Banned in the Classroom: Notes on the Outlawing of French in Louisiana's Public Schools

"I Will Not Speak French on the School Grounds,"
from an exhibit at the Vermilionville
living history museum, Lafayette, La.

From approximately 1920 to 1960, educators routinely punished children in Louisiana's public school system for speaking French — often those students' primary if not sole language. As I wrote in my book The Cajuns: Americanization of a People (2003):

Some educators helped to bring about this change [i.e., Americanization] by punishing Cajun children who were caught speaking French at school. . . . Caught up in the Americanism of World War I and the following Red Scare sparked by the Russian Revolution, numerous states had designated English as the sole language of classroom instruction. Louisiana was among those states: in 1916 the state’s Board of Education banned French from classrooms, a move sanctioned by lawmakers in the state constitution of 1921.(1)

While many secondary sources refer to these two linguistic bans — the one of 1916 (about which more below) and the one of 1921 — I do not offhand know of any sources that actually quote the governmental primary sources in question. As a result, and for ease of reference, I compile the below primary-source references pertaining to the banning of French in the Louisiana public-school classroom — an event that opened the door to the punishment of Cajun children (and Creole children in general, I should add) for daring to speak their ancestral tongue on school grounds.

Some of the below information came to me from my mentor, Professor Carl A. Brasseaux, who I thank for sharing his knowledge of this topic.

To the point — the Louisiana state constitution on the books in 1920 stated:

"The general exercises in the public schools shall be conducted in the English language; provided, that the French language may be taught in those parishes or localities where the French language predominates, if no additional expense is incurred thereby."(2)

This clause had appeared in each of the state's constitutions since 1879, when it was first adopted, albeit with slightly different wording:

"The general exercises in the public schools shall be conducted in the English language and the elementary branches taught therein; provided, that these elementary branches may be also taught in the French language in those parishes in the State or localities where the French language predominates, if no additional expense is incurred thereby."(3)

From the 1879 state constitution.

In 1921, however, a new state constitution was ratified. In regard to language in the classroom, it tersely read:

"The general exercises in the public schools shall be conducted in the English language."(4)

From the 1921 state constitution.

In other words, from one year to the next — 1920 to 1921 — the French language became unacceptable for communication or instruction in Louisiana's public-school classrooms. (This ban did not affect the teaching of conversational French — explaining why, for instance, the Louisiana Department of Education issued a 24-page document in 1952 titled French Can Enrich Your Elementary School Program: A Progress Report on the Teaching of Conversational French in Several Louisiana School Systems. This may have been the case because students would have presumably mastered English by the time they reached high school, when schools offered conversational French as a topic of study. Another factor at work might have been a bias toward the "Parisian French" taught in conversational French, at the expense of Louisiana French, which many in the state regarded as "bad French" or "not the real French.")(5)

This proscription, however, officially ended some fifty-three years later with ratification of the Louisiana state constitution of 1974. That document contained the following progressive article — one clearly influenced by the ethnic pride and empowerment movements of the 1960s and early '70s:

"The right of the people to preserve, foster, and promote their respective historic linguistic and cultural origins is recognized."(6)

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There is, however, serious need for reconsideration of a particular, and rather common, claim about this subject.

Despite frequent references by historians (including myself) and others to a 1916 ban on French in public-school classrooms — one allegedly enacted by the Louisiana state Board of Education five years before the overt "English-only" provision of the 1921 state constitution — I cannot locate any proof of such an order. An order that, in any event, would have been unconstitutional, because, as shown, the state constitution in effect in 1916 provided for French instruction "in those parishes or localities where the French language predominates."

However, I now believe there was no 1916 ban on French in public-school classrooms. Rather, I think claims to the contrary are based on a misreading or mischaracterization (albeit accidental) of the state directive in question.

What actually occurred in 1916 was passage of compulsory education act, known generically as "Act No. 27 of 1916," sometimes retroactively called "the Mandatory Education Act." (See the image of the entire act at the very bottom of this essay.)

Granted, this act — by levying penalties on parents and guardians who failed to send children to school — no doubt contributed indirectly to the punishment of French-speaking children, namely, by coaxing more French-speaking children into schools where they might be disciplined for speaking French. Yet it should be noted that the legislative act in question contained no mention of language — neither of the need for English to predominate in the classroom, nor the need to ban French.

In light of this finding — a new one for me, at least — I would no longer characterize Act No. 27 as (to quote a pertinent source chosen almost at random) "the 1916 banning of French in Louisiana schools.”(7)

This was simply not the case.

I do not blame researchers who repeated this inaccuracy. Indeed, I myself am guilty of doing so — having heard the claim so many times from seemingly authoritative sources. Again, as I wrote in my book The Cajuns: Americanization of a People, "in 1916 the state's Board of Education banned French from classrooms. . . ."(8)

But that I now know is incorrect.

What really happened in 1916 was not the banning of French, but rather the banning of truancy. Act No. 27, that is, stated (to seize on what is arguably the act's most essential passage):

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana, That from and after September the first, 1916, every parent, guardian, or other person residing within the State of Louisiana, having control or charge of any child or children between the ages of seven and fourteen years, both inclusive, shall send such child or children to a public or private day school under such penalty for non-compliance herewith as is hereinafter provided.(9)

And while the act goes on for several more paragraphs, it makes no mention of language, only mandatory school attendance.

Some secondary sources, however, seem to have grasped the actual intent of Act No. 27. While still connecting this legislation to the punishment of French-speaking students, they more accurately characterize the act as only indirectly leading to punishment — particularly after ratification of the 1921 state constitution and its declaration that "The general exercises in the public schools shall be conducted in the English language."

Even so, education officials and others complained that Act No. 27 of 1916, despite its apparent toughness on truancy, had no real teeth to it. And so, as I note in The Cajuns:

This larger [post-World War II] student population resulted not only from the period’s "baby boom," but from a tougher state compulsory attendance law, known as Act 239. Passed by the state legislature in 1944, it required all children between ages seven and fifteen to attend school regularly; it also provided for the punishment of parents who failed to comply. In addition, Louisiana created "visiting teachers," whose jobs combined the roles of truant officers and social workers.(10)

I assert this 1944 mandatory education act ushered a "second wave" of French-speaking students into what by then were staunchly English-only schools. And, as I further contend, educators punished and denigrated this "flood of new students" for "their use of French, even as a second language because it allegedly corrupted their mastery of English." (Again, this ban did not affect the learning of conversational French.) Cajun children, and French or Creole-speaking children in general, were thus punished not merely in the years immediately following ratification of the 1921 state constitution, but into the 1940s and '50s — until by around 1960, when, as I observe in The Cajuns, "youths had no reason to fear punishment at school for speaking French — because so few of them spoke French."(11)

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Addendum

Having interviewed or corresponded with many Cajuns punished for speaking French as schoolchildren, and having even interviewed one elderly teacher who did some of the punishing, I believe there was no top-down directive from the Louisiana state Board of Education advising educators to use punishment.

Rather, I believe some individual teachers and principals, when faced with the task of making French-speaking children learn English, concluded on their own that punishment was (alas!) the best method for handling the issue. 

This would explain why, for instance, some Cajun interviewees told me that certain teachers punished for speaking French, while other teachers in the same school did not. 

Likewise, interviewees told me that some schools were known for punishing children for speaking French, while other schools in the same parish were known for taking a more lenient approach.

To me this suggests there was no codified method for discouraging students from speaking French. Some teachers punished, others did not. Some schools punished, others did not.

This lack of consistency also explains why no documentary evidence has been found (as far as I know) of any top-down directive from the state (or even parish) advising teachers to punish.

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For more on the topic of French and Creole (aka Kreyòl or Kouri-Vini) in Louisiana, see these other blog articles of mine:

French and Creole in Louisiana, 2010-2022: A Very Brief Analysis

Tracking the Decline of Cajun French

NOTES

(1)Shane K. Bernard, The Cajuns: Americanization of a People (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), p. 18.

(2)Article 226, Public Education, in Constitution of the State of Louisiana Adopted in Convention, at the City of New Orleans, the Twenty-Third Day of July, A.D. 1879 (New Orleans: Jas. H. Cosgrove, 1879), p. 55

(3)Article 251, in Constitution and Statutes of Louisiana . . . to January 1920, Vol. III, comp. Solomon Wolff (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1920), p. 2320.

(4)Article XII, Public Education, Section 12, in Constitution of the State of Louisiana Adopted in Convention at the City of Baton Rouge, June 18, 1921 (Baton Rouge: Ramirez-Jones Printing Company, [1921]), p. 93.

(5)Mabel Collette and Thomas R. Landry, French Can Enrich Your Elementary School Program: A Progress Report on the Teaching of Conversational French in Several Louisiana School Systems (Louisiana Department of Education, Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, 1952).

(6)Article XII: General Provisions, in Louisiana Constitution [1974 state constitution with amendments to 2024], Justia.com, https://law.justia.com/consti.../louisiana/Article12.html..., accessed 9 October 2024.

(7)Holly Duchmann, "French Language, Culture Alive but Struggling," HoumaToday, 12 April 2017, https://www.houmatoday.com/story/lifestyle/2017/04/13/french-language-culture-alive-but-struggling/21367549007/, accessed 13 October 2024; Ryan André Brasseaux, French North America in the Shadows of Conquest (New York: Routledge, 2021), p. 158, n. 92.

(8)Bernard, The Cajuns, p. 18.

(9)"Act No. 27 of 1916," Public School Laws of Louisiana, Tenth Compilation, T. H. Harris, State Superintendent (Baton Rouge: Ramires-Jones, 1916), pp. 109-110.

(10)Bernard, The Cajuns, p. 33.

(11)Ibid., p. 83.

Below is the entire text of Act No. 27 of 1916: