In July 1861, at the start of the war, the Bossier Parish Police Jury appropriated $35,000 for the benefit of Confederate volunteers and their family members left behind, an amount then considered generous.

From the end of Reconstruction into the 20th century, violence increased as conservative white Democrats struggled to maintain power over the state.

In this period, Bossier Parish had 26 lynchings of African Americans by whites, part of racial terrorism.

Members are elected from single-member districts.The current members of the police jury are: Since the late 20th century, the non-Hispanic white population of the parish has shifted from the Democratic to the Republican Party (as have most conservative whites in Louisiana and other Southern U.S. states).

Bossier Parish has since reliably voted for Republican candidates in most contested U.S. presidential elections.

Since 1952, George Wallace, the former governor of Alabama who ran in 1968 on the American Independent Party ticket, has been the only non-Republican to carry Bossier Parish.

[25] In 2012, Mitt Romney polled 34,988 votes (72 percent) in Bossier Parish (2,275 more ballots than McCain drew in 2008).

Also located in Bossier City is the 156TH Army Band which deployed as part of the 256th Infantry Brigade in 2010 to Iraq.