In the post–Civil War environment, Anglo-Americans increased the pressure for Anglicization, and in 1921, English was shortly made the sole language of instruction in Louisiana schools before a policy of multilingualism was revived in 1974.

[15][16] Louisiana has never had an official language, and the state constitution enumerates "the right of the people to preserve, foster, and promote their respective historic, linguistic, and cultural origins.

"[15] Based on national averages, Louisiana frequently ranks low among U.S. states in terms of health,[17] education,[18][19][20][21] and development, with high rates of poverty[22][23][24] and homicide.

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.

[47] Many current place names in Louisiana, including Atchafalaya, Natchitouches (now spelled Natchitoches), Caddo, Houma, Tangipahoa, and Avoyel (as Avoyelles), are transliterations of those used in various Native American languages.

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.

[49] A royal ordinance of 1722—following the Crown's transfer of the Illinois Country's governance from Canada to Louisiana—may have featured the broadest definition of Louisiana: all land claimed by France south of the Great Lakes between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghenies.

"[77] 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.

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,[80] and free navigation of the river for U.S. commerce.

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.

President Jefferson ignored public pressure for war with France, and appointed James Monroe a special envoy to Napoleon, to assist in obtaining New Orleans for the United States.

Jefferson's political opponents in the Federalist Party argued the Louisiana purchase was a worthless desert,[83] 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, and further reducing the influence of New England Federalists in national affairs.

Eventually former Confederates came to dominate the state legislature after the end of Reconstruction and federal occupation in the late 1870s, and black codes were implemented to regulate freedmen and increasingly restricted the right to vote.

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, residency requirements and literacy tests.

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.

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.

[107] 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.

Continued violent white resistance in Bogalusa to blacks trying to use public facilities in 1965, following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, caused the federal government to order local police to protect the activists.

[113][114] In August 2016, an unnamed storm dumped trillions of gallons of rain on southern Louisiana, including the cities of Denham Springs, Baton Rouge, Gonzales, St. Amant and Lafayette, causing catastrophic flooding.

Historic or scenic areas managed, protected, or recognized by the National Park Service include: Louisiana contains 308 incorporated municipalities, consisting of four consolidated city-parishes, and 304 cities, towns, and villages.

[181][182] From French and Spanish rule in Louisiana, they were joined by Filipinos, Germans, and Spaniards both slave and free, who settled in enclaves within the Greater New Orleans region and Acadiana;[183][184][185][186] some of the Spanish-descended communities became the Isleños of St. Bernard Parish.

[193] 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;[195] and other faiths including Haitian Vodou and Louisiana Voodoo were introduced to the state and are practiced to the present day.

[d] The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, 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.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.

[227] 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.

Its members are descendants of colonists from the Canary Islands who settled in Spanish Louisiana between 1778 and 1783 and intermarried with other communities such as Frenchmen, Acadians, Creoles, Spaniards, and other groups, mainly through the 19th and early 20th centuries.

[247][needs update] As per a ruling from Ivan Lemelle, 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.

The Sunset Limited serves Schriever, New Iberia, Lafayette, and Lake Charles on its route west to Los Angeles via Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, and Tucson.

[269] 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.

[278] On June 19, 2024, Jeff Landry signed a bill to officially require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every classroom in public schools and colleges, making it the only state to have that law.