Louisiana

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• SOURCE: NPR
  8/18/2022
  

  Southern Republicans Want to Narrow the Census Definition of Black Identity – Why?

  In a case that involves both the history of voting rights and exclusion and changes in the Census's recognition of complex ethnic identities since 1980, the Supreme Court may reverse a longstanding assumption about which voters are properly understood to be Black. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  8/10/2022
  

  Cajun Radio is Keeping Louisiana French Alive

  "Cajuns were punished for speaking French in school, Cajun GIs left the region to fight in the world wars and learned English, the discovery of oil ushered in more English, and television further diluted the language."

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• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  4/18/2022
  

  EPA Will Finally Investigate "Cancer Alley" as a Civil Rights Violation

  The EPA will investigate whethe the state of Louisiana granted emissions permits to chemical producers in ways that exposed Black communities to significantly higher cancer risk. 

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• SOURCE: MSNBC
  1/5/2022
  

  Homer Plessy's Posthumous Pardon Finally Recognizes His Heroism

  by Keisha N. Blain

  "The decision to pardon Plessy and finally clear his record are the culmination of efforts by Keith Plessy, the great-great-grandson of Homer Plessy’s cousin, and Phoebe Ferguson, the great-great-granddaughter of John H. Ferguson, the Louisiana judge who upheld the state's Separate Car Act."

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• SOURCE: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
  12/9/2021
  

  The Industrial Infrastructure Catastrophe Hanging Over the Gulf Coast

  The flooding and destruction of the refineries and storage facilities along 52 miles of the Houston Ship Channel is a matter of if, not when, says environmental lawywer Jim Blackburn. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/12/2021
  

  Louisiana Governor to Decide Posthumous Pardon for Homer Plessy

  Louisiana's Avery C. Alexander Act, named for a longtime state House member, calls for pardoning individuals who were convicted of violating laws establishing segregation or discrimination, but has seldom been invoked to do so. 

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• SOURCE: CNN
  10/18/2021
  

  St. Malo, Louisiana, Site of Earliest Filipino-American Settlement, Threatened by Climate Change

  More than a century ago, long before the Civil War, St. Malo was the first permanent Filipino settlement in the United States. Preserving the settlement's history is now a race against time. 

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• SOURCE: Rolling Stone
  9/16/2021
  

  Cajun Punk Musician Louis Michot on Saving the Bayous

  by Andy Horowitz

  Can the DIY punk ethos of mutual aid, plus broadly distributed solar power, save the Louisiana Cajun country from the climate threat? 

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• SOURCE: Atlas Obscura
  9/10/2021
  

  The Challenges of Reclaiming Filipino Louisiana’s Centuries-Old History

  “Filipinos in Louisiana are always being ‘discovered,’ says Randy Gonzalez. Someone will write an article, ‘I bet you didn’t know there were Filipinos in Louisiana!’ Ten years later, someone will write the same article. I wish that would stop one day.”

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• SOURCE: CNN
  8/10/2021
  

  Bogalusa March, One of the Longest of the Civil Rights Era, Remembered in Louisiana

  The 1967 march from Bogalusa to Baton Rouge covered 107 miles in response to racist violence in the state. It is now represented by a marker on Louisiana's new Civil Rights Trail. 

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• SOURCE: The Week
  7/12/2021
  

  Remembering Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards, and his Merciless Roasting of David Duke

  Edwin Edwards saved the state of Louisiana by attacking Duke as a hateful bigot, winning office despite a record of corruption. 

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• SOURCE: Baton Rouge Advocate
  https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/artic
  

  Martha White, who helped start the 1953 Baton Rouge bus boycotts, dies at 99

  Martha White's defiance of customary segregation pushed the city's white bus drivers to strike demanding the repeal of a local desegregation ordinance. The ensuing boycott was a model for the Montgomery campaign two years later.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/7/2021
  

  ‘One Oppressive Economy Begets Another’

  Slavery and Jim Crow deprived Black communities in Louisiana of wealth and power, and enabled contemporary environmental racism. But slavery-era cemeteries are becoming part of efforts by those communities to fight back against polluters. 

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• SOURCE: History.com
  5/10/2021
  

  The First Asian American Settlement Was Established by Filipino Fishermen

  The first Asian American settlement in what is now the United States was by Filipino sailors and indentured servants who escaped from Spanish ships in the Gulf of Mexico and established settlements in Louisiana. 

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• SOURCE: Arkansas Democrat & Gazette
  4/11/2021
  

  Unsung and Unknown — Graphic Biography Details Life of First Black Lieutenant Governor, Oscar Dunn

  Professor Brian Mitchell's path into history began with a teacher's disbelief that one of his relatives had been the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana. He now tells the story of Oscar Dunn in a graphic form to make it as widely accessible as possible. 

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• SOURCE: Bitter Southerner
  2/18/20201
  

  Forgotten Camps, Living History: Japanese Internment in the South

  by Jason Christian

  Camp Livingston, deep in the Louisiana pines, used to be the site of a World War II Japanese internment camp. Drawing from the memories of internees, the research of two Louisiana State University librarians and other historians, and the activism of survivors and their descendants, this story uncovers a buried piece of American history.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/98/2021
  

  Black History is Often Shunned, Like the Book I Wrote

  by Martha S. Jones

  The historian of voting rights and Black women's activism examines the reaction to a planned discussion of her book through a Louisiana public library. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1/30/2021
  

  Only Accountability Will Allow the U.S. to Move Forward

  by Mitch Landrieu

  Full accountability for the Capitol Riot is essential lest white supremacists and other extremists take the lesson that their actions are accepted and permitted. The white supremacist massacres of the post-Reconstruction period show that moving on without accountability is impossible. 

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• SOURCE: Acadiana Advocate
  1/30/3021
  

  Lafayette Parish Library Director Retires Suddenly After Clash Over Voting Rights Programming

  A Louisiana library system is under pressure from conservatives to include "both sides" of the debate over voting rights in its public programming. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/28/2020
  

  The Massacre That Emboldened White Supremacists

  by William Briggs and Jon Krakauer

  The Colfax Massacre, sparked by white supremacists' refusal to accept a state election result, set in motion a series of legal rulings that made it virtually impossible for the federal government to prosecute civil rights violations by private citizens, ensuring that mob violence and racial oppression would continue.