Louisiana Historical Association

A picture we found in Dr. Fernandez’s office from what looks like the 1990s. It is such a great encapsulation of the bonds one builds as scholars in Louisiana history. Undoubtedly taken during a road trip to the Louisiana Historical Association meeting that happens every spring. Dr. Fernandez was a great supporter and pillar of the LHA, including as President, Fellow, and McGinty Award recipient. But LHA is almost always a lot of fun as the smiles here attest. On the far left one sees Kimberly Hangar, and on the far right is Patricia Brady. Behind her is Ed Haas. Over Mark’s right shoulder is his grad school mentor, Warren Billings.

The 2027 annual meeting of the Louisiana Historical Association will be held March 4-6 at the historic Hotel Bentley in Alexandria, La. Please visit www.lahistory.org for more information, including paper/session submissions.

From author D. Caleb Smith, whose "I didn’t want to be like Parson': Black Aluminum Workers, Shop-Floor Activism, and Hollow Victories, 1962-1985" appears in the Spring 2026 edition of Louisiana History: "Of the scholarship available on Louisiana’s civil rights movement, this article is the first to unpack the legal and labor strides that took place in tandem with grassroots protests. By focusing on Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights, it connects the dots between local activism in the New Orleans metro area and national legal developments."

Want a copy? join the LHA here: https://www.lahistory.org/membership/

The Spring 2026 edition is at the printers!

WWNO and the Historic New Orleans Center have teamed up for a "Beyond the 13 Colonies': Louisiana's role in America's Revolutionary War Victory." Listen to the first episode here:

Setting the stage In today's episode, Paul Maassen talks with the Historic New Orleans Collection's Chief Curator Jason Wiese about political conditions in South Louisiana in 1776.

Coming June 24 from our friends at Louisiana's Old State Capitol.

Exhibition Opening Ceremony!

Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2026

Doors at 4:30 p.m. | Keynote at 5 p.m.

Admission: Free (reserve a spot here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/exhibition-opening-ceremony-louisianas-old-state-capitol-tickets-1990500013122

Continue your Louisiana Purchase journey at the opening ceremony of "Excursions, Expeditions, and 'Discoveries:' A Young Nation Expands" and "Reimagining America: The Maps of Lewis & Clark."

Through historic narratives and contemporary photography created in collaboration with LSU students, Louisiana's Old State Capitol reimagines what it means to discover, document, and remember a changing nation.

PLUS! Historian and award-winning author, Alexander Mikaberidze, will speak at 5 p.m. on the Louisiana Purchase and its impact on America. He will shed a light on the less-acknowledged history of the transaction, which cost the U.S. billions of dollars and displaced Native peoples—who actually owned the land.

EXHIBITION OPENING CEREMONY - Louisiana's Old State Capitol Reimagine what it means to discover, document, and remember a changing nation.

In the latest edition of Louisiana History... "'Mobster Emeritus': The FBI, Carlos Marcello, and the Imagined Structures of Organized Crime in New Orleans, 1950–1985," by Dexter Babin II. The piece reexamines the FBI’s decades-long pursuit of Carlos Marcello by showing how federal investigators forced an imaginary structure onto the New Orleans underworld. Drawing on newly declassified FBI files, it argues that Marcello was not a traditional Mafia boss, but rather the product of a unique local underworld shaped by political machines, gambling interests, and East Coast gangsters. (Image: Federal Bureau of Investigation's chart of American Mafia Bosses across the country in 1963. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/CommissionChart1963.jpg)

"Forgetting the Fall: Violence, Voter Suppression, and the End of Reconstruction in Tensas Parish, Louisiana," by John David Miles, is available in the current edition of "Louisiana History." According to the author, "Forgetting the Fall" reconstructs the events of October 1878, in which a campaign of voter intimidation overthrew Republican governance in a majority-Black, northern Louisiana parish. Armed white Democrats systematically terrorized Black residents, killing at least fourteen people, to secure electoral victory and silence Black political leadership, such as preacher Alfred Fairfax. The article further traces how successive local histories, a Lost Cause novel, and WPA-era accounts obscured or reframed these stories, revealing how racial violence is strategically forgotten, and how forgetting itself is an instrument of white supremacist ideology.

More than a century of photos of Shreveport-Bossier will beis on display in the exhibit “Thurman C. Smith: A Photographic Legacy,” which runs through June 5 at the Northwest Louisiana Archives.