Louisiana Tours

Louisiana may well have the most distinctive African American history in the nation. In a situation unique to our area, many people of African descent arrived in Louisiana as free people and would never experience life as slaves. These were refugees from Haiti who had fled a 1791 slave uprising that would eventually establish the western hemisphere's second oldest nation. The newcomers—often of mixed race—sometimes owned slaves themselves. So numerous were the immigrants that they approximately doubled the population of New Orleans.
Louisiana was also home to some of the earliest civil rights pioneers. P.B.S. Pinchback, for instance, became the first person of African descent to serve as governor of a U.S. state in 1872. Twenty years later, New Orleanian Homer Plessy challenged Jim Crow laws in their infancy when he boarded a whites-only car on a South Louisiana commuter train. Though the Supreme Court of the United States would ultimately rule against Plessy and his supporters, his courage, like many who came before and after was profound. The state's black community enriched the entire nation. The descendants of Kongo captives and Haitian refugees would work alongside African Americans from across the country to achieve the resounding success of the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-twentieth century. Their contributions have gone well beyond politics, however. Louisianans—and others throughout the nation—imbibe Louisiana's African American culture whenever they listen to Jazz or eat gumbo.