Some of its ethnic French residents had ancestors who settled here after being expelled in the 18th century by the British from Acadia in present-day Canada.

It was part of an effort by the Reconstruction-era government to create parishes in which there would be large Republican-majority populations, composed primarily of freedmen in those years.

[5] [citation needed] This territory was part of the sugar parishes, where sugar cane plantations were developed along the waterways before and after the Civil War, dependent on labor of high numbers of enslaved African Americans before the war.

In this period, the highly populated Iberia Parish had 26 lynchings of Black people by the KKK, as part of racial terrorism.

Iberia Parish had factions split among conservatives and those who were more moderate about the status of Black people.

Moderates sometimes allied with the Republican creoles and White people in the parish.

In contrast to northern Louisiana, residents otherwise seemed to rely more on the formal legal system, with fewer mob lynchings.

But Black people suffered here, making up 88 percent of the persons legally executed for violent crimes in the late 19th century.

Planters recruited thousands of Italian immigrants as temporary laborers, many Sicilians who had first settled in New Orleans.

They were needed during the fall harvest and processing season, which extended from October to January.

[10] As of the 2020 United States census, there were 69,929 people, 26,185 households, and 20,409 families residing in the parish.

The 2019 American Community Survey estimated 69,830 people lived in Iberia Parish.