Pre–colonial history , the oldest mound complex in North America The area of Louisiana is the place of origin of the
Mound Builders culture during the Middle
Archaic period, in the
4th millennium BC. The sites of Caney and Frenchman's Bend have been securely dated to 5600–5000
BP (about 3700–3100 BC), demonstrating that seasonal hunter-gatherers from around this time organized to build complex earthwork constructions in what is now northern Louisiana. The
Watson Brake site near present-day
Monroe has an eleven-mound complex; it was built about 5400 BP (3500 BC). These discoveries overturned previous assumptions in archaeology that such complex mounds were built only by cultures of more settled peoples who were dependent on maize cultivation. The Hedgepeth Site in
Lincoln Parish is more recent, dated to 5200–4500 BP (3300–2600 BC).
UNESCO site Nearly 2,000 years later,
Poverty Point was built; it is the largest and best-known Late Archaic site in the state. The city of modern–day
Epps developed near it. The
Poverty Point culture may have reached its peak around 1500 BC, making it the first complex culture, and possibly the first tribal culture in North America. It lasted until approximately 700 BC. The Poverty Point culture was followed by the
Tchefuncte and Lake Cormorant cultures of the
Tchula period, local manifestations of Early
Woodland period. The Tchefuncte culture were the first people in the area of Louisiana to make large amounts of pottery. These cultures lasted until 200 AD. The Middle Woodland period started in Louisiana with the
Marksville culture in the southern and eastern part of the state, reaching across the Mississippi River to the east around Natchez, and the
Fourche Maline culture in the northwestern part of the state. The Marksville culture was named after the
Marksville Prehistoric Indian Site in
Avoyelles Parish. , once the second tallest earthworks in North America These cultures were contemporaneous with the
Hopewell cultures of present-day
Ohio and
Illinois, and participated in the Hopewell Exchange Network. Trade with peoples to the southwest brought the
bow and
arrow. The first
burial mounds were built at this time. By 400 the
Late Woodland period had begun with the
Baytown culture,
Troyville culture, and Coastal Troyville during the Baytown period and were succeeded by the
Coles Creek cultures. Where the Baytown peoples built dispersed settlements, the Troyville people instead continued building major earthwork centers. Population increased dramatically and there is strong evidence of a growing cultural and political complexity. Many Coles Creek sites were erected over earlier Woodland period
mortuary mounds. Scholars have speculated that emerging elites were symbolically and physically appropriating dead ancestors to emphasize and project their own authority. The
Mississippian period in Louisiana was when the
Plaquemine and the
Caddoan Mississippian cultures developed, and the peoples adopted extensive maize agriculture, cultivating different strains of the plant by saving seeds, selecting for certain characteristics, etc. The Plaquemine culture in the lower
Mississippi River Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana began in 1200 and continued to about 1600. Examples in Louisiana include the
Medora site, the archaeological
type site for the culture in West Baton Rouge Parish whose characteristics helped define the culture, the
Atchafalaya Basin Mounds in St. Mary Parish, the
Fitzhugh Mounds in Madison Parish, the
Scott Place Mounds in Union Parish, and the
Sims site in St. Charles Parish. Plaquemine culture was contemporaneous with the Middle Mississippian culture that is represented by its largest settlement, the
Cahokia site in Illinois east of
St. Louis, Missouri. At its peak Cahokia is estimated to have had a population of more than 20,000. The Plaquemine culture is considered ancestral to the historic
Natchez and
Taensa peoples, whose descendants encountered Europeans in the colonial era. By 1000 in the northwestern part of the state, the Fourche Maline culture had evolved into the Caddoan Mississippian culture. The Caddoan Mississippians occupied a large territory, including what is now eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas, northeast
Texas, and northwest Louisiana. Archaeological evidence has demonstrated that the cultural continuity is unbroken from prehistory to the present. The
Caddo and related
Caddo-language speakers in prehistoric times and at first European contact were the direct ancestors of the modern
Caddo Nation of Oklahoma of today. Significant Caddoan Mississippian archaeological sites in Louisiana include
Belcher Mound Site in
Caddo Parish and
Gahagan Mounds Site in Red River Parish. Many current place names in Louisiana, including
Atchafalaya, Natchitouches (now spelled
Natchitoches), Caddo,
Houma,
Tangipahoa, and
Avoyel (as
Avoyelles), are transliterations of those used in various Native American languages.
Exploration and colonization by Europeans The first European explorers to visit Louisiana came in 1528 when a Spanish expedition led by
Pánfilo de Narváez located the mouth of the Mississippi River. In 1542,
Hernando de Soto's expedition skirted to the north and west of the state (encountering Caddo and Tunica groups) and then followed the Mississippi River down to the
Gulf of Mexico in 1543. Spanish interest in Louisiana faded away for a century and a half. In the late 17th century, French and
French Canadian expeditions, which included sovereign, religious and commercial aims, established a foothold on the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. With its first settlements, France laid claim to a vast region of North America and set out to establish a commercial empire and French nation stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. In 1682, the French explorer
Robert Cavelier de La Salle named the region Louisiana to honor King
Louis XIV of France. The first permanent settlement, Fort Maurepas (now
Ocean Springs, Mississippi), was founded in 1699 by
Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, a French military officer from
New France. By then the French had also built a small fort at the mouth of the Mississippi at a settlement they named
La Balise (or La Balize), "
seamark" in French. By 1721, they built a wooden lighthouse-type structure here to guide ships on the river. A royal ordinance of 1722—following the Crown's transfer of the
Illinois Country's governance from Canada to Louisiana—may have featured the broadest definition of Louisiana: all land claimed by France south of the
Great Lakes between the
Rocky Mountains and the
Alleghenies. A generation later, trade conflicts between Canada and Louisiana led to a more defined boundary between the French colonies; in 1745, Louisiana governor general
Vaudreuil set the northern and eastern bounds of his domain as the
Wabash valley up to the mouth of the
Vermilion River (near present-day
Danville, Illinois); from there, northwest to
le Rocher on the
Illinois River, and from there west to the mouth of the
Rock River (at present day
Rock Island, Illinois). making it the oldest permanent European settlement in the modern state of Louisiana. The French settlement had two purposes: to establish trade with the Spanish in
Texas via the Old San Antonio Road, and to deter Spanish advances into Louisiana. The settlement soon became a flourishing river port and crossroads, giving rise to vast cotton kingdoms along the river that were worked by imported African slaves. Over time, planters developed large plantations and built fine homes in a growing town. This became a pattern repeated in New Orleans and other places, although the commodity crop in the south was primarily sugar cane. , settled in southern Louisiana, especially along the banks of its major bayous. Louisiana's French settlements contributed to further exploration and outposts, concentrated along the banks of the Mississippi and its major tributaries, from Louisiana to as far north as the region called the
Illinois Country, around present-day
St. Louis, Missouri. The latter was settled by French colonists from Illinois. Initially,
Mobile and then
Biloxi served as the capital of La Louisiane. Recognizing the importance of the Mississippi River to trade and military interests, and wanting to protect the capital from severe coastal storms, France developed New Orleans from 1722 as the seat of civilian and military authority south of the Great Lakes. From then until the United States acquired the territory in the
Louisiana Purchase of 1803, France and Spain jockeyed for control of New Orleans and the lands west of the Mississippi. In the 1720s, German immigrants settled along the Mississippi River, in a region referred to as the
German Coast. France ceded most of its territory east of the Mississippi to
Great Britain in 1763, in the aftermath of
Britain's victory in the Seven Years' War (generally referred to in North America as the
French and Indian War). This included the lands along the Gulf Coast and north of Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi River, which became known as British West Florida. The rest of Louisiana west of the Mississippi, as well as the "isle of New Orleans", had become a colony of Spain by the
Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762). The transfer of power on either side of the river would be delayed until later in the decade. In 1765, during Spanish rule, several thousand
Acadians from the French colony of
Acadia (now
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and
Prince Edward Island) made their way to Louisiana after having been
expelled from Acadia by the British government after the French and Indian War. They settled chiefly in the southwestern Louisiana region now called
Acadiana. The governor
Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga, eager to gain more settlers, welcomed the Acadians, who became the ancestors of Louisiana's
Cajuns. Spanish Canary Islanders, called
Isleños, emigrated from the
Canary Islands of Spain to Louisiana under the Spanish crown between 1778 and 1783. Starting in 1719, traders began to import slaves in higher numbers; two French ships, the
Du Maine and the
Aurore, arrived in New Orleans carrying more than 500 black slaves coming from Africa. Previous slaves in Louisiana had been transported from French colonies in the West Indies. By the end of 1721, New Orleans counted 1,256 inhabitants, of whom about half were slaves. In 1724, the French government issued a law called the
Code Noir ("Black Code" in English) which regulated the interaction of whites (blancs) and blacks (noirs) in its colony of Louisiana (which was much larger than the current state of Louisiana). After the
Sale of Louisiana, French Law survived in the Louisiana, such as the prohibition and outlaw of any cruel punishment. Fugitive slaves, called
maroons, could easily hide in the backcountry of the bayous and survive in small settlements. The word "maroon" comes from the Spanish "cimarron", which means "fierce" or "unruly." In the late 18th century, the last Spanish governor of the Louisiana territory wrote: with
mixed-race daughter; late 18th-century collage painting, New Orleans When the United States
purchased Louisiana in 1803, it was soon accepted that slaves could be brought to Louisiana as easily as they were brought to neighboring
Mississippi, though it violated U.S. law to do so. Despite demands by United States Rep.
James Hillhouse and by the pamphleteer
Thomas Paine to enforce existing federal law against slavery in the newly acquired territory, Hugh Thomas wrote that Claiborne was unable to enforce the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, which the U.S. and Great Britain enacted in 1807. The United States continued to protect the domestic slave trade, including the coastwise trade—the transport of slaves by ship along the Atlantic Coast and to New Orleans and other Gulf ports. By 1840, New Orleans had the biggest slave market in the United States, which contributed greatly to the economy of the city and of the state. New Orleans had become one of the wealthiest cities, and the third largest city, in the nation. The ban on the African slave trade and importation of slaves had increased demand in the domestic market. During the decades after the American Revolutionary War, more than one million enslaved African Americans underwent forced migration from the Upper South to the Deep South, two thirds of them in the slave trade. Others were transported by their owners as slaveholders moved west for new lands. With changing agriculture in the Upper South as planters shifted from tobacco to less labor-intensive mixed agriculture, planters had excess laborers. Many sold slaves to traders to take to the Deep South. Slaves were driven by traders overland from the Upper South or transported to New Orleans and other coastal markets by ship in the
coastwise slave trade. After sales in New Orleans, steamboats operating on the Mississippi transported slaves upstream to markets or plantation destinations at Natchez and Memphis. Unusually for a slave-state, Louisiana harbored escaped Filipino slaves from the
Manila Galleons. The members of the Filipino community were then commonly referred to as
Manila men, or
Manilamen, and later
Tagalas, as they were free when they created the oldest settlement of Asians in the United States in the village of
Saint Malo, Louisiana, the inhabitants of which, even joined the United States in the
War of 1812 against the British Empire while they were being led by the French-American
Jean Lafitte. Beginning in the 1790s, waves of immigration took place from
Saint-Domingue as refugees poured over following a
slave rebellion that started during the
French Revolution of
Saint-Domingue in 1791. Over the next decade, thousands of refugees landed in Louisiana from the island, including Europeans, Creoles, and Africans, some of the latter brought in by each free group. They greatly increased the French-speaking population in New Orleans and Louisiana, as well as the number of Africans, and the slaves reinforced
African culture in the city.
Anglo-American officials initially made attempts to keep out the additional
Creoles of color, but the
Louisiana Creoles wanted to increase the Creole population: more than half of the refugees eventually settled in Louisiana, and the majority remained in
New Orleans.
Pierre Clément de Laussat (
Governor, 1803) said: "Saint-Domingue was, of all our colonies in the Antilles, the one whose mentality and customs influenced Louisiana the most." , who operated in New Orleans, was born in
Port-au-Prince around 1782.
Purchase by the United States When the United States won its independence from Great Britain in 1783, one of its major concerns was having a European power on its western boundary, and the need for unrestricted access to the Mississippi River. As American settlers pushed west, they found that the
Appalachian Mountains provided a barrier to shipping goods eastward. The easiest way to ship produce was to use a
flatboat to float it down the
Ohio and Mississippi rivers to the port of New Orleans, where goods could be put on ocean-going vessels. The problem with this route was that the Spanish owned both sides of the Mississippi below
Natchez. Napoleon's ambitions in Louisiana involved the creation of a new empire centered on the
Caribbean sugar trade. By the terms of the
Treaty of Amiens of 1802, Great Britain returned control of the islands of
Martinique and
Guadeloupe to the French. Napoleon looked upon Louisiana as a depot for these sugar islands, and as a buffer to U.S. settlement. In October 1801 he sent a large military force to take back Saint-Domingue, then under control of Toussaint Louverture after the
Haitian Revolution. When the army led by Napoleon's brother-in-law Leclerc was defeated, Napoleon decided to sell Louisiana.
Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, was disturbed by Napoleon's plans to re-establish French colonies in North America. With the possession of New Orleans, Napoleon could close the Mississippi to U.S. commerce at any time. Jefferson authorized
Robert R. Livingston, U.S. minister to France, to negotiate for the purchase of the city of New Orleans, portions of the east bank of the Mississippi, and free navigation of the river for U.S. commerce. Livingston was authorized to pay up to $2million. An official transfer of Louisiana to French ownership had not yet taken place, and Napoleon's deal with the Spanish was a poorly kept secret on the frontier. On October 18, 1802, however, Juan Ventura Morales, acting intendant of Louisiana, made public the intention of Spain to revoke the right of deposit at New Orleans for all cargo from the United States. The closure of this vital port to the United States caused anger and consternation. Commerce in the west was virtually blockaded. Historians believe the revocation of the right of deposit was prompted by abuses by the Americans, particularly smuggling, and not by French intrigues as was believed at the time. President Jefferson ignored public pressure for war with France, and appointed
James Monroe a special envoy to Napoleon, to assist in obtaining New Orleans for the United States. Jefferson also raised the authorized expenditure to $10million. On April 11, 1803, French foreign minister
Talleyrand unexpectedly asked Livingston to purchase the entire Louisiana Territory, far exceeding the authorized negotiations for just New Orleans. Monroe agreed with Livingston that Napoleon might withdraw this offer at any time (leaving them with no ability to obtain the desired New Orleans area), and that approval from President Jefferson might take months, so Livingston and Monroe decided to open negotiations immediately. By April 30, they closed a deal for the purchase of the entire Louisiana territory of for sixty million
Francs (approximately $15million). The payment was made in United States
bonds, which Napoleon sold at face value to the Dutch firm of
Hope and Company, and the
British banking house of Baring, at a discount of per each $100 unit. As a result, France received only $8,831,250 in cash for Louisiana. English banker
Alexander Baring conferred with Marbois in Paris, shuttled to the United States to pick up the bonds, took them to Britain, and returned to France with the money—which Napoleon used to wage war against Baring's own country. When news of the purchase reached the United States, Jefferson was surprised. He had authorized the expenditure of $10million for a port city, and instead received treaties committing the government to spend $15million on a land package which would double the size of the country. Jefferson's political opponents in the
Federalist Party argued the Louisiana purchase was a worthless desert, and that the U.S. constitution did not provide for the acquisition of new land or negotiating treaties without the consent of the federal legislature. What really worried the opposition was the new states which would inevitably be carved from the Louisiana territory, strengthening western and southern interests in
U.S. Congress, and further reducing the influence of New England Federalists in national affairs. President Jefferson was an enthusiastic supporter of westward expansion, and held firm in his support for the treaty. Despite Federalist objections, the
U.S. Senate ratified the Louisiana treaty on October 20, 1803. By statute enacted on October 31, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson was authorized to take possession of the territories ceded by France and provide for initial governance. A transfer ceremony was held in New Orleans on November 29, 1803. Since the Louisiana territory had never officially been turned over to the French, the Spanish took down their flag, and the French raised theirs. The following day,
General James Wilkinson accepted possession of New Orleans for the United States. The Louisiana Territory, purchased for less than three cents an acre, doubled the size of the United States overnight, without a war or the loss of a single American life, and set a precedent for the purchase of territory. It opened the way for the eventual expansion of the United States across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. Shortly after the United States took possession, the area was divided into two territories along the
33rd parallel north on March 26, 1804, thereby organizing the
Territory of Orleans to the south and the
District of Louisiana (subsequently formed as the
Louisiana Territory) to the north.
Statehood Louisiana became the eighteenth U.S. state on April 30, 1812; the Territory of Orleans became the State of Louisiana and the Louisiana Territory was simultaneously renamed the
Missouri Territory. At its creation, the state of Louisiana did not include the area north and east of the Mississippi River known as the
Florida Parishes. On April 14, 1812, Congress had authorized Louisiana to expand its borders to include the Florida Parishes, but the border change required approval of the state legislature, which it did not give until August 4. For the roughly three months in between, the northern border of eastern Louisiana was the course of
Bayou Manchac and the middle of
Lake Maurepas and
Lake Pontchartrain. From 1824 to 1861, Louisiana moved from a political system based on personality and ethnicity to a distinct two-party system, with Democrats competing first against
Whigs, then
Know Nothings, and finally only other
Democrats.
Secession and the Civil War , April 1862, colored lithograph of engraving According to the 1860 census, 331,726 people were enslaved, nearly 47% of the state's total population of 708,002. The strong economic interest of elite whites in maintaining the slave society contributed to Louisiana's decision to secede from the Union on January 26, 1861. It followed other U.S. states in seceding after the election of
Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States. Louisiana's secession was announced on January 26, 1861, and it became part of the
Confederate States of America. The state was quickly defeated in the
Civil War, a result of Union strategy to cut the Confederacy in two by controlling the
Mississippi River. Federal troops captured New Orleans on April 25, 1862. Because a large part of the population had Union sympathies (or compatible commercial interests), the federal government took the unusual step of designating the areas of Louisiana under federal control as a state within the Union, with its own elected representatives to the U.S. Congress.
Post–Civil War to mid–20th century Following the American Civil War and emancipation of slaves, violence rose in the southern U.S. as the war was carried on by insurgent private and paramilitary groups. During the initial period after the war, there was a massive rise in black participation in terms of voting and
holding political office. Louisiana saw the United States' first and second black governors with
Oscar Dunn and
P.B.S. Pinchback, with 125 black members of the state legislature being elected during this time, while
Charles E. Nash was elected to represent the state's
6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Eventually former Confederates came to dominate the state legislature after the end of
Reconstruction and federal occupation in the late 1870s, and black codes were implemented to regulate
freedmen and increasingly restricted the right to vote. They refused to extend voting rights to African Americans who had been free before the war and had sometimes obtained education and property (as in New Orleans). Following the
Memphis riots of 1866 and the
New Orleans riot the same year, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed that provided suffrage and full citizenship for freedmen. Congress passed the
Reconstruction Act, establishing military districts for those states where conditions were considered the worst, including Louisiana. It was grouped with
Texas in what was administered as the
Fifth Military District. African Americans began to live as citizens with some measure of equality before the law. Both freedmen and people of color who had been free before the war began to make more advances in education, family stability and jobs. At the same time, there was tremendous social volatility in the aftermath of war, with many whites actively resisting defeat and the free labor market. White
insurgents mobilized to enforce
white supremacy, first in
Ku Klux Klan chapters. By 1877, when federal forces were withdrawn, white Democrats in Louisiana and other states had regained control of state legislatures, often by paramilitary groups such as the
White League, which suppressed black voting through intimidation and violence. Following Mississippi's example in 1890, in 1898, the white Democratic, planter-dominated legislature passed a new constitution that effectively
disfranchised people of color by raising barriers to voter registration, such as
poll taxes, residency requirements and
literacy tests. The effect was immediate and long lasting. In 1896, there were 130,334 black voters on the rolls and about the same number of white voters, in proportion to the state population, which was evenly divided. , 1938 The state population in 1900 was 47% African American: a total of 652,013 citizens. Many in New Orleans were descendants of Creoles of color, the sizeable population of free people of color before the Civil War. By 1900, two years after the new constitution, only 5,320 black voters were registered in the state. Because of disfranchisement, by 1910 there were only 730 black voters (less than 0.5 percent of eligible African-American men), despite advances in education and literacy among blacks and people of color. Blacks were excluded from the political system and also unable to serve on juries. White Democrats had established one-party Democratic rule, which they maintained in the state for decades deep into the 20th century until after congressional passage of the 1965
Voting Rights Act provided federal oversight and enforcement of the constitutional right to vote. , 1938 In the early decades of the 20th century, thousands of African Americans left Louisiana in the
Great Migration north to industrial cities for jobs and education, and to escape Jim Crow society and
lynchings. The
boll weevil infestation and agricultural problems cost many sharecroppers and farmers their jobs. The mechanization of agriculture also reduced the need for laborers. Beginning in the 1940s, blacks went west to California for jobs in its expanding defense industries. In 1920 the state had no continuous paved roads running east to west or north to south which traversed the entire state. During some of the
Great Depression, Louisiana was led by Governor
Huey Long. He was elected to office on populist appeal. His public works projects provided thousands of jobs to people in need, and he supported education and increased suffrage for poor whites, but Long was criticized for his allegedly demagogic and autocratic style. He extended patronage control through every branch of Louisiana's state government. Especially controversial were his plans for wealth redistribution in the state. Long's rule ended abruptly when he was
assassinated in the state capitol in 1935.
Mid–20th century to present Mobilization for
World War II created jobs in the state. But thousands of other workers, black and white alike, migrated to California for better jobs in its burgeoning defense industry. Many African Americans left the state in the
Second Great Migration, from the 1940s through the 1960s to escape social oppression and seek better jobs. The mechanization of agriculture in the 1930s had sharply cut the need for laborers. They sought skilled jobs in the defense industry in California, better education for their children, and living in communities where they could vote. On November 26, 1958, at
Chennault Air Force Base, a USAF B-47 bomber with a
nuclear weapon on board developed a fire while on the ground. The aircraft wreckage and the site of the accident were contaminated after a limited explosion of non-nuclear material. In the 1950s the state created new requirements for a citizenship test for voter registration. Despite opposition by the
States' Rights Party (Dixiecrats), downstate black voters had begun to increase their rate of registration, which also reflected the growth of their middle classes. In 1960 the state established the Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission, to investigate civil rights activists and maintain segregation. Despite this, gradually black voter registration and turnout increased to 20% and more, and it was 32% by 1964, when the first national civil rights legislation of the era was passed. The percentage of black voters ranged widely in the state during these years, from 93.8% in
Evangeline Parish to 1.7% in
Tensas Parish, for instance, where there were intense white efforts to suppress the vote in the black-majority parish. Violent attacks on civil rights activists in two mill towns were catalysts to the founding of the first two chapters of the
Deacons for Defense and Justice in late 1964 and early 1965, in
Jonesboro and
Bogalusa, respectively. Made up of veterans of World War II and the
Korean War, they were armed self-defense groups established to protect activists and their families. Continued violent white resistance in Bogalusa to blacks trying to use public facilities in 1965, following passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, caused the federal government to order local police to protect the activists. Other chapters were formed in Mississippi and Alabama. By 1960 the proportion of African Americans in Louisiana had dropped to 32%. The 1,039,207 black citizens were still suppressed by segregation and disfranchisement. African Americans continued to suffer disproportionate discriminatory application of the state's voter registration rules. Because of better opportunities elsewhere, from 1965 to 1970, blacks continued to migrate out of Louisiana, for a net loss of more than 37,000 people. Based on official census figures, the African American population in 1970 stood at 1,085,109, a net gain of more than 46,000 people compared to 1960. During the latter period, some people began to migrate to cities of the
New South for opportunities. Since that period, blacks entered the political system and began to be elected to office, as well as having other opportunities. On May 21, 1919, the
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving women full rights to vote, was passed at a national level, and was made the law throughout the United States on August 18, 1920. Louisiana finally ratified the amendment on June 11, 1970. Due to its location on the Gulf Coast, Louisiana has regularly suffered the effects of tropical storms and damaging hurricanes. On August 29, 2005, New Orleans and many other low-lying parts of the state along the
Gulf of Mexico were hit by the catastrophic
Hurricane Katrina. It caused widespread damage due to breaching of levees and large-scale flooding of more than 80% of the city. Officials had issued warnings to evacuate the city and nearby areas, but tens of thousands of people, mostly African Americans, stayed behind, many of them stranded. Many people died and survivors suffered through the damage of the widespread floodwaters. In July 2016 the
shooting of Alton Sterling sparked protests throughout the state capital of Baton Rouge. In August 2016,
an unnamed storm dumped trillions of gallons of rain on southern Louisiana, including the cities of
Denham Springs,
Baton Rouge, Gonzales, St. Amant and
Lafayette, causing catastrophic flooding. An estimated 110,000 homes were damaged and thousands of residents were displaced. In 2019, three
Louisiana black churches were destroyed by arson. The first case of
COVID-19 in Louisiana was announced on March 9, 2020. As of October 27, 2020, there had been 180,069 confirmed cases; 5,854 people have died of COVID-19. ==Geography==