Notes on Emancipation in Louisiana, 1863-1865

I have been asked a number of times “When did slavery in Louisiana end?”*

The short answer is that slavery in Louisiana ended between the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on December 6, 1865.

Enslaved sugarcane field workers in south Louisiana.
Source: Harper's Monthly (1853)

Yet the question demands a more complicated response.

While the U.S. government dealt with the status of enslaved persons in the Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862 and the Captured and Abandoned Property Acts of 1863, those measures permitted Union troops to seize and free enslaved persons only under very specific conditions.(1) It was the Emancipation Proclamation, however, that aimed to free enslaved persons en masse. Yet a reading of the Proclamation reveals — much to the surprise of many who have never examined it, at least not in detail — that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln excluded from its effects by name the Louisiana parishes (counties) of, to quote the Proclamation itself, “St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans. . . .”

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
with exempted parishes highlighted.
Source: Lincoln Presidential Library
(click to enlarge)

The question then arises, “Why did Lincoln exclude these parishes from the Proclamation?”

Many American historians declare that Lincoln excluded these parishes because they were “Union-held” and, as is commonly known, the Proclamation freed the enslaved only in areas held by Confederate forces. Thus, as one historian notes, “Lincoln’s critics were quick to . . . claim that the Proclamation had never freed anyone at all. ‘Where he has not power Mr. Lincoln will set the negroes free; where he retains power he will consider them as slaves,’. . .” Others, the same historian observes, strongly disagreed: “No one should ‘for a moment imagine that the Emancipation Proclamation had no force in law,’ warned one abolitionist. ‘By that instrument three millions of slaves were legally set free.’”(2)

It is telling that contemporary observers expressed such opposing views about the document’s impact. Today, historians continue to evaluate the Proclamation. Yet the reason for Lincoln’s exclusion of those thirteen Louisiana parishes has been overlooked or explained away rather dubiously.

Section of the Emancipation Proclamation
exempting certain south Louisiana parishes.
Source: National Archives & Records Administration

As noted, some sources claim Lincoln excluded those thirteen parishes because they were Union-held and thus beyond the Proclamation’s stated intent of freeing the enslaved only in “the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion.”

“This day” meaning January 1, 1863, the day the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.

Here a problem arises: on that date those thirteen parishes were not entirely Union-held.

While Orleans Parish (including the city of New Orleans) and other parishes along the Mississippi River were wholly or largely Union-held, others of those thirteen parishes were not Union-held. Take, for example, St. Martin and St. Mary parishes.(3) At the time of the Proclamation’s enactment, neither St. Martin Parish nor the majority of St. Mary Parish were Union-held,(4) despite the ability of Union gunboats to ascend their meandering rivers and bayous.

Map of the exempted parishes,
by the author.

When in the middle of that very month, for instance, a Union flotilla dared to steam up Bayou Teche — a vital 125-mile waterway of both strategic and economic importance — it encountered a withering barrage of enemy fire hailing from sharpshooters on land and a Rebel gunboat on water. Both sides suffered losses (among them the flotilla’s commander), but it was the Union that withdrew, leaving Rebels in command of the entire Teche.(5)

Again, why did Lincoln exclude those thirteen parishes from the Emancipation Proclamation when some were demonstrably not Union-held?

Two present-day historians, Stephanie McCurry of Columbia University and Martin Ruef of Duke University independently put forth the idea that Lincoln excluded those parishes because he (correctly or not) believed them to be bastions of pro-Union sentiment.(6) In other words, Lincoln did not wish to spoil the goodwill he thought existed in that alleged pro-Union enclave.(7)

Granted, the two historians do not overtly state why Lincoln excluded those parishes. They do strongly imply he did so because he viewed them as pro-Union. McCurry, for example, observes, “Nor did the Emancipation Proclamation resolve the dilemma [of enslavement], because the southern Louisiana parishes, with their cohort of Unionist sugar planters, were officially exempt from its provisions” [my italics].

Regardless, McCurry and Ruef confirm my interpretation of their writings. To my query McCurry responded, “[Y]our reading accords with my own,” while Ruef likewise replied, “[M]y understanding certainly dovetails with yours. In the book [his Between Slavery and Capitalism], I suggest that the exclusion resulted from efforts by Union authorities to maintain the support of sugar plantation owners.”(8)

Another present-day historian, John C. Rodrigue, formerly of Louisiana State University, now of Stonehill College, offers a similar if slightly qualified view of Lincoln’s motivation. As Rodrigue states in his Reconstruction in the Cane Fields, “[T]he proclamation specifically exempted from its provisions the sugar parishes. . . . [I]n addition to Lincoln’s refusal, on grounds of constitutional scruples, to attack slavery in areas not in rebellion, he also hoped to win the support of loyal slaveholders for a Unionist government for Louisiana” [my italics].

Like McCurry and Ruef, Rodrigue further explained his outlook in correspondence with me. In that exchange, he noted

I’m not sure I would go so far as to say that Lincoln excluded those areas because they were “pro-Union,” or even because he thought they were pro-Union [my italics]. I think it would be more accurate to say that [there] were some slaveholders (and other whites) who were loyal [to the Union], or there were slaveholders in those parishes who had previously supported the Confederacy but who were now willing to resume their allegiance [to the North] if doing so would help them to keep their slaves. . . . But in terms of the political loyalties of the majority of the white populations, these were not pro-Union areas. . . . Again . . . I would not necessarily concur in the statement that the excluded areas were “pro-Union” in their sentiment. But they did have potential Unionist elements that Lincoln was hoping to build on.

In other words, Rodrigue avers that Lincoln excluded those thirteen south Louisiana parishes not because he viewed them as significantly “pro-Union,” but because they harbored a population of sugar-planter slaveowners whom the President viewed as “potential Unionist elements.”(9)

Notably, those thirteen excluded parishes made up the entirety of Louisiana’s first and second U.S. Congressional districts, which — despite the ongoing conflict — sent two congressmen to Washington in early December 1862. That Lincoln should one month later exclude those parishes, and only those parishes, from the Emancipation Proclamation hardly seems coincidental. As one of those congressmen shortly observed, “[I]n the first and second congressional districts . . . those people have always in every election, and under the most trying circumstances, shown their fidelity to this [U.S.] Government.” Lincoln, in short, had no wish to derail pro-Union sentiment in two south Louisiana congressional districts still active in the U.S. political system, even as the rest of the state deferred to the Confederacy.(10)

Whatever its impetus, the exclusion clause in the Emancipation Proclamation had real consequences. This is demonstrated by a circular printed by Union troops on capturing the town of New Iberia (located at the time, April 1863, in St. Martin Parish). Preserved in the Library of Congress, that circular declared, “The generally received impression, that the slaves of this Parish, are free, by force of the presence of the Union army is erroneous [original italics].” It continued, “This Parish . . . is excepted by name, in the Emancipation Proclamation, of President Lincoln, issued at Washington, D.C., January 1, 1863. . . . No farther [sic] interference, with the institution of slavery will be allowed by the Army Authorities, than may necessarily result from the police regulations.”(11)

Union circular stating that enslaved persons
in occupied St. Martin Parish were not free.
Source: Library of Congress

Putting aside the Proclamation, the question remains, “When did slavery in Louisiana end in actuality, including in those thirteen excluded parishes?”

A reasonable answer might be that it ended months after the Civil War’s conclusion, when on December 6, 1865, the various states ratified the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment stated, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Yet the Union-held part of Louisiana had already abolished slavery as early as September 5, 1864.(12) On that date the state’s Union-controlled parishes ratified a new state constitution, the first article of which declared, “Slavery and involuntary servitude . . . are hereby forever abolished and prohibited throughout the state.”(13)

Detail of the 1864 Louisiana state constitution
abolishing slavery (ratified September 1864).

Like the Emancipation Proclamation, this article was unenforceable in most of Louisiana, where the Confederate government remained in control. But with the South’s defeat in April 1865, the entire state fell under the rule of this new constitution and its vital antislavery article.

One could argue, however, that the Union-backed state government ended slavery even earlier than September 1864. On May 11 that year, the same state government issued an ordinance outlawing slavery within its borders.(14) Like the state constitution ratified months later, this May ordinance was unenforceable throughout most of Louisiana.

Louisiana ordinance
abolishing slavery (May 1864)
Source: Library of Congress

A mere ordinance might be said to lack the gravitas of a law framed in a state constitution. Yet an ordinance offered a notable benefit over a constitution and its complicated ratification process. As an abolitionist wrote of Louisiana’s new antislavery ordinance, “This important act, passed almost unanimously by the only legislative power in the State, does not need the ratification of the people to make it law. . . . [I]t no more stands in need of popular ratification than any other ordinance. . . . [W]ithout waiting for that endorsement, it is the law.”(15) In other words, the ordinance served as a feasible stop-gap measure pending ratification of the new antislavery state constitution.

This attempt to answer the broad question “When did slavery end in Louisiana?” demonstrates how messy history can be — even when dealing with a major well-documented event that occurred only 160 years ago.

To summarize, we might consider several possible dates for the end of slavery in Louisiana:

• January 1, 1863: when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect (covering only Rebel-held parts of Louisiana);

• May 11, 1864: when the Union-backed Louisiana state government issued an ordinance banning slavery statewide (including both Union-held and, if symbolically, Rebel-held territory);

• September 5, 1864: when voters in Union-controlled parts of Louisiana ratified a new antislavery state constitution (effective in Union-held and, if symbolically, Rebel-held territory);

• December 6, 1865: when the various states ratified the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, banning slavery nationally.

As to the question of when slavery ended in those thirteen parishes excluded by the Emancipation Proclamation: it could be asserted the ordinance of May 1864 ended slavery in those places, either in theory or practice, depending on whether Union or Confederate forces locally held sway. Some four months later the newly ratified state constitution affirmed that ordinance. Moreover, that constitution became statewide law when the war ended in spring 1865. Finally, ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on December 6, 1865, declared on the federal level — and thus more commandingly — what Louisiana had already decided two summers earlier: that slavery was at long last a defunct institution.

NOTES

*I thank historian Daniel H. Usner of Vanderbilt University, independent geographer Lucy W. Osborn, and educator Tom Richey for critiquing my essay. I also express gratitude to Stephanie McCurry of Columbia University, Martin Ruef of Duke University, and John C. Rodrigue of Stonehill College for their substantive feedback on Lincoln’s reasons for excluding certain parishes from the Emancipation Proclamation.

(1) For example, enslaved persons could be seized if they had been used for “aiding, abetting, or promoting . . . insurrection or resistance to the laws” or when they had belonged to persons who “commit the crime of treason against the United States, and shall be adjudged guilty thereof. . . .”

(2) Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation: The End of Slavery in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), pp. 257, 258.

(3) I do not refer to Iberia Parish, which sits between St. Martin and St. Mary, because it did not exist in 1863.

(4) A Congressional document published in early February 1863 referred to the thirteen-parish region as “entirely within the federal lines [original italics], with the exception of the parish of St. Martin and a portion of St. Mary" [my italics]. Even then, the word “entirely” might have been an exaggeration. “Report No. 22,” House of Representatives, 37th Cong., 3rd Sess., 3 February 1863, in Reports of Committees of the House of Representatives and Court of Claims . . . 1862-’63 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1863), p. 1.

(5) Shane K. Bernard, Teche: A History of Louisiana’s Most Famous Bayou (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016), pp. 81-83.

(6) As for the issue of why those parishes would have been pro-Union: their loyalty might have stemmed from a reliance on protective federal tariffs as well as on northern industry for refining their sugar. South Louisiana sugar planters produced brown sugar (and molasses), but left the commodity to others, outside the South, to refine into granulated white sugar.

(7) General Banks’ northern troops did much to dispel this pro-Union goodwill during their three Teche Country invasions of 1863-1864, burning and looting extensively. This fact stems not only from Confederate propagandists, but more importantly from Union soldiers who witnessed such behavior and condemned it. See Bernard, Teche, pp. 93-94.

(8) Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 254; Martin Ruef, Between Slavery and Capitalism: The Legacy of Emancipation in the American South (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 44.

    McCurry, to Shane K. Bernard, 25 and 26 June 2025, email correspondence; Ruef, to Shane K. Bernard, 25 June 2026, email correspondence.

    I thank Dr. Stephanie McCurry of Columbia University and Dr. Martin Ruef of Duke University for their feedback on this topic and for permitting me to quote their correspondence.

(9) John C. Rodrigue, Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana’s Sugar Parishes, 1862-1880 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), p. 38; Rodrigue, to Shane K. Bernard, 15 July 2025, email correspondence. See also Rodrigue, Lincoln and Reconstruction (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013), pp. 37, 42, 51-52.

    I thank Dr. Rodrigue for his feedback and for permitting me to quote his correspondence.

(10) The First Congressional District of Louisiana consisted of Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes, and part of Orleans Parish, including a section of the city of New Orleans.

    The Second Congressional District consisted of Jefferson, St. Charles, St. John, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Lafourche, Terrebonne, St. Martin, and St. Mary parishes, as well as, again, part of Orleans Parish and a section of New Orleans. “Report No. 22,” p. 1.

    Congressman Michael Hahn, Second Congressional District, State of Louisiana, in “Louisiana Elections,” The Congressional Globe, 17 February 1863, p. 1030. See also “Report No. 22,” pp. 1-3.

    I am indebted to Dr. Rodrigue for suggesting a link between the parishes in the First and Second congressional districts and those excluded from the Emancipation Proclamation. Rodrigue, to Bernard, 15 July 2025. See also Rodrigue, Lincoln and Reconstruction, p. 47.

(11) This did not prevent enslaved persons from seizing de facto freedom for themselves. In south Louisiana many fled sugar plantations to seek protection with sometimes ambivalent Union troops.

    A. B. Long, Captain and Provost Marshall, Commanding Post, [Union Army], New Iberia, La., 24 April 1863, PD [digitized image], Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2020770803/, accessed 27 June 2025.

(12) I originally viewed 23 July 1864, the date of the constitution’s passage by the Union-backed state legislature, as a vital emancipative date. Dr. Rodrigue reminded me, however, that the constitution would not have become law until voters ratified it on 5 September 1864. See “Cases of Contested Elections in Congress from 1834 to 1865, Inclusive,” comp. D. W. Bartlett, Misc. Doc. No. 57, 38th Cong., 2nd. Sess., in Miscellaneous Documents of the House of Representatives, 1864-’65, Vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1865), p. 585.

(13) Title I. Emancipation, “Constitution of the State of Louisiana, Adopted in Convention, July 23, 1864,” in Louisiana Annual Reports (Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Louisiana, for the Year 1865), Vol. XVII, (New Orleans: Bloomfield & Steel, 1866), Appendix, p. i.

(14) Ordinance Abolishing Slavery in Louisiana, 11 May 1864, ALS [digitized image], in Abraham Lincoln Papers: Series 1, General Correspondence, 1833-1916: Louisiana Constitutional Convention, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.3298800/?r=-0.945,-0.038,2.889,1.725,0, accessed 17 July 1863.

(15)“Is the Black Code Still in Force?” New Orleans Tribune, 21 July 1864, p. 1.

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, even 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 in this essay the 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.

My 2003 book,
available here.

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 enrolled in conversational French. 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 clause — 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 (incorrectly) in my book The Cajuns: Americanization of a People, "in 1916 the state's Board of Education banned French from classrooms. . . ."(8)

But now I know that 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, as noted, 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 into what were by then strictly English-only schools a second wave of French-speaking students. 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)

❧

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 (unfortunately) that punishment was 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 helps to explain why no documentary evidence has been found (as far as I know) of any top-down directive from the state advising teachers to punish. In short, I believe no such top-down directive existed.

Addendum of 4 March 2026 I have found a Louisiana Department of Education booklet for teachers that was published in 1924–the period in which the issue of teaching English to French-speaking students came to the fore. In a section titled "French Children," the booklet observes, "There are many children in Louisiana who are unable to speak English when they enter the public schools. The problem of teaching reading to these children is especially difficult." Importantly, the booklet makes no mention of punishment as a means of instilling English in those French-speaking students—which in my opinion further suggests that this punitive practice did not stem from the state, but occurred on the local level.

Indeed, this official state handbook implicitly recommends patience in teaching English to French-speaking students. "The oral word, the written word and the meaning," the booklet advises, "must all be made clear. Reading should not be attempted for several weeks. The first work should be the development of an English vocabulary. Present the words orally, always making the meaning clear by action, objects or pictures. Be sure to establish a direct relation between the word and the idea it represents. As soon as possible use the words orally in sentences. Be sure to check the child's understanding of each sentence by having him indicate in some way what is said. Have the children use the words whenever possible. Develop the words that the child will need to use most in his everyday activities. . . ." Moreover, the booklet suggests it may be necessary for teachers to stray from the schedule advanced by the official curriculum—which, again, suggests the importance of patience. "Many schools in the state and in some instances entire parishes," it notes, "have been giving one and one-half or two years' time to [covering] the first grade work. . . . If the majority of the first grade children in French districts cannot reach the standard of the first grade in one year, then the standard is too high or the teaching is inefficient." Source: State Course of Study for Elementary Schools of Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Louisiana Department of Education, 1924), pp. 59-60.

❧

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.

(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:

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

As a follow up to my recent essay “Disappearing Cajuns and Creoles? Ethnic Identity and the Limits of Census Data,” I have produced line charts representing data for two Louisiana languages, French and Creole, as spoken at home by persons aged five and older. The statistics used to construct these charts derive from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS), compiled annually from 2010 to 2022. (Stats for 2023 and 2024 are not yet available.)

Each language is represented by two charts: one chart is based a one-year estimate, and the other, on a five-year estimate.(1)

On viewing these charts one feature becomes immediately clear: a general decline in the number of Louisiana’s French and Creole speakers.

In particular, for the twelve years ending in 2022, data indicates a 50- or 53-percent decline in the number of French speakers in Louisiana's homes (depending on whether one consults the one-year or five-year estimate). For speakers of French Creole/Haitian, the data shows a 45- or 61-percent drop over the same period (again, depending on which estimate is used; see my below analysis of the ACS's use of the terms “French Creole” and “Haitian”).

Discussing this with others who share my interest in all things Cajun and Creole, the consensus, though speculative, is that the decline stems largely if not solely from the demise of older French- and Creole-speaking persons, combined with an insufficient number of younger French- and Creole-speakers to replace them.

This downward trend — perceptible today even through impressionistic data (such as the dearth of French or Creole heard on the street, in commerce, or in other workday contexts) — explains the fervent “call to arms” among Louisiana’s sizeable corps of language and cultural activists. “Nowadays, our language is flooded, buried, not yet dead but above all desperate,” notes recently founded activist group l’Assemblée de la Louisiane. It goes on: “Language is not the only marker of our collective identity, but it is probably one of the most important and undoubtedly the most threatened.”(2)

Clearly there is no time to lose, yet, as esteemed folklorist and linguist Barry Jean Ancelet has often pointed out, “Chaque fois que l’on s’apprête à fermer le cercueil sur le cadavre de la culture cadienne et créole, il se lève et commande une bière!” Or, in translation, “Every time we prepare to close the coffin on Cajun and Creole culture, the corpse gets up and orders a beer!”(3)

It should be kept in mind that the stats in question are estimates derived from sampling and not the result of direct inquiry of all possible census respondents. Moreover, while it is fact that the U.S. Census Bureau reports the results shown on the following charts (assuming, of course, I convey the data accurately, and I think I do), readers with a healthy measure of skepticism might rightly ask, “Does this census data actually reflect the reality of language use in Louisiana?” That, however, is a topic for another day. (I will, however, give one example of how this census data cannot tell the entire story: My adult daughter, who attended French Immersion schools as a child in the early 2000s, speaks French very well — but she does not speak French “at home,” mainly because she has no one with whom to speak it. As such, the Census Bureau would not count her (or others like her, from children to the elderly) as speaking French. Because of the narrow wording of the language question, the answers it solicits no doubt underrepresent the number of French speakers in Louisiana — though by how much, who can say?)

Regarding the terms “French Creole” and “Haitian” as used by the U.S. Census Bureau: from 2010 to 2015 the Bureau collected language data on “French Creole.” From 2016 onward, however, it apparently ceased to collect data on that language or dialect, and instead began to collect data on what it referred to as “Haitian.” (A vertical red line on the ”French Creole/Haitian” charts indicates where in time this change occurred.) 

It is unclear if, in Louisiana’s case, the Census Bureau regarded “Haitian” as merely “French Creole” by another name. There does, however, appear to be some continuity in the numbers reported before and after the change in terms. It is therefore possible that census respondents considered “Haitian” a reasonable substitute for “French Creole,” especially given historic links between Louisiana and the people and culture of Haiti. I refer to large numbers of Haitians, both free and enslaved, who came to Louisiana in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

I leave it to others to determine why the Census Bureau made this switch and if, in the context of these ACS results, it is valid to interpret “Haitian” as synonymous with (or at least a close approximation to) “French Creole.” Regardless, “French Creole” is now viewed as a misnomer because it implies a dialect of continental French: rather, the tongue is now viewed as its own distinct standalone language called Creole, Kreyòl, or Kouri-Vini. (For more about census stats and language in Louisiana, see my earlier essay “Tracking the Decline of Cajun French”.)

Notes

(1)As the Census Bureau explains regarding the difference between 1-year and 5-year ACS estimates, “Each year, the U.S. Census Bureau publishes American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates for geographic areas with populations of 65,000 or more. . . . For geographic areas with smaller populations, the ACS samples too few housing units to provide reliable single-year estimates. For these areas, several years of data are pooled together to create more precise multiyear estimates. Since 2010, the ACS has published 5-year data (beginning with 2005–2009 estimates) for all geographic areas down to the census tract and block group levels. . . . This means that there are two sets of numbers — both 1-year estimates and 5-year estimates — available for geographic areas with at least 65,000 people. . . [while] Less populous areas . . . receive only 5-year estimates. . . . There are no hard-and-fast rules for choosing between 1-year and 5-year data.” “Understanding and Using ACS Single-Year And Multiyear Estimates,” U.S. Census Bureau, 2018 [PDF document (excerpt)], https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/acs/acs_general_handbook_2018_ch03.pdf, accessed 30 July 2024.

(2)“Declaration of St. Martinville, Louisiana, at the Founding of the Assembly of Louisiana, September 16, 2023,”  l’Assemblée de la Louisiane, https://www.assemblee.la/our-vision, accessed 1 August 2024.

(3)Ancelet is quoted in Jean-Benoît Nadeau, “Mardi gras en Louisiane,” Le Devoir (Montreal), 24 February 2020, https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/chroniques/573560/mardi-gras-en-louisiane, accessed 30 July 2024.