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The United States confronted new problems of territorial expansion with the Louisiana Purchase, as it involved, for the first time, the transfer in sovereignty of a territory that contained a population who by birth, language and religion differed substantially from the inhabitants of the United States, but who had been guaranteed the rights of full citizens. A series of other colonial powers faced these same problems on the North American continent, notably the Spanish in Louisiana. As with those earlier powers, ultimately the United States pursued processes that both brought Louisiana government and law into line with its institutions, and allowed for continued local control. County and parish officeholders through their interactions with U.S. authorities prove especially useful for an examination of the processes that gradually integrated the Territory of Orleans into the United States. Neither a study of high political figures in Washington nor marginalized groups in Louisiana can accurately demonstrate how this process of accommodation worked. Local elites and U.S. officials served as the middlemen who oversaw the implementation of new policy and therefore were in a position to obstruct these policies if they so chose. Native-born Louisiana elites confronted significant challenges in dealing with a U.S. administration that in some areas chose to accommodate them, but in many others chose to implement policies through Anglo- American or foreign French newcomers to the territory. The change in sovereignty to the United States offered many individuals from local elites new pathways to power in the territorial legislature, and later in a stronger state legislature. Local governance played a central role in the success of U.S. sovereignty within Louisiana.

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This study examines the social, cultural, and political discontinuities found among Acadians who settled in Louisiana after their deportation from Atlantic Canada in 1755. Historians studying the Acadians’ early years of arrival and resettlement in Louisiana have drawn readers’ attention to the preservation of Acadian cultural and social attributes. These works tell how in spite of their need to adapt to life in a southern borderland region, the Acadians who arrived in Louisiana retained important qualities of their pre-dispersal identity. Such studies have served well in deconstructing the “Evangeline” myth created through Henry Longfellow’s epic poem, yet at the same time they have inadvertently mythologized the preservation of the Acadians’ pre-dispersal identity. In contrast, this text examines ways that the Acadian identity changed through their experiences in exile and resettlement in the South. The Acadians’ interactions with the government, with Native and African Americans, and among themselves in Louisiana provide evidence that the very foundation of their former identity underwent severe fractures. In studying their new relationships with colonizers as well as other colonized, evidence of the Acadians’ willing participation in the colonial military, their fears of Native American tribes, their involvement in slaveholding, and their increased dependence on the government indicate that they experienced critical social, cultural, and political changes as a result of the Grand Dérangement. Through their dispersal and their resettlement in the South, the Acadians’ quest for survival resulted in a new definition of what it meant to be “Acadian.”

In this study the term "woman's movement" is defined as any advancement made by women, socially, economically, legally, or politically. In addition to information gathered from various collections, memoirs, diaries, and contemporary newspaper accounts of Louisiana women's activities, material from a number of pertinent secondary works is included. Chapter one gives a brief overview of the women's movement as it developed in America in the latter half of the 19th century. This is followed by a chapter on women in Louisiana before 1879- Evidence suggests that a number of Louisiana women shared a common bond with other southern women in longing for an emancipation from their limited role in society. The last six chapters are devoted to the woman's movement in the state, beginning in 1879 when women first dared to to speak out in public in behalf of women. After the Civil War, a large number of women were forced by post war conditions to depart from the traditional life-style of home and family and venture into public life. Liberated from their societal mold, women slowly expanded their sphere, going beyond the immediate need to provide a livelihood. Early women's organizations, temperance unions, church societies, and women's clubs, provided the necessary training ground as women moved into legal, civic and social reforms. Women entered literary and professionally fields and gradually became active in civic affairs. The movement reached a climax in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, granting women the right to vote, and marking the end of an era. While the liberation of women was not complete, from the achievements gained by women of this era emerged the modern woman of today.

In South Louisiana in the late 1950s, Ville Platte native Floyd Soileau joined a network of independent recording companies across the United States that provided an opportunity for local entrepreneurs and artists to profit from the global music industry. This paper analyzes the album covers of Floyd Soileau’s Cajun recording label, Swallow Records, during the 1960s-1970s. This period overlaps with a movement to subvert a negative regional identity among Louisiana Cajuns that is often referred to as the Cajun revival. Through a consideration of album covers as objects of business strategy and creative expression, as well as oral histories with individuals who worked with Swallow Records, this paper argues that Floyd Soileau shaped the perception of Cajun music and people through the channels of the global music industry. On the album covers of Swallow Records, Floyd Soileau marketed a Cajun identity that was rural, white, masculine, and French-speaking, and became an accidental facilitator of the social and political goals of leaders in the Cajun revival.

This thesis examines social and economic change among Black Creoles in the sugarcane plantation society of St. Martin Parish, Louisiana. It begins with slavery and emphasizes the last 40 years. The study area is viewed as a creole society set in the United States. Change and adaptation is analysed from the perspective of those lacking access to, and control over, resources ensuring socio-economic advancement. Factors of race and ethnicity are crucial to the analysis. / Changes in the agricultural economy have cast blacks off the land. In local settlements, they form a surplus labor pool. In today's industrial, neoplantation economy, Civil Rights legislation and alliances beyond the study area have ensured black participation, particularly at a textile mill, resulting in fragile prosperity. Their dual Afro-Creole identity, viewed through language, music, and food, faces a questionable future as alliances external to the creole society are strengthened.

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Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

<p dir="ltr">This dissertation analyzes the sixty-four (64) page handwritten ledger of Mrs. Goldleana Harris (also known as Mrs. Mosley Abraham Gibbs, 1920–1986), kept between 1944 and 1960. Harris is a Black woman born in Longstreet, Louisiana DeSoto Parish. She lived in Shreveport, Louisiana from 1949–1986. Using a case study approach and close reading analysis of Mrs. Goldleana’s writings, I document a Black woman’s lived experience and the historical significance of Hollywood, a segregated Black neighborhood in Shreveport, Louisiana and related gathering spaces within the Deep South region of the United States between 1944 and 1960. These spaces include five areas of significant and overlapping importance: The Family House, The School House, The Church House, The Labor (Work) House, & The Play (Leisure) House. </p>