History of Louisiana
Trade with peoples to the southwest brought the bow and arrow[9] An increase in the hierarchical structuring of their societies began during this period, although it is not clear whether it was internally developed or borrowed from the Hopewell.
Many Coles Creek sites were erected over earlier Woodland period mortuary mounds, leading researchers to speculate that emerging elites were symbolically and physically appropriating dead ancestors to emphasize and project their own authority.
In 1542, Hernando de Soto'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 Gulf of Mexico in 1543.
The Spanish, whose crossbows had long ceased working, had no effective offensive weapons on the water and were forced to rely on their remaining armor and sleeping mats to block the arrows.
European interest in Louisiana was dormant until the late 17th century, when French expeditions, which had imperial, religious and commercial aims, established a foothold on the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast.
With its first settlements, France lay 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 through Canada.
The French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle named the region Louisiana in 1682 to honor France's King Louis XIV.
The first permanent settlement, Fort Maurepas (at what is now Ocean Springs, Mississippi, near Biloxi), was founded in 1699 by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, a French military officer from Canada.
[23]) As part of a general report on conditions in the newly conquered lands, Gen. Thomas Gage, then commandant at Montreal, explained in 1762 that, although the boundary between Louisiana and Canada wasn't exact, it was understood the upper Mississippi above the mouth of the Illinois was in Canadian trading territory.
[citation needed] Both free and enslaved populations increased rapidly during the years of Spanish rule, as new settlers and Creoles imported large numbers of slaves to work on plantations.
The volume of slaves imported from Africa resulted in what historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall called "the re-Africanization" of Lower Louisiana, which strongly influenced the culture.
The western boundary of Louisiana with Spanish Texas remained in dispute until the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, which was formally ratified in 1821,[33] The area referred to as the Sabine Free State served as a neutral buffer zone.
With the growth of settlement in the Midwest (formerly the Northwest Territory) and Deep South during the early decades of the 19th century, trade and shipping increased markedly in New Orleans.
Louisiana's 1868 Constitution abolished the Black Codes, granted full civil and political equality to freedmen, disenfranchised several classes of ex-Confederates, and included the state's first formal bill of rights.
Ruby's endeavors were met with a positive response from the black population, who eagerly embraced education, but they also faced vehement opposition, including physical violence, from numerous planters and other white individuals.
On Easter Sunday 1873, an estimated 85 to more than 100 blacks were killed in the Colfax massacre, as white militias had gathered to challenge Republican officeholders after the disputed gubernatorial election of 1872.
Among violent acts attributed to the White League in 1874 was the Coushatta massacre, where they killed six Republican officeholders, including four family members of the local state senator, and twenty freedmen as witnesses.
The lawsuit, based on restricted seating in interstate passenger trains, was brought from Louisiana with strong support from the Creoles of color community in New Orleans: Plessy was one.
By 1923, Louisiana established the all-white primary, which effectively shut out the few black voters from the Democratic Party, the only competitive part of elections in the one-party state.
They sought skilled jobs in the burgeoning defense industry in California in the 1940s, better education for their children, and living opportunities in communities where they could vote, as well as an escape from southern violence.
Though popular for his public works projects, which provided thousands of jobs to people in need, and for his programs in education and increased suffrage for poor whites, Long was criticized for his allegedly demagogic and autocratic style.
Mobilization for World War II created defense industry jobs in the state, attracting thousands of rural black and white farmers into the cities to obtain such employment.
However, tens of thousands of black workers left the state in the Second Great Migration for the North and West Coast to seek skilled jobs and better pay in the defense industry outside the South, better education for themselves and their children, and living opportunities in communities where they could vote.
[54] The disfranchisement of African Americans did not end until their leadership and activism throughout the South during the Civil Rights movement gained national attention and Congressional action.
Officials issued warnings to evacuate the city and nearby areas, but tens of thousands of people, mostly African Americans, had stayed behind, some stranded, and suffered through the damage of the widespread flood waters.
Cut off in many cases from healthy food, medicine, or water, or assembled in public spaces without functioning emergency services, more than 1,500 people in New Orleans died in the aftermath.
[66][67] 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.
Governor John Bel Edwards closed schools statewide on March 16, 2020, restricted most businesses to takeout and delivery only, postponed presidential primaries, and placed limitations on large gatherings.
[74][75] On March 23, Edwards enacted a statewide stay-at-home order to encourage social distancing, and President Donald Trump issued a major disaster declaration, the fourth state to receive one.
[77] Numerous "clusters" of confirmed cases have appeared at nursing homes across southern Louisiana, including an outbreak at Lambeth House in New Orleans that has infected over fifty and killed thirteen elderly residents as of March 30.
