Highlighting historic businesses is crucial because they embody resilience and innovation, offering inspirational stories that demonstrate how they’ve weathered challenges over time. These businesses are more than just economic entities; they become integral to the community's identity, often shaping local culture and traditions. By preserving and sharing their legacies, we honor their contributions and provide valuable lessons for future generations, reinforcing the importance of longevity and…

Using enormous wooden screws and muscle power, New Orleans Screwmen packed cotton bales tightly into ships, helping fuel the city's nineteenth-century prosperity. Their fascinating story reveals a world of labor, immigration, race, and cultural exchange. This ten-stop tour invites you to discover that history where it happened. Developed by historian Laura M. Hughes through her M.A. thesis research at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the tour brings an overlooked past into the present.

This tour will feature some of the sites, places, and people important and interesting to the history of boudin. This tour is currently under development as of 1/19/2022.

The radio, since its invention in the late 1800s, served as perhaps the most important invention throughout the twentieth century. For decades, listeners across the U.S. listen to the radio for news, music, information, and entertainment. The radio has also helped shape an increasingly connected world as it can be accessed through automobiles, mobile devices, and the internet. When Louisiana’s first radio station aired in 1922, a new chapter in the state’s history began that connected people on…

Bourdieu’s idea of social capital has to do with the acquiring and use of cultural sway to gain influence and power in a society. Commemorative street names are a way of constructing and expressing the past. In Acadiana there are many different streets named after people, but very few of the people who live here know much, if anything, about those people or their stories. As a public space, the names of streets are part of everyday life, but are often overlooked. Cultural symbols and popular…