Demographics of Louisiana

[10] Hispanic and Latino Americans have also increased as the second-largest racial and ethnic composition in the state, making up nearly 10% of Louisiana's population at the 2020 census.

These people are predominantly of English, Huguenot French, Welsh, and Irish/Scots Irish backgrounds, and share a common, mostly Protestant culture with Americans of neighboring states.

The majority of the White American population concentrated upstate are religiously affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

Louisiana Cajuns are the descendants of French-speaking Acadians from colonial French Acadia, which is now the present-day Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

[18] During the early part of the 20th century, attempts were made to suppress Cajun culture by measures such as forbidding the use of the Louisiana French language in schools.

This group was formed under French and Spanish rule, made up at first of descendants from relationships between colonial men and enslaved women, mostly African.

The arrangements were formalized in New Orleans as plaçage, often associated with property settlements for the young women and education for their children, or at least for sons.

Creoles who were free people of color during French and Spanish rule formed a distinct class; many were educated and became wealthy property owners or artisans, and they were politically active.

After the Haitian Revolution, the class of free people of color in New Orleans and Louisiana was increased by French-speaking refugees and immigrants from Haiti.

[22] Creoles of color today are frequently racially mixed, being of African, French (and/or Spanish) and/or Native American heritage.

[citation needed] Among the Black and African American Catholic communities in southern Louisiana, cultural distinctives commonly kept are Gospel music and some Charismatic Christian traits.

Canary Islanders settled in the area down river from New Orleans, now St. Bernard Parish, and in other parts of the southeast of the state during Spanish rule.

[26][27] Settlement at the Los Adaes presidio and mission also resulted in a local Spanish-speaking population along the Sabine River.

[28] Louisiana has received a significant influx of immigrants from various Latin American nations, including Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Established Cuban American and Dominican communities can be found in the New Orleans region, with some origins tracing back to the 1920s and even the 1880s.

[31] Local planters imported Cantonese contract workers from Cuba and California as a low-cost substitute for slave labor.

By 1870, the Chinese had begun migrating from the plantations to the cities, especially New Orleans, forming a Chinatown that existed from the 1880s until its removal by WPA development in 1937.

The Vietnamese began migrating to the southern part of the state and the Gulf Coast region after the Fall of Saigon in 1975.

Filipinos rebelled against slavery on ships and settled in Louisiana, near the similarly Spanish-colonized independent ethnic Isleño community.

The oldest community of Asian Americans in the United States at Saint Malo, Louisiana was founded by Filipino exiles from the Manila galleon trade between Mexico and the Philippines.

Harry Lee, a Chinese American, was a federal judge, candidate for governor, and sheriff of Jefferson Parish, an office he held for 27 years, from 1979 until his death in 2007.

Louisiana is home to four federally recognized Native American tribes, the Chitimacha, the Coushatta, the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians, and the Tunica-Biloxi.

[40] Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.

Louisiana has a unique linguistic culture, owing to its French and Spanish heritage—although historically—Native American peoples in the area at the time of European encounter were seven tribes distinguished by their languages: Caddo, Tunica, Natchez, Houma, Choctaw, Atakapa, and Chitimacha.

Only Koasati still has native speakers in Louisiana (Choctaw, Alabama and possibly Caddo are still spoken in other states), although several tribes have been working to revitalize their 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.

The 1868 constitution, passed during the Reconstruction era before Louisiana was re-admitted to the Union, banned laws requiring the publication of legal proceedings in languages other than English.

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 alongside Christianity through the establishment of Spanish and French missions;[67] and other faiths including Haitian Vodou and Louisiana Voodoo were introduced to the state and are practiced to the present day.

[73] Prominent Jews in Louisiana's political leadership have included Whig (later Democrat) Judah P. Benjamin (1811–1884), who represented Louisiana in the US Senate before the American Civil War and then became the Confederate secretary of state; Democrat-turned-Republican Michael Hahn who was elected as governor, serving 1864–1865 when Louisiana was occupied by the Union Army, and later elected in 1884 as a US congressman;[76] Democrat Adolph Meyer (1842–1908), Confederate Army officer who represented the state in the US House of Representatives from 1891 until his death in 1908; Republican secretary of state Jay Dardenne (1954–), and Republican (Democrat before 2011) attorney general Buddy Caldwell (1946–).

[78] Among Louisiana's irreligious community, 2% affiliated with atheism and 13% claimed no religion as of 2014; an estimated 10% of the state's population practiced nothing in particular at the 2014 study.