolidated the two sheriff's departments into one parish sheriff responsible for both civil and criminal matters. In 2015, Louisiana had a higher murder rate (10.3 per 100,000) than any other state in the country for the 27th straight year. Louisiana is the only state with an annual average murder rate (13.6 per 100,000) at least twice as high as the U.S. annual average (6.6 per 100,000) during that period, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics from FBI Uniform Crime Reports. In a different kind of criminal activity, the '' Chicago Tribune'' reports that Louisiana is the most corrupt state in the United States. According to ''

'', Louisiana is the prison capital of the world. Many for-profit private prisons and sheriff-owned prisons have been built and operate here. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly five times Iran's, 13 times China's and 20 times Germany's. Minorities are incarcerated at rates disproportionate to their share of the state's population. The

New Orleans Police Department The New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) has primary responsibility for law enforcement in New Orleans, Louisiana. The department's jurisdiction covers all of Orleans Parish, while the city is divided into eight police districts. The NOPD has a ...

began a new sanctuary policy to "no longer cooperate with federal immigration enforcement" beginning on February 28, 2016.

Judiciary

The

judiciary of Louisiana The Judiciary of Louisiana is defined under the Constitution and law of Louisiana and is composed of the Louisiana Supreme Court, the Louisiana Circuit Courts of Appeal, the District Courts, the Justice of the Peace Courts, the Mayor's Courts, th ...

is defined under the

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these princi ...

and

law of Louisiana Law in the state of Louisiana is based on a more diverse set of sources than the laws of the other 49 states of the United States. Private law—that is, substantive law between private sector parties, principally contracts and torts—has a ...

and is composed of the

, the

Louisiana Circuit Courts of Appeal The Louisiana Circuit Courts of Appeal are the intermediate appellate courts for the state of Louisiana. There are five circuits, each covering a different group of parishes. Each circuit is subdivided into three districts. As with the Loui ...

, the district courts, the Justice of the Peace courts, the mayor's courts, the city courts, and the parish courts. The chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court is the chief administrator of the judiciary. Its administration is aided by the Judiciary Commission of Louisiana, the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board, and the Judicial Council of the Supreme Court of Louisiana.

National Guard

Louisiana has more than 9,000 soldiers in the

Louisiana Army National Guard The Louisiana Army National Guard (French: Garde nationale de Louisiane) is a component of the Louisiana National Guard, and the state's reserve force within the United States Army. The Constitution of the United States specifically charges the ...

, including the 225th Engineer Brigade and the 256th Infantry Brigade. Both these units have served overseas during the

War on Terror The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant ...

. The

Louisiana Air National Guard The Louisiana Air National Guard (LA ANG) is the aerial militia of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is, along with the Louisiana Army National Guard, an element of the Louisiana National Guard. As state militia units, the units in the Louisiana ...

has more than 2,000 airmen, and its 159th Fighter Wing has likewise seen combat. Training sites in the state include Camp Beauregard near Pineville, Camp Villere near Slidell, Camp Minden near Minden,

England Air Park Alexandria International Airport is a public use airport located four nautical miles (5 mi, 7 km) west of the central business district of Alexandria, in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, United States. The airport is operated by the En ...

(formerly

England Air Force Base England Air Force Base is a former United States Air Force base in Louisiana, located northwest of Alexandria and about northwest of New Orleans. Originally known as Alexandria Army Air Base, on 23 June 1955 the facility was renamed England ...

) near

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandri ...

, Gillis Long Center near Carville, and

Jackson Barracks Jackson Barracks is the headquarters of the Louisiana National Guard. It is located in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana. The base was established in 1834 and was originally known as New Orleans Barracks. On July 7, 1866, it was ren ...

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Louisiana is nominally the least populous state with more than one major professional sports league franchise: the

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United S ...

New Orleans Pelicans The New Orleans Pelicans are an American professional basketball team based in New Orleans. The Pelicans compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Southwest Division and play their hom ...

and the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...

New Orleans Saints The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans. The Saints compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. Since 1975, the te ...

. Louisiana has 12 collegiate NCAA Division I programs, a high number given its population. The state has no NCAA Division II teams and only two NCAA Division III teams. As of 2019, the

LSU Tigers The LSU Tigers and Lady Tigers are the athletic teams representing Louisiana State University (LSU), a state university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. LSU competes in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) as ...

football team has won 12

Southeastern Conference The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is an American college athletic conference whose member institutions are located primarily in the South Central and Southeastern United States. Its fourteen members include the flagship public universities of ...

titles, six

Sugar Bowl The Sugar Bowl is an annual American college football bowl game played in New Orleans, Louisiana. Played annually since January 1, 1935, it is tied with the Orange Bowl and Sun Bowl as the second-oldest bowl games in the country, surpassed only ...

s and four national championships. Each year New Orleans plays host to the Bayou Classic, and the New Orleans Bowl college football games, while Shreveport hosts the Independence Bowl. Also, New Orleans has hosted the Super Bowl a record eleven times, as well as the BCS National Championship Game, NBA All-Star Game and NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. The Zurich Classic of New Orleans, is a PGA Tour golf tournament held since 1938. The Rock 'n' Roll Mardi Gras Marathon and Crescent City Classic are two road running competitions held at New Orleans. As of 2016, Louisiana was the birthplace of the most NFL players per capita for the eighth year in a row.

Notable people

* Phil Anselmo, singer, songwriter, best known for being member of the metal band Pantera * Terry Bradshaw, former NFL quarterback and sports personality * James Carville, political strategist known for his success with Bill Clinton's presidential campaign * Ellen DeGeneres, comedian, television host, actress, writer, and producer * Armand Duplantis, pole vaulter. IAAF male World Athlete of the Year 2020 * Mannie Fresh; DJ, producer, and rapper * Kevin Gates; rapper, singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur * DJ Khaled; American DJ, record executive and media personality * Angela Kinsey, actress * Ali Landry, actress and Miss USA 1996 * Jared Leto, actor and musician * Jerry Lee Lewis; singer and piano-player *

, politician *Peyton Manning, former American football quarterback * Tim McGraw, singer, actor and record producer *Tyler Perry, actor, director, producer, and screenwriter * Dustin Poirier; American mixed martial artist, currently signed to the UFC * Zachary Richard; Cajun singer, songwriter and poet * Fred L. Smith (political writer), Fred L. Smith Jr., founder of Competitive Enterprise Institute * Ian Somerhalder, actor, model and director * Britney Spears; singer, songwriter, dancer and actress * Jamie Lynn Spears, singer and actress * Lil Wayne; rapper, singer, songwriter, record executive, entrepreneur, and actor * Shane West, actor, singer and songwriter * Reese Witherspoon, actress * YoungBoy Never Broke Again; rapper, singer, and songwriter

Notes

References

Bibliography

* ''The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World, 1820–1860'' by Richard Follett, Louisiana State University Press, 2007. * ''The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870'' by Hugh Thomas. 1997: Simon and Schuster. p. 548. * ''Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World'' by David Brion Davis 2006: Oxford University Press. * Yiannopoulos, A.N., ''The Civil Codes of Louisiana'' (reprinted from Civil Law System: Louisiana and Comparative law, A Coursebook: Texts, Cases and Materials, 3d Edition; similar to version in preface to Louisiana Civil Code, ed. by Yiannopoulos) * Rodolfo Batiza, "The Louisiana Civil Code of 1808: Its Actual Sources and Present Relevance", 46 ''TUL. L. REV.'' 4 (1971); Rodolfo Batiza, "Sources of the Civil Code of 1808, Facts and Speculation: A Rejoinder", 46 ''TUL. L. REV.'' 628 (1972); Robert A. Pascal, Sources of the Digest of 1808: A Reply to Professor Batiza, 46 TUL. L. REV. 603 (1972); Joseph M. Sweeney, Tournament of Scholars Over the Sources of the Civil Code of 1808,46 TUL. L. REV. 585 (1972). * The standard history of the state, though only through the Civil War, is Charles Gayarré's ''History of Louisiana'' (various editions, culminating in 1866, 4 vols., with a posthumous and further expanded edition in 1885). * A number of accounts by 17th- and 18th-century French explorers: Jean-Bernard Bossu, François-Marie Perrin du Lac, Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, Dumont (as published by Fr. Mascrier), Fr. Louis Hennepin, Lahontan, Louis Narcisse Baudry des Lozières, Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe, and Laval. In this group, the explorer Antoine Simon Le Page du Pratz may be the first historian of Louisiana with his ''Histoire de la Louisiane'' (3 vols., Paris, 1758; 2 vols., London, 1763) * François Xavier Martin's ''History of Louisiana'' (2 vols., New Orleans, 1827–1829, later ed. by J. F. Condon, continued to 1861, New Orleans, 1882) is the first scholarly treatment of the subject, along with François Barbé-Marbois' ''Histoire de la Louisiane et de la cession de colonie par la France aux Etats-Unis'' (Paris, 1829; in English, Philadelphia, 1830). * Alcée Fortier's ''A History of Louisiana'' (N.Y., 4 vols., 1904) is the most recent of the large-scale scholarly histories of the state. * The official works of Albert Phelps and Grace King, the publications of the Louisiana Historical Society and several works on history of New Orleans, the history of New Orleans (q.v.), among them those by Henry Rightor and John Smith Kendall provide background.

External links

*
Louisiana: State Resource Guide, from the Library of Congress
*
Louisiana Geographic Information Center

Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities

Louisiana Weather and Tides
{{coord, 31, -92, dim:300000_region:US-LA_type:adm1st, name=State of Louisiana, display=title Louisiana, 1812 establishments in the United States Former French colonies Former Spanish colonies Southern United States States and territories established in 1812 States of the Confederate States of America States of the Gulf Coast of the United States States of the United States Contiguous United States

Etymology

History

Pre–colonial history

Exploration and colonization by Europeans

Expansion of slavery

Dominican Creole asylum and influence

Purchase by the United States

Statehood

Secession and the Civil War

Post–Civil War to mid–20th century

Mid–20th century to present

Geography

Geology

Climate

Publicly owned land

National Park Service

U.S. Forest Service

Major cities

Demographics

Race and ethnicity

Religion

Economy

Culture

African culture

Creole culture

Isleño culture

Languages

Education

Transportation

Roads

Interstate highways

United States highways

Rail

Mass transit

Air

Waterways

Law and government

Administrative divisions

Civil law

Marriage

Elections

Law enforcement

Judiciary

National Guard

Notable people

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links