[music] Louisiana is a human gumbo that exists nowhere else in America.

Its founding predates the 13 colonies, and its diversity comes from its European and African roots.

That gave rise to its existence more than five centuries ago.

When New Orleans- not Ellis Island, not any other port- was the gateway to the New World.

It's the culture, stupid.

Yes, James.

It's the culture that makes us different.

There's an exuberance here.

A joie de vivre.

A love of life mixed with the religious zeal of multiple denominations.

Unlike other Southern states, almost a third of us are Catholic.

That's why we have parishes, not counties.

Mardi Gras is a state holiday.

We spell our words differently.

Our food is spicy.

The Holy Trinity has a double meaning.

Our civil laws are based on the Napoleonic Code.

We have drive through daiquiri shops.

And there's no ethnic majority.

40% of us are white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

32% are African American.

And 28% are everything else.

French, Spanish, Creole and Cajun.

This is the story of our disproportionate contribution to America's music, art, sports history and politics.

None of which would be possible without the mighty river that empties into the Gulf of Mexico through just one state.

Ours.

It's why Louisiana ain█t Mississippi or anyplace else.

[music] Any discussion of Louisiana must begin with water.

It buffers our bottom most rim.

It pools serenely in lakes and bayous in almost every parish of the state.

It nourishes the agricultural ground in which we are rooted.

Its manifestation is the mighty Mississippi River.

From its source in Lake Itasca, Minnesota.

The river begins in a trickle, coursing its way through ten states, traveling more than 2300 miles before gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Rich, the river water and the weather define us as Louisianians, I guess.

And this mighty river is really the reason we're here.

In the most fundamental of ways, starting with geology.

This very landscape here, to a degree of 100%, is the product of sediment deposited by that river.

And to put even finer point on it, you could go so far to say that if 70% of the human body is comprised as water and their water source is the Mississippi River, that if you live here, long enough, 70% of your body is Mississippi River water.

Now, I'm hard pressed to think of a more intrinsic relationship of a river to its people.

The rest of it is Sazerac.

I was going to say coffee, but.

Okay.

A mix of both perhaps.

It is majestic, but it hasn't always been kind.

In 1927, the river overflowed its banks, puncturing the erratically placed earthen levees in 145 places.

27,000 square miles of America were inundated most dramatically in Alabama, Mississippi and 20 of the 64 parishes in Louisiana.

Hundreds of people died.

Thousands more were displaced.

And the national economy devastated by $400 million in losses.

Also swept away was the ‘Levees Only█ policy of the Mississippi River Commission.

What this policy entailed was a faulty understanding of river dynamics.

What they said is that what you want is strong, high levees to scour out the bottom and thus create more space to store excess water.

What it does is simply shift the bottom sediment to the next section of the river.

Instead of deepening the river, it raises the bottom in the river.

And so, you know, it's a tiger by the tail scenario.

You have to make the levees that much stronger and stronger as it raises higher and higher and threatens even more.

So eventually, this is going to lead to the moment when you have a mega disaster, extreme excess water that eventually starts breaching those levees.

That's what happened in April of 1927.

In response, Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1928 and charged of the Corps of Engineers with adopting other strategies to tame the river.

What this led to was the creation of spillways like the Bonne Carre Spillway.

The Morganza Spillway.

Ways of storing, retaining water, routing them laterally as rivers like the Mississippi are want to do in the first place.

We haven't had a flood like 1927 ever since that.

It was man's effort to manipulate Mother Nature.

And so far it's worked.

But it has deprived Louisiana of the nutrient-rich sediment called alluvium that has been deposited on both sides of the swollen river for 7000 years, where it was the life source of the first people to occupy this land.

The ingredients that make a good gumbo are literally analogous to the human gumbo that shaped Louisiana's earliest days and remain evident even today.

There's no better person to make a great gumbo and explain the origin of those ingredients than Chef John Folse.

Chef, we all know Louisianans love their gumbo.

But what is a gumbo?

What a great question.

Not a lot of people would say just a mixture of everything, a mixture of culture, a mixture of music, food, ingredients from the swampland.

So, John, this was a pretty important early ingredient.

One of the most important, because without this, the sassafras or the leaves of the sassafras tree, which we ground dry and ground into filé powder, as we call it, it's a thickening agent and a flavoring agent for our soup.

Without the Native American gifts of sassafras, we wouldn't have a gumbo.

What would Louisiana be without it?

Well, before we put the filé in there to thicken and got to have a stock.

Yeah, exactly.

And one of the great things about the stock in Louisiana, again, another great gift from all of those nations that came in.

But again, the Native Americans were the first to add to the stock and it came in the form of fish bones.

They would eat the fish, but of course, the bones would be boiled in the Mississippi River water to pick up the flavor of the fish and then any wild herbs and seasonings.

Just imagine way back in the 15 and 1600s that these people were able to come up with these flavors that we're still using today.

We know Native Americans have been on this land longer than anyone else.

And some of the fascinating evidence of the sophisticated civilization they built is in Poverty Point in West Carroll Parish.

We█re reentering the ridge system, so that was Ridge 6.

I'm here with Dr.

Diana Greenlee, an archeologist who has studied the ancient mounds at Poverty Point for years.

Poverty point.

It's really just such a special place.

It's so remarkable.

Built by American Indians, has these earthen monuments these mounds in a scale and design that's just not known anywhere else.

Although the early occupants who gathered and traded here have never been known as Louisianans, they were our first citizens.

Mound A goes back 3500+ years.

Yeah, the mound itself probably dates to sometime after about 1350 B.C.. And it's called Mound A but it was originally called the Bird Mound, right?

Mm hmm.

Why was that?

Well, the first archaeologists here thought that it resembled a bird in flight.

Birds are important in the iconography of the Southeastern Indians.

Is it correct that there's no evidence of agriculture on this site?

That is true.

Perhaps as many as 10,000 people came here at any one time.

You'd think there would be some evidence of agriculture and how they fed themselves and and how they live.

But no agriculture.

But this is Louisiana.

It's so rich.

The resources were so abundant.

You had the floodplain just off the edge of the ridge.

You had these upland resources.

So, you know, you had fish and turtles and waterfowl, deer nuts.

These folks were hunters and gatherers.

They went out and got things and what they got the most of was dirt or mud to build these mounds.

These mounds didn't start like this.

They had to be constructed.

If you think about it in terms of 50lbs basketloads of dirt, that's probably about 15 and a half million basket loads.

Isn█t that crazy?

All right.

Well, let's go see Mound A. The escalators on the other side?

Yeah, I'm glad we don't have to carry on a conversation the whole way.

Because I'll be panting.

Yeah.

I know.

Most of the speculation, and I guess it's speculation, centers around the fact that this was some type of ceremonial spot or gathering spot, either commercially or from a religious standpoint, right?

Well, our speculation is that it was some sort of ceremonial kind of thing.

But usually when archaeologists say that, it just means we don't really know.

The belief is that a mound this size took how long to build?

Well, there have been some archaeologists who have looked at the dirt that's within the mound, and they have estimated it could have been, you know, as few as 90 days.

Come on.

You know what's really fascinating?

We can identify individual basket loads and within those basket loads of dirt, there is actually dirt that comes from different depths or different sort of locations on the site, all mixed together in one basket load.

It actually is engineered.

I want to see some of the stuff that you've dug up from around here.

All right.

Okay.

Let's head on back to the curatorial facility.

People tend to downplay how sophisticated these people were, but, you know, they knew their environment.

They knew where to get resources.

They had great craftsmenship.

These people had the time and the energy and the resources to do some amazing stuff.

What's behind the door?

That is our artifact storage area.

So you can see we have artifacts from excavations going back into the early seventies, into the eighties, the nineties.

All right, let's go check this out.

That's an owl.

Well.

They're all kind of little owls that have been found all over the property.

They were a symbol, presumably, of this place and a calling card.

Yeah.

People took it with them to show where they'd been.

Here you can actually see little eyes and a nose.

So now you've got some arrowheads here, huh?

Actually, these would be dart or spear points.

Something to hunt with, obviously.

Yes.

This is one of the sort of classic Poverty Point types.

It's called a motley point.

But the tip is very sharp and it's obviously some kind of stone.

It's chert.

Chert.

Chert.

Chert is a combination of charcoal and dirt.

Sounds like it, doesn't it?

But no, it's a kind of rock.

And that's really interesting.

It's a figurine.

What's interesting is that they're female.

They're mostly headless torsos.

A lot of them look like they may be pregnant.

Was this some kind of a fertility symbol?

We don't know.

We don't know.

But they're clearly defined where the arms would be and where the legs would be.

There are no heads.

They don't have heads on any of them?

No, some of them do have heads.

And there are also ones like this that don't appear to be pregnant.

There are.

Yes.

That are slender.

Actually, I have one.

It's pretty awesome.

So you can see there's a little bit of a head.

Yeah.

Belt or.

Wow.

Look at this.

This clearly legs and where the arms would be.

And there's a head and there's a belt.

But this doesn't look like she's pregnant.

We don't know what language we're speaking, and we don't know how they said, wow, or this is awesome, but this is pretty cool.

In 2014, Poverty Point became only the 22nd site in America and the 1001st site in the world to be named a UNESCO's World Heritage site based on its cultural and historical significance.

What's even more interesting is the recent discovery that the mounds on LSU campus are even older than those at Poverty Point, dating back some 11,000 years.

That makes them the oldest manmade structures, not just in Louisiana, but in the Americas.

And the descendants of these indigenous communities are still here today.

Still time to come on out.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to be really entertained by the biggest Grand Entry here in Kinder, Louisiana.

Some like the Tunica Biloxi tribe in Marksville and the Coushatta tribe in Kinder are federally recognized as sovereign nations within the territorial United States.

You know, a lot of times, people they really don't realize there's an Indian tribe here.

There's four federally recognized within the state of Louisiana.

Down here in the corner of southwest Louisiana is the Coushatta people.

And a lot of times it's just forgotten and mostly because people are just unaware.

We also bring in our ladies categories and all that category will explain it all.

We really try to push our culture.

We we just recently had our Coushatta Powwow, which really put it on display.

You have tribes from all over the country coming in.

Definitely, if you haven't been to a powwow, try and go to one.

They have amazing food, love the music, really, really interesting dancing.

When you're in your traditional regalia, you're showing your colors.

This is a fun time to come out and celebrate your culture.

People think of Coushatta and they think of our business down the road.

Casino.

However, just a few miles away, the birthplace of the Coushatta tribe is right here.

I'm in Elton, Louisiana, the home of the Coushatta Tribe with Chief Jonathan Cernek.

Chief.

Not a lot of people in Louisiana are going to believe that we have a buffalo herd right here in our state.

But we do.

That's right.

Right here in a the corner of Allen Parish.

We actually have had these buffalo for close to two decades now.

How many are there?

We have a herd of over 20 now that were actually a gift to us from a tribe in Oklahoma.

Started to herd.

The herd has grown into what it is today.

You have some native born buffalo.

Native buffalo, right?

Yeah.

We're so proud of them.

Matter of fact, we built a gas station convenience store to showcase the buffalo run.

Buffalo Run open in 2016.

Live buffalo viewing patio in the back.

Koasati cultural center inside that displays all of our handmade Koasati baskets.

And you haven't yet put an -eaux on the end of buffalo?

Not yet.

Not yet.

But if we go up I-10, you never know because that's Cajun country.

The Houma Indians date back to at least 1686 when they settled in the area of Baton Rouge and near the current site of the Angola prison.

Eventually, Houma tribe members migrated to Lafourche and Terrebonne, thus the name of the parish seat and Native American names remain important pages of any Louisiana dictionary.

Centuries ago, this very spot marked the dividing line between the hunting grounds of the Houma Indians and the Bayou Goula Indians.

A cypress stick, a bloody cypress stick marked that dividing line.

French explorer sailing up the Mississippi River saw that bloody red stick and named this place Le Baton Rouge.

The Baton Rouge Bicentennial Commission erected this sculpture by the late Frank Hayden to commemorate that sighting of the Bloody Red Stick and the naming of Baton Rouge.

Even the Mississippi River itself has a respectful Indian name.

The word Mississippi is generally translated as father of waters.

So it's a beautiful word.

And I think every schoolchild realizes how fun it is to spell and that you could almost see the sinuous channels of the river as you write it.

The river flow measures 3 million gallons per second.

If a levee were to be breached right here at Skip Bertman drive.

God forbid the water would fill Tiger Stadium in 30 seconds.

New meaning to roll tide.

Let me make two points right here.

I mean.

Right here.

[Sports announcer:] Daniels for the win.

LSU does it.

The volume and force of the Mississippi carries with it nutrient rich sediment known as alluvium.

The river actually filters 40% of the dirt in America, ultimately giving rise to the nation's largest flood plain.

And within it, Louisiana's alluvial valley.

That rich river sediment creates the finest farmland in the country.

And it's made Louisiana an agricultural giant in the production of beef and dairy cattle, cotton, corn, rice and soybeans.

Oh, and who could forget crawfish?

We're the nation's largest domestic producer, 150 million pounds of the delicacies each year.

But the Mississippi River didn't build those fertile fields all on its own.

If the Mississippi had its way and the levee system had not been created to harness the river, it would eventually overtake the Atchafalaya River and hasten its race to the Gulf.

The Atchafalaya flows south to the Gulf in 130 miles.

The Mississippi serpentine path through Louisiana requires 315 miles before it reaches the Gulf.

It's a good thing for the economy that the two rivers remain separate and distinct.

Otherwise, Baton Rouge would not be a port city, in New Orleans would become a saltwater estuary.

Of course, in true colonization fashion, it was a Spaniard, Hernando de Soto, who was credited with discovering the Mississippi River in 1541.

The Spanish were the first European outsiders with whom the Native Americans had to contend.

The Spaniards were explorers.

They wanted to expand their Catholic faith in the 16th and 17th centuries, traveling from Mexico and South America from what is now Florida and from what would become Texas.

But it would take another 100 years before the real roux and the human gumbo was introduced to the New World.

First we got to make a roux, though, huh?

That's exactly right.

Everything in Louisiana begins with the roux when you're talking about a gumbo.

Well, let's make a roux.

Okay.

And roux is equal parts of oil and flour and it's a thickening agent.

And without the oil in the flour combining, we would just have a watery dish rather than that.

Right.

Nice rich dish that we're going to.

We're going to call it gumbo.

So I'm putting in oil.

In the old days, we would use animal fat.

We would use any kind of fat coming in from you.

Get one of these and I'm going to let you take this.

All right.

Now, equal parts of oil and flour and you're going to see see the steam coming out of here.

The flour is going to what is going to evacuate that pot quickly?

And you want to stir like crazy here.

You don't want it to stick to the bottom of the pot.

And this is another one of our early gifts from the French explorers.

They came in and found the Native Americans doing this and they said, you know, we like it, but let's take in it.

And this is this a snack?

And it's like you wanted to do.

And of course, as you start, it's going to change color because the flour is going to toast.

And through the toasting, there's going to be a richness and flavor that's going to just be compounded when we add this beautiful, beautiful stock.

And you want to get all in the corners of that so you don't burn it.

And the more you cook it, the darker it will get.

And of course, that's the secret to a good gumbo.

The French made their first expedition began in 1682, when Robert Cavalier Sieur de la Salle set sail from the Great Lakes in a canoe.

He disembarked near what is now known as Venice, Louisiana.

He started to smell and taste saltwater, and he knew he was near the mouth of the river.

He landed and famously planted the the fleur de lis and the cross and claimed the entire watershed, sight unseen as the land of his king, King Louis, and hence Louisiana.

Claim this land for King Louis.

Louis, Louisiana.

LaSalle comments as he begins to understand the nature of the lower Mississippi and how it relates to this vast basin through which he just sailed.

And these are his exact words.

A port or two here will make us masters as a whole of this continent.

Less than a decade later, the French crown recognized that it needed to act on Lasalle's claim, or else the Spanish or English would.

They deployed once again out of French Canada the Lemoine brothers.

Iberville is the older brother.

He's 36 years old.

He's a war hero in French count and a battle of the English on the Great Lakes.

Bienville is his younger brother, very interesting character.

He's a tough read.

I'd like to meet him and I often wonder what he'd be like in person.

He's 19.

He's got got something to prove in front of his big brother.

They probe along the Gulf Coast.

They come to a little island and there they see about 60 or 70 skeletons with bashed skulls and completely dismembered bodies.

They call it Massacre Island.

So they proceed along and they find a shallow draft, which is not good for these oceangoing vessels and fortuitously they come upon Ship Island off today's Gulfport.

So they use that and that region as sort of a jumping off point to try to find that river that LaSalle had discovered that great river back in 1682.

Iberville records excellent journals.

And he records every movement as he's penetrating up the river.

And it so happened on March 3rd, 1699.

They pull over at a certain meander that had a little bayou there and gloriously it's Mardi Gras.

I witnessed today something called Mar.... And he writes it in his journal.

Mardy - spells it with a Y - Mardy Gras.

Mardi Gras.

Never have I seen something so vile, so raucous and so debaucherous.

I must come back again.

It doesn't go into any more dimensions.

It twice.

But the very fact that he took the time to note that it was Mardi Gras is really quite remarkable.

This is the first primary source, clear reference to Mardi Gras in the early French colonial era.

This so-called Mardi Gras is a combination of pomp, circumstance and lowered inhibitions that would make the king and queens of Europe, weep.

In 1699, while canoeing upriver, Bienville came upon an English warship.

Move aside for Her Majesty, the Queen's Royal British Navy.

We must stake claim to this land for England.

I would not continue down this river if I were you.

You heard the captain move you French scoundrel.

You will meet 500,000 French soldiers armed to the teeth, which are themselves very sharp.

They will ambush you and you will be walking directly into certain death.

We are but a single vessel.

We would not survive an attack.

How can we trust him?

He's just some rando in a canoe.

Can we afford to not trust him?

Man, please turn around.

You're walking into an ambush and you cannot say no one warned you.

Would you help us up?

Turn around English, turn into English.

Turn around English turn, turn.

Good English.

Au revoir!

And that's how French trickery denied the British control of the river.

Bienville served as our second territorial governor.

Shortly after his governorship ended, his successor ordered Louisiana's first land grant to the entrepreneur St.

Denis.

St.

Denis made his way along the Red River and founded Natchitoches in 1714, making it the first settlement in the territory of Louisiana.

And in 1718, Choctaw Indians helped guide Bienville to a place that would change the course of history.

On the banks of the river, wrote Bienville, is a place very favorable for the establishment of a post with one of the finest crescents in the river.

Thus, the Crescent City was born.

How did New Orleans get its name?

Well, it was named for Philipe, Duc d█Orléans who unexpectedly came to power when King Louis the 14th, died.

Breaking news today, September 1st, 1715.

King Louis the 14th has died in Versailles.

He ruled France for 72 years and now all eyes are on his successor since Louie Louie- as his friends called him- outlived his son and eldest grandson, the throne will be passed to his five year old grandson, the deceased king's nephew, Philipe the Second will make decisions until the boy comes of age.

In studio now is Duke of Orleans, Philipe the Second, his mother, Elizabeth, and famed writer Voltaire.

Philipe, I'm so sorry that this happened.

Are you up for the job?

Thank you for having me.

No, I do not think I will do well.

So you'll step aside then.

Never!

I'm never giving up power.

I'm just letting everyone know I'm going to look out for number one and lower expectations.

But your mother's here.

Surely she believes in you.

The fairies have given him every gift except that of how to use them.

Yikes!

That's his mom.

Folks saying he was born on third base and doesn't know how to run home.

Well put.

Do you understand what they're saying about you?

No.

Thank you.

Voltaire.

You're a prominent French writer, a wizard of words.

How would you describe Phillipe the Second.

We've had many unscrupulous kings.

Phillipe, however, is a man of few scruples.

In fact, scruples themselves prefer not to be mentioned in the same sentence as him Why, thank you, Voltaire.

It's really that's that's it's not a compliment.

We'll be back with more after this message from our sponsor, Marie█s Cakes.

Let them eat it.

And that, my friends, is for whom New Orleans was named.

France had a strategic military interest in protecting Louisiana from the British, who were seeking to expand in the new world.

The Duc d█Orléans appointed Antoine Crozet for the job.

Five years into his 15 year contract, Crozet relinquished the property back to France, promising that tobacco would be the top crop in the Territory, perhaps confirming that he was smoking something long before it became legal in certain states.

The only tobacco that would be grown in Louisiana turned out to be Perique tobacco, a particularly powerful strain still grown exclusively in St James Parish after Crozat█s failure.

Along came John Law, an economic theorist and financial wizard who had the skills and savvy to woo wealthy investors.

But Law had one fault.

He couldn't live up to his name.

He was the Bernie Madoff of the 18th century, making off with everyone's money.

John Law is almost a cinematic character.

He was brilliant, a Scotsman, and he was a gambler and was also a womanizer.

He was a Hobnob.

Yeah.

And he knew that the way you got things done was by hobnobbing with the powerful.

And so he was one of the first to conceptualize the use of paper currency rather than real wealth, such as gold.

It's called a stock.

It's better than real money.

This was this exciting new concept.

And investors, buyers of stock in this company went wild for it.

They didn't just go wild for in the streets of Paris.

They went wild for it in Leipzig and Berlin, throughout the continent, everyone wanted in on this deal.

Law established a national bank in France and in 1717 created the company of the West.

The French government gave the company control of trade between France and its Louisiana and Canadian colonies.

That territory of trade stretched for 3000 miles and gave rise to the company's more popular name, the Mississippi Company.

And the lure of gold and silver brought out many eager investors, aristocrats with names like Duplantier, Destrehan, Dautrieve, Delerie, De La Ronde, Delahoussaye, De La Bretonne, LIvadais, Mandeville, Maurepas, Poydrras.

All familiar names in Louisiana today, and all joined by a single German family named Darensbourg.

These wealthy aristocrats were accompanied by moralists and misfits.

Moralists in the sense that there were nuns and priests to provide for the spiritual guidance of these Catholic pioneers and misfits.

Well, as one historian noted, they ransack jails and hospitals looking for incorrigible and those with social ills disorderly soldiers, paupers, prostitutes and unsophisticated peasants.

Ah, our ancestors.

Again.

The price of their shares kept rising like a balloon.

And then suddenly it popped.

Things start to sour within a year or two when rumors start to make it back from Louisiana that things are rough going, that things are slow going.

And just like a run on the bank, rumors get are out there that you're about to cash out now and there's panic.

By 1731, the company is now all but bankrupt.

The sordid saga is referred to as the Mississippi bubble.

As for Law, he is Exiled.

He dies poor.

I believe in 1729.

But his impact is made.

And today we have something called monetary policy.

And we have stock and we have corporations and we have commercial wealth.

And we don't think twice about it.

Hello and welcome everyone.

I'm Karen LeBlanc and I am so happy for you to join us for this special broadcast of Why Louisiana Ain't Mississippi or any Place Else.

This LPB documentary shares Louisiana's story in a completely new way, and we have heard from so many of you asking LPB, do bring this film back to broadcast.

And we listened.

This LPB documentary is a collaboration with Jay Dardenne, who many of you already know is a great ambassador for Louisiana.

Jay is going to join us in just a few minutes, along with LPB executive producer Linda midget.

But first, we want you to know that it's viewers like you who become members that make productions like this possible.

Show us you value LPB and Louisiana's Storyteller by calling or texting.

Give to 888-769-5000 pledging online at lpb.org or by scanning the QR code on your screen.

When you support LPB during this program, we have some exclusive thank you gifts created especially for this documentary that we will remind you of in a few moments.

But first, let's meet the Dynamic Duo who brought the story of Louisiana to life.

Jay Darden and Linda midget.

Welcome to both of you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm so excited to dig into the backstory of this.

And Jay, I got to start with the obvious question.

Why Louisiana?

Why was it such a passion project for you?

I began doing this in the early 2000 with live presentations, and I would repeatedly, repeatedly get told, I wish I had this on film or I wish I could share this with my children.

I wish it was in schools and I always wanted to put it on film.

And when we got together, Linda and I talked about this possibility.

It became a reality.

So a reality.

As Linda, the executive producer at LPB, why did you decide this was a great project for LPB to get involved with?

Well, I did not know about Jay's, presentation until he invited me to come take a look and see what I thought.

Would it be possible to adapt this?

And, I really didn't know what to expect.

The first time I went, there was a large audience.

We were actually in Lake Charles where he was doing this, and I was so blown away when I saw his presentation.

It lasts about 3.5 hours, Jay, which is a long time.

And you would think that this would get boring.

But I have to tell you, Karen, the audience was riveted, I was riveted, I was so impressed with how Jay had used humor and just music and unexpected ways to bring this.

To bring this to life.

And so my mind just was spinning and I thought, we have to adapt this for LPB.

And I will say, as someone who watched all four hours, I was riveted.

It definitely does connect with the audience and really just instills a sense of pride in being a Louisiana.

All right.

So now I want you to pay attention because we have a corporate challenge that will make your contribution to LPB.

Go twice as far.

RoyOMartin is proud to support this documentary.

And when you pledge your support right now, they will match dollar for dollar up to the first $1,500.

So thank you.

Roy Martin and we'll hear more from Jay and Linda in just a moment.

But first let's take another look at those thank you gifts created especially for this series and for you.

Support LPB and celebrate Louisiana by becoming a member for $30 a month.

We will thank you with the Louisiana Mississippi combo that includes the Louisiana signed hardcover book with over 250 pages of photographs of Louisiana.

The limited edition, signed photographic print collection by Carol Highsmith that includes Mike the Tiger, Big Chief, Mardi Gras, Indian Fireworks over cane River, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Coastal Marsh, and the Why Louisiana Ain█t Mississippi two DVD set for $10 a month.

Choose the Why Louisiana companion book signed by Jay Dardenne, Carol Highsmith or for just $8 a month, choose the two DVD set of this documentary.

We also have a very special credit card offer for a pledge of $500.

Receive a stunning aerial photograph of Louisiana state capital on a metal canvas titled Red Stick Blue Sky.

Jay, what are some of the most memorable moments?

And I'm sure there were many over the course of this.

There really were.

Every time we went out on vacation somewhere, we had more fun and more new experiences.

There's so many we could touch on Jimmy Swaggart, for example, James Carville, Kim Mulkey.

That was especially fun for me to be on the basketball court with Coach Kim.

But I think the most memorable for me was to actually be walking on the newest land created in Louisiana because of all our problems along the coastal marsh of our state.

That I talk about a great length, but we actually went out there, and I was standing on the sandbar that represented new land that had been created.

Wow.

And, Linda, so, you know, we talked a little bit about the response that the audience gave you that people were really connecting.

Who were some of the people that you met that you thought, wow, quirky, crazy, typical Louisiana, because you're from North Carolina?

I am from North Carolina.

So this was, this was a great way for me to be introduced.

Aside from just marriage, I got married to somebody from Louisiana.

But, but I learned so much about about Louisiana by doing this project that I didn't know.

You know, when you're in a culture, you you don't necessarily analyze it and pick it apart in this way, but but doing this project, I was it made sense to me.

Oh, this is this is where all of these influences come from.

So many people.

Irma Thomas, who we interviewed was just thrilling.

Richard Lipsey story of, of, his experiences with JFK were riveting.

I mean, I could just go on and on.

We take so many things for granted as Louisiana, and we just think everybody realizes that.

And I don't I don't really think about all the things that make Louisiana special.

But what we tried to accomplish in this documentary is to make Louisianans proud of the fact that they call Louisiana home.

And yes, we have our warts and we know that.

But by and large, we love our state, we love our families, we love our people.

And that's one of the motivations behind the show.

Well, I got to tell you, as a native Louisiana, and I certainly learned a lot, and I'm an art and culture nerd, I thought I knew a lot about my people.

I definitely learned and just that sense of pride.

So great job.

LPB has developed a curriculum around this because it is a great history lesson.

You know, about Louisiana.

Tell me.

Tell me about that program.

Yeah, well, as I was saying, I got an education producing this series and learned so much.

And so we also have made this available to Louisiana and then nationally.

So Jay do you want to talk about Why Louisiana and the school system?

BESE reviewed this and endorsed this as a great way for students in grades 6 to 12 to be able to learn about many different subjects by taking excerpts from the show.

So everything from mathematics to social studies to the coastal erosion issues in Louisiana.

Obviously, the history, can be seen on these, vignettes from the show that have been turned into curricula that teachers can use all across the state to educate their students in a fun and different way.

And fun is is key.

I think the way the story is told, it's not linear and following chronology.

It's told by making connections and it keeps you engaged and entertained.

And as you said, you're learning so much.

So definitely the teachers were the ones who developed this, I mean, which was great.

We didn't sit there and try and figure out what would be an appropriate way for students to learn.

Positions did that and said, this is a great way for them to be able to get messaging about Louisiana and learn a lot of subject matter information as well.

And of course, it totally ties into its mission as Louisiana's classroom.

Yes, as our education team has done an amazing job here of taking this content and making it available to the entire country.

So we're exporting Louisiana's history to the nation by PBS Learning Media.

So this content is actually going out to, children and adults nationwide.

That's great.

Great resource.

So I want to quickly remind you about the corporate challenge.

Thanks to RoyOMartin We want to thank him and we want to remind you that when you make your pledge of support right now, they will match dollar for a dollar up to the first $1,500.

Thank you, RoyOMartin.

Now Jay and Linda, we also want to thank them.

And we want to remind you that the membership gifts that we are offering, they're truly, truly remarkable.

All right.

So we're going to take one more look before returning to why Louisiana, Mississippi or any place else, want to take one more look at those thank you gifts.

Support LPB and celebrate Louisiana by becoming a member for $30 a month.

We will thank you with the Louisiana Ain█t Mississippi combo that includes the Why Louisiana signed hardcover book with over 250 pages of photographs of Louisiana.

The limited edition signed photographic print collection by Carol Highsmith that includes Mike the Tiger, Big Chief, Mardi Gras, Indian Fireworks over cane River, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Coastal Marsh, and the Why Louisiana Ain█t Mississippi two DVD set for $10 a month.

Choose the Why Louisiana companion book signed by Jay Dardenne and Carol Highsmith, or for just $8 a month, choose the two DVD set of this documentary.

We also have a very special credit card offer for a pledge of $500.

Receive a stunning aerial photograph of Louisiana State Capitol on a metal canvas titled Red stick, blue Sky.

Among the new arrivals were also those who did not come voluntarily.

Louisiana was part of the triangle of trade between North America, Europe and West Africa, that began in the 17th hundreds.

that began in the 17th hundreds.

The nature of the slave trade during colonial times was mostly the story of the Middle Passage.

The two main waves during French and Spanish colonial times.

One entailed about 5000 victims who survived.

And that was in the 1720s, during French colonial times.

And they disproportionately came from the Senegambia region.

There were many others, but the next major wave was in the 1780s during Spanish colonial time, and they tended to come from the Spanish colonies in Africa, which tended to be the Bight of Benin and the Congo region.

And it's a big mistake to think of them as just Africans or just West Africans.

They're really as varied in their ethnicity and their cultures as other groups coming under their own volition.

Co-operative tribal leaders in Africa profited by providing men, women and children to be bound in bondage.

On the.

Coast of Africa, people being held in cells to be transported over the Atlantic.

The purpose of the ship was to transport as many people as possible as people are getting sick.

People are dying.

There is a very brutal legacy with the transatlantic slave trade and that journey across the Atlantic.

The slave trade became an established part of the Louisiana economy, and the practice was regulated in Europe by a code of laws known as the Code Noir or the Black Code.

Code Noir is a group of laws put in place by the French to govern mostly enslaved people, but Black people more generally.

These things restrict the movement of enslaved people.

How many enslaved people can gather at any given point in time.

They also demand that you convert enslaved people to Catholism.

And so you end up with this very large Black population of Catholics.

Thus, the ultimate irony teaching Christianity to those imprisoned by human slavery.

The code also dictated that a master who has a child with the slave girl must free both the child and the slave.

It's a situation that was far too common.

Let's be real.

You know, the prevalence of sexual assault of young girls and young women who then go on to have mixed race children.

If you go back and some of the the records, you'll see people identify or characterize as mixed or mulatto.

These forced unions became the topic of a 1971 Rolling Stones classic Brown Sugar, a song that probably wouldn't be recorded today.

Soon, the debauchery evidenced by the treatment of natives and slaves, as well as the presence of prostitutes, created tension between the government and the church.

Early on, New Orleans was known as the City of Sin, a new Sodom.

One of the nuns, Sister Madeleine Marie Hatchard, observed The women here are extremely ignorant as to the means of securing their salvation, but they're very expert in the art of displaying their beauty.

The territorial governor lamented, If I send away all these loose females, there would be no women left here at all.

Eventually, Bienville pleaded with the leaders in France.

Please send me wives for my Canadians.

Meanwhile, Sister Harchad sent an urgent message to the church elders.

Bear in mind there were no telephones, faxes, emails or other means of communication.

Aside from sending a note on.

A boat to the.

Homeland, her message nevertheless was quite urgent.

The devil has a vast empire here, which she hoped to overcome with God's love.

But overcoming yellow fever ultimately proved easier.

The Ursuline nuns arrived soon after to civilize the city.

They also built themselves a convent.

It is really exceptional because it is our sole remaining whole, fully documented French colonial era structure and the whole quarter in not just the quarter, but the city, the region.

Amazing that here we are in a modern American city and it's still standing and that's the treasure of living in a neighborhood like this, in a city like this, of that tactile experience of history.

Emphasis on neighborhood.

This is a. Neighborhood.

It is.

Where people live as well as you have the craziness of the French Quarter and Bourbon Street, and they all seem to get along just like Louisiana seems to get along with this interesting.

Mix of culture.

It all works despite it all.

The arrival of the nuns helped the church, but it did not provide respectable wives for the lonely soldiers.

The solution was the arrival of young ladies with small chests called cassettes which later morphed into caskets.

They came to be known as the Casket Girls, literally the mothers of the New World.

The foundation of European influence on the territory of Louisiana was shared by the French with the Spanish.

The territory was ping-ponged back and forth between French and Spanish control.

Throughout the late 1700s.

I'm going to make my rounds.

Bye, grandpapa.

Remember, a Spaniard, Hernando de Soto, discovered the Mississippi River and the first settlement in Louisiana in Natchitoches was controlled by the Spanish when the Frenchman St.

Denis arrived.

Now, St.

Denis was an entrepreneur who developed a good relationship with the Spaniards who already occupied the area which bordered on what is now Texas.

He also had the good sense to marry the granddaughter of the Spanish general who control the territory.

My grandfather is the Spanish general who controls the entire territory.

Oh, I did not know that.

But I will not hold it against you.

Will you marry me?

Oh.

He then established Fort Jean-Baptiste in Natchitoches and became a wealthy man in what became the crossroads of the El Camino Real.

The road of the Kings, as it was known, extended across Texas into Mexico.

This was the route traveled by Davy Crockett and Jim Buie to reach their fate at the Alamo.

It will surprise many Texans to know that this historical landmark Los Adaes is near Roebling, Louisiana, stood as the capital of Texas for 40 years before Texas statehood.

The Spanish influenced our 20th century music to the lead singer of that group, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs was actually Domingo Samudio who had a Tex-Mex band in Leesville.

The band played regularly on the border until the release of Wooly Bully which was supposedly the name of his cat.

It became a huge national hit and right now, Spanish influence later moved westward from New Orleans to parishes like Assumption and Ascension.

There you'll travel through towns named Galvez and Gonzalez and meet families named Martinez Diaz Sevario Hidalgo, Ourso, and Falcon.

Even more notable is the Spanish influence in Iberia Parish.

Spain sits on the Iberian Peninsula.

Thus, the parish name.

they very soon began speaking French because they were outnumbered by French speakers and intermarried with the local population.

And so you have a lot of even today, a lot of people with Spanish last names that can be traced back to 1779.

Romero, Dartez, Seguro.

And yet, you know, since at least the early 19th century and until the mid 20th century, their primary language was French.

But the surnames persist to the to the present.

While under Spanish control, from 1766 to 1803, Louisiana prospered.

In particular, New Orleans, the French Quarter burned twice during this period.

The French Quarter was restored, as we see it today.

And there's little French about it.

It is Spanish in design.

The wrought iron, flat roofs and colors are reminiscent of Havana, Cuba and Quito, Ecuador.

The great Louisiana novelist James Lee Burke, perhaps best described New Orleans in his book The Tin Roof Blowdown.

When he said traditional New Orleans is like a piece of South America that had been sawed off of its moorings and blown by trade winds across the Caribbean till it affixed itself to the southern rim of the United States.

Well, we're making our way to perhaps the most historically significant plot of land in the city.

Jackson Square Place d█Arms.

The absolute historical and psychological heart of New Orleans.

And everyone knows it.

And probably one of the best preserved or most symmetrical plaza ensembles in the nation.

If you feel like you might be in France or Spain or Latin America as you arrive here and it is spectacular.

The Spaniard, Don Andre Almonaster is considered the true developer of New Orleans.

He built the first public school, the Charity Hospital and Saint Louis Cathedral, among other structures.

It's his daughter, however, the Baroness Pontalba, who made the biggest mark.

She designed and built the first apartment houses in America.

The Pontalba Apartments flanked the Saint Louis Cathedral, the Cabildo and the Presbyter.

And Baroness Pontalba.

Probably she was at the forefront of a trend of the circa 1850 that has since come become iconic for the French Quarter.

And that is the spectacular cast iron balconies, as opposed to the more modest wrought iron balconies that you saw previously and make much more elegant shapes and scrolls and if you look carefully, of course, you could see the initials of the Almonaster and Pontalba families there, too.

And at the same time, the prior Saint Louis Church, now cathedral was largely disassembled, except for the first 30 feet of the front wall and rebuilt in the form that you see today and eventually the statue of Andrew Jackson was placed and it was renamed Jackson Square.

What you're really seeing here is a very inspired, woman led transformation of circa 1850.

Nowhere in Louisiana, however, is the Spanish influence more clearly celebrated than in Saint Bernard Parish, which was settled by Canary Islanders, known as Islenos Their familiar surnames read like a roll call of well known elected officials: Nunez, Perez, Fernandez, Hernandez, Alvarez, Barrios.

There are six words that put fear in the heart of Louisiana.

There's a storm in the Gulf.

Saint Bernard Parish was virtually destroyed during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 when the very lifeblood of Louisiana engulfed the state's southeastern coastal parishes in a 27 foot storm surge.

[Announcer] Massive evacuations for the first time in history.

The city of New Orleans under an.. Soon after the nation and indeed the world watched in horror.

This is absolutely a catastrophe.

As the levees in and around the city of New Orleans buckled under the pressure of catastrophic rains ushered in by 115 mile per hour winds.

Wealthy homes along the lakefront and in uptown were equally as devastated as homes in working class St.

Bernard and the Lower Ninth Ward, proving that water knows no racial or political boundaries.

[Announcer] You could probably gauge exactly how high up the water is.

However, social and economic frailties and inequities quickly took center stage.

[Announcer] Police and firefighters are still trying to reach people.

In largely poor Black areas ravaged by floodwaters ten feet deep or more.

[Announcer] People who are just literally stranded.

More than 1800 Louisianans died.

[Announcer] Rita sustained high winds.

One month after Katrina, Hurricane Rita devastated southwest Louisiana.

[Announcer] Hurricane Laura slamming ashore as a monster category.

A scene eclipsed by Hurricane Laura.

15 years later, in 2020, Hurricane Ida Ida slammed into Louisiana into New Orleans and one year later, that destruction was replicate that yet again.

When Hurricane Ida struck on the anniversary of Katrina.

Rescuers unable to reach them.

Over the last 50 years, 20 hurricanes and dozens of tropical storms have taken a disastrous toll on our state, causing billions of dollars in damage.

Arguably, the greatest loss we suffer is to our coastal marshland.

Harnett Kane described this part of Louisiana in an apt way.

It is a place that seems unable to make up its mind if it will be earth or water so it compromises.

The loser in that compromise is land on maps.

Louisiana resembles a boot.

In reality, its soul and heel are in tatters.

The two critical resources that fluvial deltas like southeastern Louisiana critically need to stay, land and not water.

One of them is occasional doses of freshwater to push back the saltwater wedge.

And the other one is the deposition of new sediment particles, alluvial sand, silt and clay particles.

Both of these need to happen in order to to build up delta topography and to keep it fresh so that there are cypress forests and other vegetation holding this all in place by straitjacketing the river.

In these artificial levees, we eject both of those resources uselessly out on to the continental shelf.

Since 1932 and the construction of the levees on the Mississippi River 2000 square miles have been lost.

That's 25% of the state's landmass.

It's the equivalent of losing a football field of land every 90 minutes.

If Delaware or Rhode Island had lost that much territory, the United States would have only 49 states.

Right now we are on Lake Verret.

Lake Verret is on the outside of the Atchafalaya Basin now during the 1940.

They built the lavish shortage area would flourish much and look like the last 20 years we've been sinking our water levels from when I was a young kid.

These cypress trees didn't start growing in water.

They were growing in mud when our water was higher.

And now adding to water.

With the rise in sea levels, this already disappearing quick because we got too much coastline.

So, you know, your hurricanes are going to cause more damage because they're going to come further inland and all your Gulf Coast states are going to be impacted.

I think Louisiana is going to be the worst and even the East Coast, you know, all the way up to New York and all your low lying areas.

I mean, I don't care if you're on the East Coast or the Gulf Coast, you're going to be in trouble.

Efforts are underway to stem the tide and rebuild the coast, thanks to settlement diversion projects like this one.

You're looking at the newest land in Louisiana.

If you walk four feet in there, you would disappear but not forever.

But you can turn around and walk back.

But this was all open water, all of it.

All the birds.

There's 184 species of birds here and one at a time on the other side, ten.

So my name is Captain Ryan Lambert.

I mean, got in these waters for 45 years down Buras, Louisiana.

I've watched the land on the west side with no diversions completely disappear, 100% devastation at the same time with a very few little crevasses and diversions on this side.

I watched it grow.

See that levee over there?

In 1969, Hurricane Camille blew holes all through it.

19 holes in a levee that opened up these little crevasses.

And since then, they've been growing land.

And that's how I've learned.

Everything I know about restoration is watching those little crevasses and the little diversions build land.

I mean, we did this by building the levees after the flood of 27 for flood control and navigation of the Mississippi River.

But we didn't have a mandate for restoration.

We didn't know what it was going to do for 90 years now we haven't replaced.

It is just sinking out of sight.

Here we are.

We lost 2400 square miles of Louisiana.

Look at all the hermit crabs, Fiddler crabs on the bank.

Look at that.

Look at that.

So all this land that we're seeing here to the left, this is all.

New, all brand.

And how how long ago?

Two years.

Just two years, geez.

This was Bay Denesse It was a bay, as far as you can see those trees back there.

This will all open water.

And within two years, we built all of this.

When you have river sediment, you can manipulate it, slow the water down, expediate the growth ten times.

And what we're seeing right here is just that that's the sediment that has been from the river as a result of this diversion.

Within another month, all this will be vegetated all the way to the end.

And then it just extrapolates and it just keeps growing and growing and growing.

You build in landfills for habitat and this tidal surge is a win win any way you look at it.

So what we're seeing here is a double impact for Louisiana.

For every mile of marsh you have, it knocks the storm surge down one foot.

Louisiana and New Orleans in particular cannot survive if we don't do this because the water is lapping or it's going to break down marsh down to there's nothing left to protect us.

This is awesome because we've talked so much about the land loss we've suffered in Louisiana.

We're now reversing that in building land in areas it used to be land became water and is now being restored to land again.

And I thought this was all existing.

All right.

This is all new, too.

Wow.

Look at this pop up look.

Last month this was underwater because now a river dropped out.

Jump out and go back out there.

And four miles out from the Mississippi River and Quarantine Bay.

And I'm standing on a sandbar that stretches for about a mile.

It's newly-created land sediment from the Mississippi River, manmade Mother Nature made.

And this is what we need to do to save Louisiana.

This will be our next barrier island.

However, it's a massive challenge not only to Louisiana, but to the nation and the world.

In fact, it is as important to the people in Chicago, Sheboygan, Shanghai and Shreveport and Shongaloo as it is to those in Chackbay, Schriever and Chauvin.

Many facets of Louisiana life in the many contributions Louisiana makes to the world are dependent upon the viability of the coastal marsh, unlike our neighbors to the east who beckon tourists to their white sandy beaches, Louisiana has a working coast and it feeds the nation in more ways than one.

The state quenches the nation's thirst for oil and gas.

We're the second largest producer of oil in the country.

We also generate 25% of America's natural gas and petrochemicals, most of which are manufactured and shipped from the coastal marsh.

Louisiana also satisfies the world's hunger for seafood.

We're the second largest commercial fishing state in America and the number one producer of shrimp, oysters and crawfish.

The ports of New Orleans and Baton Rouge are engines of the south Louisiana economy.

In addition, the Port of South Louisiana, which is centered in Laplace and stretches for 54 miles along the river parishes between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is the largest tonnage port in the Western Hemisphere, as well as the largest grain exporter.

But it's not just who depend on Louisiana's coast for survival.

Louisiana's wetlands also provide sanctuary to some 300 species of native and migratory birds.

The sights and sounds have drawn millions of birdwatchers over the years, including former President Theodore Roosevelt, filmed walking the once flourishing habitat in 1915, a mere century ago.

Today, the coast is a mere fragment of its former self.

when French explorers first arrived.

Grand Isle is the only inhabitated barrier island that remains and it was decimated by Hurricane Ida in 2021.

Yet those who call the coast home are filled with the same tenacity and perseverance of those early settlers who braved the new world ever resilient in the face of change and the challenges wrought by Mother Nature.

by Mother Nature.

Support LPB and celebrate Louisiana by becoming a member for $30 a month.

We will thank you.

With the Louisiana eight Mississippi Combo that includes the While Louisiana signed hardcover book with over 250 pages of photographs of Louisiana.

The limited edition signed photographic print collection by Carol Highsmith that includes Mike the Tiger, Big Chief, Mardi Gras, Indian Fireworks over cane River, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and coastal Marsh, and the Louisiana eight Mississippi two DVD set for $10 a month.

Choose the Wild Louisiana companion book signed by Jay Darden and Carol Highsmith.

or for just $8 a month, choose Choose the two DVD set of this documentary.

Hello everyone, I'm Karen LeBlanc, and welcome back to a behind the scenes look at the LPB documentary, Why Louisiana Ain█t Mississippi, or any place else?

We will be rejoined by series host and creator Jay Darden and LPB executive producer Linda Midgett In just a moment, they're going to share insights about the companion book that you just heard about that can be yours when you become a member during this broadcast.

If you love watching Louisiana history come to life as it does in this original LPB production, you can tell us.

So with your call right now, it's an easy process to support your public television network in Louisiana.

Simply call or text give to 888-769-5000 Become a member online at lpb.org.

Or scan the QR code that is on your screen.

And again, you'll want to do this during this program because where else can you choose the award winning companion book by America's photographer Carol Highsmith and author Jay Dardenne?

I'll tell you where.

Nowhere.

All right.

So let's hear more about this great book.

We want to welcome Jay and Linda back.

And also Jay.

Linda, you got to work with Carol Highsmith.

What a treat.

Because her work as a documentarian is in the Library of Congress.

She is a ball of fire.

All of her life's work is donated to the Library of Congress to be downloaded free for for anyone.

It's a tremendous gift to the people of America.

And, her photographic exploits through Louisiana are really captured in this book in beautiful ways.

There's so many great choices of what were the fun and most favorite selections with some of them you'll see on the screen.

And the Mike the Tiger picture, of course, is one of my favorites in the Carousel Bar at the Monteleone Hotel, Preservation Hall, and all throughout Louisiana.

The book takes you throughout the entirety of Louisiana.

So, Linda, how did we find Carol Highsmith?

That's a great question.

Carol actually was introduced to me through an independent filmmaker that I knew from my years in Chicago many, many years ago.

She has been working with Carol since 2015, following her.

Carol has been on this journey of documenting the entire United States for more than 40 years.

If you can imagine Carol in her 70s, she's been doing this for more than 40 years.

And so, Kristen Akers, the filmmaker, came to me and said, I started this documentary has a strong Louisiana connection It really made sense for us to start working with the filmmaker on this project.

And in the process of that, we had this idea for the book, because Carol has done these books for some other states, and we realized this is the absolute perfect companion piece for the series that we had done.

And so it's a gorgeous gift and a gorgeous coffee table book.

Like, I can envision this on my coffee table.

Really, it's I mean, 256 pages.

So it's amazing.

It is so well done.

Well, we actually have a little video of Carol, so let's let viewers hear from Carol herself right now.

I'm Carol Highsmith, Carol McKinney, Highsmith.

I love America.

I love it.

So when I came up with a harebrained idea of recording it as a documentarian, you know, people looked at me like, right, you.

There's no way you're going to get this done.

We're usually gone about eight months a year.

The whole point of this is to give the collection to the Library of Congress.

So that many, many hundreds or thousands of years from now, we can see what America look like now.

Okay.

Now I'm donating every image I take to the Library of Congress.

I feel so honored, you know, that the Library of Congress has been interested in this collection, that they value it means a lot to me.

As Carol said, she's more of a documentarian.

She wasn't here to photograph, I shiny glossy at Louisiana.

But Louisiana as it is.

And I have to ask.

This must have been a challenging process to curate these photos.

How do you decide what subjects to put in and what subjects to leave out?

So it was actually a fun process.

I'll never forget when Linda called me and said, how would you like to do a book in connection with the show?

Because we were in the midst of preparing the show, and all of a sudden this got thrown into our lap and we didn't want to miss this opportunity.

And the curator of the photos was fine.

It was pretty much Linda and me and Kathy Barry, who was my chief of staff and I was lieutenant governor, made the selections, and I was writing the captions or the cut lines all along, and then some would get thrown out and I had to throw that one out.

And then we write a new one.

We select this picture, and we wanted to make certain that it captured all of Louisiana and not just the one part.

Yeah, Kathy Barry brought the snacks.

I will say, and we had some heated discussions sometimes over, you know, this photo versus that photo.

And we would have to duke it out because there's limited space.

You know, you have to figure out, where exactly you can fit everything in.

But there are so many.

So we have 400 festivals in Louisiana.

So there were a lot to choose from.

So we have some great shots of the Strawberry Festival and the Crawfish Festival and some of the others.

And she did some great scenery shots, some great moments, magical moments, just a really well-rounded view of Louisiana.

All right.

So we have a corporate challenge for all of you with that, we're going to explain this corporate challenge is something that will make your contribution to LPB go twice as far.

RoyOMartin is proud to support this documentary.

And when you pledge your support right now, they will match dollar for dollar up to the first $1,500.

So we want to thank you, RoyOMartin, and don't miss this opportunity.

We're going to hear more from Jay and Linda in just a few moments.

But first let's take another look at those thank you gifts created especially for this series.

And of course for you.

Support LPB and celebrate Louisiana by becoming a member for $30 a month.

We will thank you.

With the Louisiana eight Mississippi Combo that includes the While Louisiana signed hardcover book with over 250 pages of photographs of Louisiana, the limited edition signed photographic print collection by Carol Highsmith that includes Mike the Tiger, Big Chief, Mardi Gras, Indian Fireworks over cane River, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and coastal Marsh, and the Louisiana eight Mississippi two DVD set for $10 a month.

Choose the Wild Louisiana companion book signed by Jay Darden and Carol Highsmith, or for just $8 a month, choose the two DVD set of this documentary.

We also have a very special credit card offer for a pledge of $500.

Receive a stunning aerial photograph of Louisiana State Capitol on a metal canvas titled Red stick, blue Sky.

Now the book, which, by the way, I'm going to just reiterate, makes a great coffee table book, is the winner of three prestigious printing and graphic awards, and LPB has also honored the book.

Yes.

So, Carol was the recipient of the 2023 Presidents Award from our president and CEO, C.C.

Copeland.

And it's just, it was just a small way to let Carol know how much we value her work, because what is so important about this book and Carol's work is that it captures things that that will be lost with time because the world is always evolving and changing.

And so the photographs, the things that she captured about Louisiana that are so special and so unique, we don't have a guarantee that they'll be here in the future.

So this is just a really important way to, to preserve that history and to hold on to it.

Absolutely.

And Jay congratulations as the writer and host and creator of Why Louisiana Ain█t Mississippi understand it's nominated for an Emmy, the entire series, it was.

And that was a great honor for us and really represents Linda's work as the executive producer to put the film together and and a great way to to tell the story of Louisiana in a different sort of way.

Storytelling.

I and you were a master at telling this story the way you were able to connect the cast of characters and history in and and connect all of that with a gumbo recipe.

Well, yes, John Folse was a big part of the show, and this is something we talked about a lot, because I was used to telling the story in a, in the three hour presentation where it was me and a lot of music and, some power points.

But to convert that an adaptation, to make it a documentary was quite a challenge.

But, that threat of the gumbo held us through all the way.

Well, it was the perfect analogy.

So I want to quickly remind you about the corporate challenge.

I want to thank, first of all, Roy and Martin.

And when you make your pledge of support right now, they will match dollar for dollar, up to $1,500.

I want to thank you, RoyOMartin.

Oh, I want to thank you both, Jay and Linda, for sharing the backstory on the creation and why Louisiana, Mississippi.

And of course, I want to thank all of you, the callers who called in during this program to show your support.

The second wave of French immigrants to make their way to Louisiana, those we call Acadians, did not come directly from France.

Cajuns are the descendants of exiles from Acadia.

Acadie, what█s now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island in Canada, who originally came from France in the 16th hundreds.

So Cajuns are the descendants of those people, some of them who came to Louisiana.

For more than 100 years, these French Catholics flourished.

But when the British won the Seven Years War, also known as the French and Indian War, things took a tragic turn.

The British victors became convinced that the settlers had sided with their French countrymen.

They demanded the residents renounce their French identity and their Catholic faith and pledge never to take up arms against the crown.

The settlers said, Mais non, I don't think so.

And the British government began an ethnic cleansing designed to destroy the Acadians identity.

Beginning in 1755.

Le Grand Derangement-- the Great Expulsion-- began.

Thousands were drowned, starved or even murdered.

It would take the British crown almost 250 years to apologize for the brutality inflicted on our Acadian ancestors.

You are looking at the Queen's Royal Proclamation 2003, which is signed by Adrian Clarkson of the Upper Right, who represented the Queen as the Governor General of Canada.

And on the left, it's in English.

On the right, it's in French.

It is the first time in the history of the British Empire that they admitted the deportation of the Acadians.

was done in the name of the crown.

That's number one.

Number two, it's an admission that many Acadians died and suffered as a result of the British action.

And thirdly, and most importantly.

It expresses sorrow and regret and finally establishes a day of commemoration, July 28th of every year as a day of remembrance, of the suffering of our ancestors and the fact that we survive today as a culture in North America and throughout the world at this time.

This is the sixth apology ever rendered in the name of the British crown in 1200 years.

It took nine years from 1755 to 1764 for many to make the trek.

They came to the Port of New Orleans and other makeshift ports along what came to be known as the Acadian Coast.

At the time, the area was known as Atakapas after the Native American tribe already living there allegedly eventually identified 22 parishes to comprise Acadiana.

Included are seven parishes named for Saints: John, Charles, Bernard, Helena, James, Mary, Martin and Landry.

And then there's the eighth parish.

There's one interesting parish that has a name that we see all the time today, but was not a canonized Catholic saint in the Saint Tammany Parish.

Tameron.

Many people refer to him as kind of this indigenous American saint who was a peacemaker and advocated for peace.

And there's certain elements of mythology here, and there's certain elements of truth.

But this notion of a Saint Tameron and Saint Tammany came out of that.

If another parish were to be added, it would no doubt be named.

Saint Drew.

The exiled Acadians were led by the legendary Joseph Beausoleil Broussard, who had commanded the resistance in La Kadi.

Who was.

With Louisiana, was the perfect fit.

They were a close knit, family oriented group.

They were French speaking the language already spoken here, and they were Catholic.

They became a part of the religious majority, not the unwelcomed minority.

The Acadian people ultimately became known as Cajuns.

It seems the word Cajun is a corruption of the word Acadian.

In Louisianan French, the word was Cadian and then that became Cajun.

The Acadians had found the promised land.

Early settlers lived solely off the land hunting, trapping and fishing.

The swamps, marsh and bayous were fertile ground, and the bounty of south Louisiana overflowed like a bowl of shrimp stew, and their age old skills of seamanship were handed down through generations, laying the groundwork for what would ultimately become Louisiana's billion dollar seafood industry.

The Cajuns could not easily escape their perceived status as second class French people, but they overcame it with the tenacity and independence and utter joie de vie., that love of life which permeates Louisiana today.

Show him who█s boss.

Did you make it?

It█s a big one!

.

I'm the 10th generation Landry from France and the eighth generation from Nova Scotia.

And the Cajun, the people that live in these bayous that settled here a couple of hundred years ago, they didn't have no choice.

They didn█t want to settle here.

They were threw out here hoping that they wouldn't survive.

Bubba, come help your paw.

Okay, 1 2 3.

You know, we've been back here all our lives, and we just do what we got to do to make a living.

You know what to do.

You can survive off the land.

Real easy.

What my grandpa done what my dad had done, and even what I'm doing now is always changing.

And that's my problem.

I'm kind of old school.

I don't like to.

I like to change.

Their unique dialect is a wonder to the world and even to some in Louisiana.

He ain't got no fight left in him.

It often blends broken English with their own brand of French.

Cajuns love to tell tales, and they love to laugh both at themselves and about the world's foibles.

I ran into my cousin last week.

Yeah?

How's your wife?

I said, Oh, she's an angel.

But I thought I said, Angel.

I am now a star.

Oh, she said, you're right.

Because if you look up star in the dictionary, it says that it's a mass of compressed gas.

Cajuns have long infused Louisiana's culture with merriment.

Our state hosts more than 400 festivals every year, most of which are in south Louisiana, making Cajun Country the festival capital of the world.

We have two going on here.

Just chicken and sausage, a little TLC.

We got a little road kill, little fly.

If something walks, crawls, flies or swims, we have a festival to salute it.

And then we throw it in a gumbo and eat it.

What's often thought of today as the most quintessential Cajun dish is really arguably a Creole dish.

Which is not to say the Cajuns didn't add to it.

But if you look at the ingredients, they grow into it.

The roux comes from, you know, pre-revolutionary France.

The red pepper comes from the Spanish who got it from Native Americans.

The sassafras, which is what filé is.

Ground sassafras came from the Native Americans here.

And the okra came from Africa.

And the name gumbo came from Africa.

It's got a beautiful roux.

It█s close.

Oh it█s close.

Even though it's a little bit hackneyed to use gumbo as a metaphor for South Louisiana, it's incredibly apt in ways that people don't often think of.

Because when you look at what goes into making the actual dish called gumbo, the ingredients come from several different ethnic groups.

Perhaps the biggest festival of them all is the Cajun Mardi Gras, known as the Courir du Mardi Gras.

This celebration is completely different than the traditional parades in Louisiana's large cities, but no less entertaining.

Dating back to the earliest days of the late 19th century.

Towns like Eunice, Church Point, and Mamou featured masked riders on horseback like chicken chasing, general revelry and no shortage of adult beverages.

Here█s what we█re gonna do, we█re gonna get on the road.

We're going to each one guy's house.

Now, when we get there, when you get going.

You gonna ask him?

You want a chicken.

You gonna want a guinea.

You gonna want to lay rice and some gratons, maybe $0.50.

Whatever they got, you got to walk up and you█re not going to ask with no piece of paper, no.

You█re gonna sing.

You're going to get your crow.

Are you going to beg you?

Do whatever you got to do so we can get what they got.

Get that bird.

Come on man.

There is no question Cajuns have left their indelible mark on Louisiana from their infectious music to legendary politicians to their spicy food.

How ya█ll are I'm glad you to see me.

I guarantee.

Literally larger than life characters like Justin Wilson.

We're going cook a pot roll.

We take this wine now.

Half a cup of chili powder.

The smoke, salt, Worcestershire sauce?

It smells good already.

It was a faux Cajun from Livingston Parish and Paul Prudhomme, a true Cajun from Opelousas, became celebrity chefs long before the Food Network whetted viewers█ appetites.

Much more better, I guarantee.

They, in turn, passed the torch to Susan Spicer, Donald Link and John Folse.

I was lucky to be born and reared in the swamps of Louisiana St.

James Parish.

That torch also got passed to a wannabe native Massachusetts transplant.

Emeril Lagasse Bam, bam, bam.

Bam, bam, bam.

All made names for themselves blending Cajun cooking, usually fried or blackened with Creole, largely a product of New Orleans kitchens run by pioneers like Dooky Chase and his indomitable wife, Leah.

We Louisianans love to eat.

From po'boys to Rockefeller.

Oysters, that is.

There's gumbo, jambalaya, crawfish, cochon de lait, catfish, boiled, broiled, blackened and fried.

Bread pudding, bananas foster, beignets, pralines, meat pies and tamales washed down with a wide variety of beverages like Dixie, Jax, Abita beer, Barqs root beer, and a host of other craft beers, Hurricanes, Sazeracs, Café au Lait, and multiple brands of coffee.

And one of Louisiana's tastiest creations and the least photogenic dish in world history.

Boudin.

Things are changing in kitchens everywhere.

And some of Louisiana's most iconic food products come from Cajun country.

Of course, there's Tony Chachere█s seasoning.

Tony Chachere█s makes everything taste great.

And there are countless hot sauce brands, most notably the original Louisiana Hot Sauce and the world famous Tabasco manufactured on Avery Island near New Iberia, to name just two.

And who could forget that sweet, sticky goodness manufactured right here in the heart of Cajun country?

I'm talking about Steen█s Cane Syrup.

This is the next ingredient to go in the Holy Trinity.

The holy trinity.

And of course, we call it the Holy Trinity because it's omnipresent in our pot.

Onion, celery, bell, pepper and garlic.

And a lot of it.

And this stops the roux from cooking, but it automatically adds the great flavor that's necessary to to know that we're making a good traditional South Louisiana gumbo.

So the Trinity is in the pot.

And the Holy Trinity, of course, has a double meaning in Louisiana because of our Catholic origins, as well as these ingredients that represent what the human gumbo contributed to the real.

Good.

Right.

And I think the early cooks were basically saying, like, the good Lord in our life, he's everywhere in south Louisiana.

So is onion, bell, pepper and cast iron pot.

With their exodus to south Louisiana, the Acadians also brought with them a love of music.

Despite its catchy beat, Cajun music is rooted in the ballads that describe the suffering of the Acadian people.

We Know that the Acadians, when they came here starting in 1764, they did not have accordions.

I mean, that would not be introduced to them until much, much later.

You know, they had lost a lot of their property when the British kicked them out and burned their dwellings and destroyed their crops.

So we don't really know what they but they showed up with.

They may have been performing a cappella.

Obviously, eventually they got their hands on fiddle and guitars and added the accordion.

Cajun music later transformed to dance and became essential to the Cajun lifestyle.

Small Get togethers on the front porch, Bals de Maison, and public dances, in dance halls called Fais Do Dos.

Those were essential after a hard week's work.

in the twenties and thirties, early Cajun legends like Harry Choates and Amédé Ardoin made the lilting love song Joli Blond, the unofficial Cajun national anthem.

Choates was a white Acadian born on Cat Island.

He's generally considered the godfather of Cajun music.

Ardoin was a Creole born near Bazile who fancied the accordion.

Like Erath█s legendary D.L.

Menard and Eunice's Dennis McGee.,Cajun musicians through the years have been mostly white, but the Acadian population is rich with Creole influence.

French speaking Blacks in Acadiana- some slaves and some gens du couleur libres or free people of color- also contributed to the culture of their Cajun cohabitants.

Collectively They created new genres of music.

First there was Lala, the forerunner of Louisiana's truly original genre Zydeco.

Eighth generation Creole.

Born and raised in Saint Landry Parish, where the Bayou Meet the Prairie.

A Louisiana Creole is the people who create zydeco music.

Zydeco music throughout the years have evolved, and a lot of people don't go back far enough to explain the way people can understand where it actually comes from.

But zydeco music started off from people singing in the fields and at gatherings there was a gathering called a juré.

This juré stuff was done just by using your voice, clapping your hands and stomping your feet.

The juré gatherings were done around a fire in a circle and they pass around a jar.

And if you took the jar and took a drink out of it, then you had to add a verse to the song.

And it was like, you know, sometimes even.

Hey maman, les haricots ne pas salé.

Hey maman, les haricots ne pas salé.

You know, zydeco supposedly came from the juré.

There's a little song they call zydeco, est pas salé.

This is no salt in your snap bean.

Clifton Chenier was the father of zydeco.

He was an accordionist who teamed with his brother Cleveland to introduce the frottoir off or rub board, worn around the shoulders and rubbed with a spoon.

The triangle and the fiddle were added later, along with other instruments.

Clifton Chenier received a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammy organization in 2014.

His role as the King of Zydeco was filled by Boozoo Chavez and then Stanley Dural, Jr, known as Buckwheat Zydeco.

A queen of Zydeco also emerged in Ida Guillory, a Grammy winning accordionist.

But it was Sidney Simeon, known as Rockin Sidney, who elevated Zydeco to the national stage.

That song won a Grammy in 1985 for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk recording.

It feels I can't even describe it.

In recent years, multiple Louisiana Grammy winners have celebrated the Cajun and Zydeco sounds on the national stage.

Chubby Carrier, Terrance Simeon, Gino Delafose, Joel Sonnier, Wayne Toups, Michael Doucet and Beausoleil and the Lost Bayou Ramblers.

Perhaps the most beloved of all Cajun music performers is a rock star in Quebec, in Nova Scotia.

From where the Cajun people were exiled.

Zachary Richard is a songwriter, a poet, a storyteller and historian.

Whose eloquence and love of his ancestry make him the Cajun ambassador par excellence.

All Louisiana musicians are my brothers and sisters.

And for me to be part of this community is very inspiring.

Crossover country cousins Sammy and Doug Kershaw also cemented their places in history.

Kaplan█s Sammy Kershaw hit number one on the country chart, She Don█t Know She█s Beautiful in 1993.

Doug- who didn't speak English until the age of eight but mastered the fiddle at five- put Cameron Parish on the map when his autobiographical ‘Louisiana Man█ became a Top Ten country hit.

The song was broadcast back to Earth by the Apollo crew as they were about to land on the moon in 1969.

Out of the marshes and swamps of Acadiana rises, the Louisiana prairie.

Well, wait a minute.

You say Louisiana doesn't have a prairie?

Well, yes, we do.

The great flat grasslands that begin in Canada and stretch all the way through the heartland of America actually end in the southernmost part of the state in Ville Platte otherwise known as Flat Town.

In the American Midwest, the chief crops of the prairie are wheat, oats and barley.

In Louisiana, our grain is rice.

On Interstate 10, you'll see this exit for Iowa.

Mispronounced by those Midwesterners who settle there in the late 1880s, the president of the Iowa State School of Agriculture came south to confirm that the land was suitable for rice growing.

There was more than a grain of truth to that theory.

Like the Midwest, our prairie land is flat.

But unlike the Midwest, Louisiana gets a lot of rain.

The proven formula for success growing rice.

The I-10 corridor from Lafayette to the Texas border is lined with rice fields, which double as crawfish ponds during the off season.

Avoyelles Parish is the northernmost tip of Cajun country.

The geographic center of the state is three miles north of the parish seat Marksville.

If you're at a convention in New York City and you see a name tag identifying someone as Bordelon, Coco, Couvillion, Dauzat, Desselle, Gremillion, Laborde, Lemoine, Mayeaux, Moreau, Roy, Rabalais, or Tassin, write it down You can be assured their immediate forebears are from Avoyelles Parish.

And if you're at that same convention and you see a nametag reading Ardoin, Fontenot, Foret, Lafleur, Soleaux, or Vidrine, you can know that their family roots trace back to Evangeline Parish.

The seat of Evangeline is Ville Plat.

It's only 25 miles from Marksville as the crow flies.

But back in the day when there were phone books, if you compare the two, as I have done, you would find in Marksville there were dozens of Labords.

Not a single Vidrine and only nine Fontenots.

But in the Ville Platte phone book Lower, only two Labords and 185 Vidrines and more than 500 Fontenots.

It's like the Berlin Wall between those two communities.

Who could forget the other evangelists synonymous with Louisiana?

Nearly 90 miles south of Marksville is Saint Martinville, the setting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's classic poem Evangeline, where a lonely Cajun girl awaits the arrival of her long lost lover, Gabriel.

The site is memorialized by the magnificent Evangeline Oak.

This historical Evangeline is believed to have been an orphan girl named Emmeline La Beach, who was said to have been separated from her fiancee, Louis Arceneaux, during the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia.

The whole romance about the Cajuns was really tied up in that poem, and that went international.

So everybody felt like they knew South Louisiana and to a degree they did.

So when you have that kind of history and that kind of romance surrounding the states history, I mean, what state can really compete with us on that?

They really can't.

I mean, there's no state that has stories like that.

You know, Texas has its revolution and Mexican and all that.

Okay.

But you aint got Longfellow's poem.

A nearby statute was commissioned by the actress Doris del Rio, who played Evangeline in the 1929 movie of the same name.

Nearby St Mary Parish was the location of the very first Tarzan movie in 1917.

Tarzan the Apes, starring Elmo Lincoln, was filmed in Franklin.

The bayous of St Mary Parish replicated the African jungle long before special effects and CGI members of the New Orleans Athletic Club actually dressed up as apes to round out the cast.

Elmo actually killed a lion that went berserk during filming.

That's true.

Afterwards, the cast and crew retired to the local K.C.

Hall to enjoy a lion sauce piquante.

Not really.

Tarzan was the precursor of what is now a thriving film industry in Louisiana, where everything from Steel Magnolias to Pitch Perfect and 12 Years a Slave has been filmed in recent years.

Raising horses and racing horses are part of life on the Louisiana prairie and throughout Cajun country, small towns like Erath, New Iberia and Catahoula.

Announcer: through that stretch, win number 142 for Randy Romero.

Sired Randy Kent Desormeaux, Eddy Delahousay, and Calvin Borel, all Hall of Fame jockeys and Triple Crown winners.

And speaking of races and winners, politics has been a contact sport in Louisiana for decades.

And many of our most colorful politicians come from Cajun country.

Like Representative Emile Coreil, he would never vote for tax, but always wanted to bring home the bacon to Evangeline parish.

He made a profound statement about Louisiana politics when he said: Louisiana native James Carville, who is the lead strategist for President Bill Clinton, knows a thing or two about politics.

I invited him to sit down for a chat about some of the state's greatest political legends.

James, first of all, I want to thank you for dressing up for LPB.

And, you know, I never miss an opportunity to brand our ward direct direct on Meet the Press.

We're we're in secret tunnel room of the Heidelberg, the old Heidelberg Hotel.

It's now the Hilton in Baton Rouge, where a tunnel leads to the King Hotel across the street.

Huey Long used it for private purposes and to escape the press.

Let's fast forward to Edwin Edwards, because he's the he's the first Catholic governor elected in the in the 1900s.

You've talked about the Protestant governors that had to carry the Catholic population, but here comes Edwin Edwards.

Totally different in messaging and in style and in personality than all of his predecessors.

Other than Bill Clinton.

I've never been around a politician that had the innate skill that Edwin Edwards had.

His father came from Scottish origins.

His mother's family was Bruillets they came from Continental France.

So they didn't come by way of Nova Scotia.

And truthfully, Edwin Edwards was never Cajun.

Who built the Cajun Dome?

Who paved the parking lot of the football game?

Who█s 4-way█ing the road to Abbeville?

But because she taught him French Cajun culture and language and he could talk it fluently, then everybody assumed he was Cajun, that he just lets you believe that.

Just as the pirate Jean Lafitte captured the imagination and admiration of New Orleans in the early 1800s, Edwards captured the hearts Louisiana and maintained his electability throughout the last three decades of the 20th century.

He was the greatest politician you've seen in Louisiana during your lifetime.

In my lifetime, it would have to be every time I shave and look in the mirror, I see him.

The state was seemingly infatuated with the lovable rogue, despite the cloud of federal investigations and brazen womanizing that dogged him as both a congressman, a governor.

Many people in Louisiana considered me to be shady, dishonest, crooked, slick, what you have.

And it's something that I'm prepared to live with if for no other reason, because my mother and I know it's not so, but she's probably the only other person who's who fully believes that.

A flamboyant populist champion, Edwards never shied away from his flashy lifestyle as a gambler and ladies man.

So, you know, so he became known as the Silver Zipper.

Edward█s quick wit and political savvy have proven unparalleled in Louisiana history.

He gave us memorable quotes.

Particularly when he was running against David Treen He said, My opponent Dave Treen is so slow, it takes him an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes.

And I've just been asked by a reporter what they think my chances are winning.

And I told him, I think it's pretty good because at this point I could not be defeated unless I was caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.

What politician?

Anywhere could get away with a line like that?

Edwin Edwards.

Edwards did win that election with 62% of the vote.

Equally as memorable was when he compared himself to his 1991 gubanatorial opponent, KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.

When some reporters asked, nobody's more opposed politically than you and David Duke.

Is there any place conceivable where you two could be alike?

And without even thinking, Edwards says, yes.

As a matter of fact, there is.

We are both wizards under the sheets.

And there was the subsequent Edwards-Duke runoff that prompted the state's most memorable bumper sticker ever: Vote for the Crook.

It's important.

Ladies and gentlemen, the governor of the state of Louisiana, Edwin Edwards.

Well, enough people did.

Edwards won again in a landslide.

When I first got elected to the state Senate, Republicans from Baton Rouge expected to be very conservative.

I went and saw him.

This was when he was elected for his final term.

And he told me, he said, I know your district better than you know your district.

He was he was right.

And he said, you're not going to vote with me very much, but when you can, I hope you'll do so.

And I hope you'll listen and help us where we can.

And that's the way he treated his foes or his perceived foes.

The idea that he would not like you because you're a Republican or you were Black or you were Jewish, or you were anything else that didn't.

He really was pretty much absent of any kind of prejudice.

A little more than a decade later, a Catholic Cajun lady married to a Spaniard was elected governor.

Today marks the first time that an honor such as this has been earned by a daughter.

A wife, a mother.

A grandmother.

Another one o mf Acadiana█s most colorful political legends was a perennial candidate who was never elected.

Still, he could have made the hatchet man Hall of Fame.

This is Warren James Puggy Number 66 on your voting machine.

His name was Warren J. Moity of New Iberia, but he was known as Puggy.

He ran numerous times for Congress insurance commissioner in the state Senate.

He was usually in the race to attack a candidate on behalf of another candidate.

The triggerman, against me.

Carlos Marcello is against me.

Although this was never admitted by any of the principals, but it became fairly obvious who benefited Peggy's antics.

You always knew who he was against, but you never knew what or who he was for.

Oh, Charles Fussillier, Sheriff of Saint Martin Parish is against me.

The coaches of Iberia Parish.

Jean Gerry is against me.

I'm in downtown Winnfield, Louisiana, at the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame.

Let's check it out.

Another one of a kind Cajun politician was Daily Joseph Cat Doucet, who served off and on from the 1930s to the 1960s as sheriff of Saint Landry Parish.

He couldn't speak English fluently until he was 19 years old and spoke perfect Cajun French.

He hired someone to help him with his pronunciation and diction when he decided to run for office.

I'm not sure it worked.

In one of the reelection campaigns, he pounded on a podium and said, Me.

I'm going to win this race.

I'm going to win by landscape.

He said, My opponent over there, he got all kind of things wrote down and he read them to you.

Me When I talk, I talk out of my head.

One time the press asked the sheriff, What do you think about juvenile delinquency?

He thought for a moment and said, Well, I don't know too much about it, but if it's good for the kids for it.

And then he was asked what he thought about the civil rights bill.

He said, well, if we owe it, we ought to pay it.

Their political posters and memorabilia everywhere, even in here.

You can wait here.

Well, some 30 miles south of Saint Landry Parish, approximately 10% of the population still speak French.

Of course, that's down in Lafayette, the unofficial capital of Cajun country, with a 65% Catholic population.

Lafayette Parish has the distinction of having the highest number of Catholics of any parish or county in America.

Lafayette is one of 21 cities in the country named for the Marquis de Lafayette, an aristocrat who became a general in the Revolutionary War at age 19.

Counted George Washington among his closest friends.

He was one of three European transplants with Louisiana connections who had a profound impact on America's victory in the Revolutionary War.

The second was the Spanish governor, Bernardo de Galvez, who led victories over the British in Mobile, Natchez, and Baton Rouge, the only battles outside the 13 colonies.

The third was an Irishman Oliver Pollock, a wealthy New Orleanian, who contributed today's equivalent of $1,000,000,000 to the war effort.

He was also responsible for creating a dollar sign with poor penmanship, writing the debt as pesos.

The P and S ran together, resulting in the modern day symbol of money.

Lafayette Parish is also home to one of the most unusual characters in Louisiana history.

Dudley J Leblanc.

If you had to tell me the most interesting person of that era in Louisiana politics was Coozan Dud Leblanc.

He always supported Protestant governors because he knew he could get anything that he.

Wanted, and those Protestant governors needed his support in South Louisiana.

They were the character they needed to get they to get 40%.

I mean, they'd get 80 and everything north of Bunkie.

He a native of Youngsville, outside of Lafayette.

He represented southwest Louisiana for one term in the House of Representatives, beginning in 1924, and then served four terms in the state Senate from 1940 to 1964, interrupted twice by unsuccessful runs for governor, Dudley made a profound impact on Louisiana in three distinct ways.

First, politically, he literally served in elected from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen.

The news every Sunday from 12 to 12:30, Dudley J. Leblanc had the news in French and people would stop and turn the radio on, quit eating lunch to listen to Coozan Dud.

He gave the news in French, but a lot of times it was interjected with politics.

Secondly, Dudley was proud of his Acadian heritage and was a champion of the French language in Louisiana.

This is hard to believe, but it was against the law to speak French in the public schools of Louisiana until late in the 20th century.

Because he elected John McKeithen governor, McKeithen returned the favor by creating the state agency CODOFIL, Council For Development of French in Louisiana.

So he was very close to McKeithen And he knew he was going to France.

For a big Acadian reunion and he asked McKeithen to get him a meeting with Pope Pius the 12th in Rome.

And so here's a photograph of Dudley Leblanc greeting Pope Pius the 12th.

And shortly after this was taken in 1996, Dudley pulled out a rosary and asked the pope to bless.

So he has a picture of the pope consecrating Dudley's rosary.

As soon as Dudley got.

Back to Louisiana.

He bought three cartons of rosaries.

And he spent the next two years telling women, look, I'm going to give you this rosary.

Was blessed by the pope.

But thirdly, and most importantly, Dudley made his mark as an entrepreneur.

He became a salesman supreme and started several companies all developing ant poison, carry on west for prostate problems and sell toys.

He had comics, T-shirts, Hadacol Man, the marketing this man did was just phenomenal.

And ultimately.

Creating an elixir.

14% alcohol Hadacol.

As a jokester they'd.

Ask him, Why did you call it Hadacol?

He says, I ‘had to call█ it something.

Actually, the name comes from this poster here Happy Day Company started a headache medicine, and so he took a D, a C, o. And that's how Harry Call comes from Happy Day Company.

What he did, he knew the Cajun diet wasn't the healthiest, so he used a combination of vitamins that he had gotten from a doctor and he added or 14% alcohol.

And on that time, you had blue laws where certain days And in many places you couldn't buy alcohol, but you could buy Hadacol and you could get just as drunk with with 14% Hadacol as 14% alcohol He was a genius.

He'd do a caravan show that would go all over the country.

The habit, called caravan, was an extravaganza.

It was a variety show.

And they had movie stars like Dorothy Lamour, Mickey Rooney, Carmen Miranda, to name a few.

And the way to get into the show was with a box top.

And my dad used to always say, if you didn't like the show, well, then we will refund you all about your box top.

We selected a housewife from our studio audience, Mrs.

Audrey Cooper.

Her partner is a special guest, Senator Dudley Le Blanc.

And Dudley became a national figure.

He was a guest on the Groucho Marx show You bet your life.

Do you know who you're a state senator is?

Oh, no, I don't know.

Senator, what do you think of a voter who doesn't know who the senator is?

Well, it's not necessarily her fault.

There must be something wrong with him, because everybody in Louisiana knows who I am.

But, Senator, do you have any particular political philosophy?

I've always advocated the idea of helping the poor and soaking the rich and make those able to pay pay the taxes.

Well, do you still believe in that?

Oh, I tell you, you still believe in that?

Oh I tell you, not so much.

Now.

Well, what caused this sudden change in your political philosophy?

Well, you know, last year I made $5 million.

How did you manage to make $5 million in one year, Senator?

Well, you know, I own the Leblanc corporation to make it.

That makes Hadacol.

We manufacture Hadacol.

Hadacol?

What█s that good for?Well, it was good for $5 million for me last year.

And that's good enough for me.

Well, the next year it was $25 million.

And by the time the Federal Trade Commission came in and shut down the production of Hadacol, Dudley had pocketed a small fortune.

What was Hadacol good for?

Well, the promotional brochure enclosed in the box said that Hadacol cured diabetes.

paralysis,, epileptic fits, delirium tremens, neuralgia, migraines, arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, high or low blood pressure and that rundown condition following colds.

Of course it did nothing of the sort but it 12% alcohol by volume.

It didn't much matter.

Bill Nettles and the Dixie Blue Boys performed a little ditty that was Dudley's not so subtle way of marketing Hadacol as an aphrodisiac.

Down in Louisiana, in the bright sunshine.

If we kept play in that song, you'd hear the second verse.

I went down to the farm to rest about a week, but the farmer's wife, she started walking in her sleep.

She did the Hadacol boogie.

Or the third verse.

If your radiator leaks in your motor stand still, give her Hadacol and watch her boogie up the hill.

It's not hard to see why many see Coozan Dud is the most interesting Louisianan of them all, although others might argue that top billing goes to a New Orleans woman who could cast a spell on you.

The third wave of French immigrants to Louisiana occurred in 1809.

The islanders arrived in New Orleans.

Like the Acadians, they did not come directly from France.

They were inhabitants of Caribbean islands like San Domingue.

The present day Haiti gone after the Haitian revolution left San Domingue█s plantation economy in shambles.

Many relocated to Cuba and then Louisiana.

America had banned the importation of slaves in 1808, but a congressional exemption allowed entry to these 10,000 refugees, including slave owners, both white and of color, and the enslaved people who had fled alongside them.

Doubling the population of New Orleans.

They brought with them the voodoo religion, which they added to the city's preexisting version of voodoo, a synthesis of African and Native American rituals and worldview and Roman Catholicism.

It's unclear how Voodoo originally entered Louisiana.

The problem is, under the code noir in colonial French Louisiana, it's illegal to practice any religion that's not Roman Catholicism.

So even if somebody was practicing a different religion, they wouldn't tell you for fear of prosecution.

We get a lot of stories about voodoo going all the way back to the 18th century, but those are all from people who don't practice voodoo, who talk about things that they claim to have seen.

These people are all outsiders.

They're invariably white and hostile racially to the practitioners.

Marie Laveau, the legendary voodoo queen was a prosperous Catholic Creole woman, one of the many powerful property owning women of color who dominated the French Quarter in the 1800s.

Marie and other spiritual leaders use the unique blend of African native and European folk traditions that make up New Orleans voodoo to heal those in need and honor the spirits.

Both she and her daughter of the same name enthralled and entertained spectators on Sundays on Congo Square.

Now Louis Armstrong Park.

Congo Square is sacred ground.

This was the place where Africans started to gather in the 1700s on Sundays for markets and for gatherings, because Sunday was the free day for people who were enslaved under this brutal system of slavery in the South.

So they knew that this was their free day, they could trade, they could make some money and things like that.

But it was also a time over the whole hundred year period or more that Africans gather here.

Where they did their dances from Senegal and the dances from the Congo and the dances from Benin, which was Dahomey or the dances from Haiti or Cuba.

So people danced.

They to create the drums or the instruments that they had in Africa.

So this is probably a place that Africans did not want to miss.

On every Sunday throughout the year.

Support LPB and celebrate Louisiana by becoming a member for $30 a month.

We will thank you with the Louisiana Mississippi combo that includes the Louisiana signed hardcover book with over 250 pages of photographs of Louisiana.

The limited edition, signed photographic print collection by Carol Highsmith that includes Mike the Tiger, Big Chief, Mardi Gras, Indian Fireworks over cane River, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Coastal Marsh, and the Why Louisiana Ain█t Mississippi two DVD set for $10 a month.

Choose the Why Louisiana companion book signed by Jay Dardenne, Carol Highsmith or for just $8 a month, choose the two DVD set of this documentary.

Hello and welcome back, everyone.

I'm Karen LeBlanc, and you are watching the story of our great state told in a whole new way.

And this original LPB production, Why Louisiana Ain't Mississippi or any place else.

I am so curious to learn more about these comedy skits and the animation that we are seeing.

And so we are so lucky right now to be joined by Jay Dardenne, the creator, co-producer, host, and Linda, the executive producer.

Linda I got to start with you.

Where did the idea for these comedy reenactments come about, and how did you pull this off?

Well, when I first saw Jay's presentation at the, I said those were the comedic elements that he had incorporated and his presentation were so important.

And so the very first conversation we ever had when we sat down to discuss this series and excuse me, was about the importance of having the comedy in there.

And so as we thought about how do we make this funny?

How do we make it unexpected?

How do we keep people on the edge of their seats for for long hours, you know, how do we keep them interested?

We took some inspiration from, some unorthodox series like, What We Do in the Shadows and Drunk History and things that you find on Comedy Central.

And we just decided, let's, let's go for it, like, let's, you know, not hold back, this Napoleon skit that you see behind it is like one of my favorites.

It was so funny.

And Jay's son, actually, he was a stand up comedian in Los Angeles who grew up in Baton Rouge, wrote these skits for us, and he just did a fantastic job.

So so we kind of kept it all in the family, but we just push the limits of what we thought people would be willing to laugh at.

Well, it laugh, and it kept your attention.

And it also drove home the point.

Like the scene where, you know, people are coming into the port city from all different countries, and the French are just rewriting their names, getting new names.

That's like Ellis Island was a great scene.

Well, to John's credit, he did, virtually all the writing on the comedy skits.

And he also selected the cast members.

All these four folks are from Louisiana.

They were.

Do the actors in the various, various skits, all playing different roles at various times.

And it just it kind of kept you off balance.

And it was a fun and interesting way, I think, to tell the story.

And in that mix of, like, present day reenactments and past, you know, historical reenactments, are you in the future, the past, the present.

It was brilliant.

And one of my favorites was the John, the fight scene where John is playing John C, and he talks about his role in helping save New Orleans in the Battle of New Orleans.

And, and he said, had we not been successful, we'd all be speaking English today.

And I said, well, we are speaking English.

I was I was kind of impromptu on both of us, but, but that was just kind of an example of how we wanted to make it with a light touch and shot in the French Quarter, the Jean Lafitte bar.

And the bartender chimes that I. It's just brilliant.

All right, so I have to ask you, what was it like working with, Academy Award winning animator Bill Joyce?

So this was an important part of what we did, too, because we wanted to have some level animation.

And I felt like, let's get the best.

I mean, an Academy Award winner, Bill Joyce from Shreveport, Louisiana.

And we talked to Bill, and he was kind of interested.

And and he put together 3 or 4 different animations for throughout the course of the show.

And it was a real treat to work with him.

He actually coached me on some of the way I was going to do the voiceover on some of his animations.

All right.

We have a clip of your interview with Bill Joyce.

Let's take a look.

We felt like humor was a big part of a documentary, and this was not intended to be just a straight hear the facts documentary.

And I'm wondering what how important do you think humor is in telling a documentary kind of story for this?

I mean, it seems, paramount almost in a way.

I mean, I think our history and everything that you guys are trying to talk about in the documentary has a certain absurdist, you know, aspect to it.

And so to make your point, sometimes using humor, makes the makes it easier to get the point across, it makes people more receptive to being sort of, suggested, a worldview that might not be their own.

So I was like, yeah, let's tell a joke and try to get this thing across.

Well, the animation added a fun element, and clearly a sense of humor was a common theme throughout the production of this.

Well, I have to say, you know, we all know Jay from his very serious roles with the state where he's been the lieutenant governor and the commissioner of administration.

And and he's done a lot of important work to help our state.

But I love seeing this, comedic side of Jay, which which you wouldn't necessarily know about unless you have seen his presentation.

But really, this, this whole comedic premise, is based on the work that he did put together.

So I have to give you credit for for laying the foundation for this.

I think it helps people remember things.

I mean, it's just a way of of not being so serious and having people, you know, maybe I knew that, but I didn't didn't think about it in that particular light.

And exactly that.

Very good point.

It's not too late to choose your thank you, gift from the Why Louisiana Collection.

Let's take another look at those gifts right now.

Support LPB and celebrate Louisiana by becoming a member for $30 a month.

We will thank you.

With the Louisiana eight Mississippi Combo that includes the While Louisiana signed hardcover book with over 250 pages of photographs of Louisiana.

The limited edition signed photographic print collection by Carol Highsmith that includes Mike the Tiger, Big Chief, Mardi Gras, Indian Fireworks over cane River, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Coastal Marsh, and the Why Louisiana eight Mississippi two DVD set for $10 a month.

Choose the Wild Louisiana Companion book signed by Jay Darden, Carol Highsmith, or for just $8 a month, choose the two DVD set of this documentary.

We also have a very special credit card offer for a pledge of $500.

Receive a stunning aerial photograph of Louisiana State Capitol on a metal canvas titled Red stick, blue Sky.

All right, Jay and Linda, back to the program.

In the back story.

So you were saying that a bill gave you a little voice coaching.

But I got to say, when it came to your Cajun accent, you did not need any coaching.

That was a very natural to show you much to kind.

Seriously, I loved how you were reading some of these politician quotes and you rendered them very accurately.

Well, there's so much rich, rich political history in Louisiana.

Just an example of how we've done so much and all the areas that are important to America, and that the arts and music and sports and all these areas, we try to capture that and make people realize that Louisiana not only is a special place, but we've had a disproportionate impact on Americana.

And speaking of political cast of characters, I thought it was so on point that you brought in James Carville, political strategist and so outspoken and a little irreverent, that perfect character to comment.

Right.

But we were lucky to have James and so many of the people who did had more than just cameo roles, but were part of telling the story.

And and James is at the very beginning of the show talking about what makes Louisiana special.

Jay and Linda, I, for one, am definitely looking forward to part two and I think what a great partnership.

We are so honored at LPB to partner with you on this.

Well, it was an honor for me to to work with LPB on the work with Linda on putting this together.

And by the way, all the proceeds from the sale of the book go to friends of LPB and it's just a very important, project for me to be able to help LPB.

I'm a big believer in what LPB has been able to do through the years, and and this was a way of helping this organization as well as telling Louisiana story in a way that I hope will last for, for, some time to come.

And viewers, just a note.

Throughout our conversation, we've been talking a little bit about what you can see in part two of Why Louisiana Ain't Mississippi.

So you gotta watch part two stories.

That's right.

All right.

Well, I want to thank all of you for becoming members during this broadcast.

It's not too late to choose your thank you gift from the Wine Louisiana collection.

Let's take another look at those gifts right now.

Support LPB and celebrate Louisiana by becoming a member for $30 a month.

We will thank you with the Louisiana Ain█t Mississippi combo that includes the Why Louisiana signed hardcover book with over 250 pages of photographs of Louisiana.

The limited edition signed photographic print collection by Carol Highsmith that includes Mike the Tiger, Big Chief, Mardi Gras, Indian Fireworks over cane River, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Coastal Marsh, and the Why Louisiana Ain█t Mississippi two DVD set for $10 a month.

Choose the Why Louisiana companion book signed by Jay Dardenne and Carol Highsmith, or for just $8 a month, choose the two DVD set of this documentary.

We also have a very special credit card offer for a pledge of $500.

Receive a stunning aerial photograph of Louisiana State Capitol on a metal canvas titled Red stick, blue Sky.

Another contribution offered by these former island inhabitants was a crop: sugar cane.

It had been introduced into the Louisiana economy in 1751 by Jesuit priests, but the influx of sugar farmers from the Caribbean helped to make it a giant crop in the American economy.

Louisiana produces approximately 13 million tons of cane yearly in 22 parishes, generating an overall economic value of $3 billion.

The very first mayor of New Orleans was an islander named Etienne Boré.

But perhaps Mayor Boré█s contribution was that he invented the process of granulated sugar.

Thank you.

Yes.

If not for Boré, we'd all be stirring our coffee.

with a stalk of sugar cane.

cane.

While the French may have settled in Louisiana and waves from the early aristocrats to the Acadians to the Islanders, Louisiana remains awash in that heritage today, just take a look at the most common French surnames at the most common French surnames in Louisiana.

According to the Louisiana Atlas of Louisiana.

Surnames of French and Spanish origin.

Although the has not been formally updated, I have informally reviewed phone books and voting records and believe it remains a fairly accurate ranking.

So here's the top ten.

Thibodaux coming in at number 9 is Breaux/Bra Boudreaux, Richard, Fontenot, Guidry.

Broussard, Landry.

And number one.

Hebert.

What?

I'm for in the study resolution, which.

Tthe Hebert clan, was represented in the legislature in the 1980s by Representative Murry Hebert who was once accused of being two faced.

A colleague remembers Hebert█s response: Two faced, two faced.

If I had two faces as you think I'd be using this one?

Speaking of two faced, the greatest example of two faced consensus building actually comes from, well, Mississippi.

But the story is just too good not to tell.

In the 1950s, our neighboring state was dry.

It was illegal to sell alcohol.

There were some apparently ignoring the law and realizing significant revenue from the sale of whiskey.

Well, the legislature was called in the session to determine once and for all whether whiskey should be legalized.

But Representative Noah Sweat was one of the leaders of the legislature.

His nickname was Soggy.

That's right, Soggy Sweat.

He was called upon to deliver an address at the opening of the session in order to provide the definitive answer as to whether or not whiskey should be legalized.

In so doing, he gave the greatest example I've ever seen of a politician being two faced and talking out of both sides of his mouth.

My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time.

However, I want you to know that I do not show controversy.

On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be.

You have asked me how I feel about whiskey.

All right.

Here is how I feel about whiskey.

If, when you say whiskey, you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge.

The bloody monster that defiles innocence.

Dethrone treason, destroys the family.

Literally takes bread from the mouths of little children.

If you mean that evil drink that topples a Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation and despair and shame and helplessness and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

But if when you say whiskey, you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the evil it is consumed.

When good fellows gathered together, puts a song in our heart and laughter on their lips and a warm glow of contentment in their eyes.

If you mean Christmas cheer, if you mean that drink.

That puts a spring in the Old gentleman step on a frosty, crisp morning.

If you mean that drink, that enables a man to magnify his joy and happiness and if only for a moment, laughs, heartaches and sorrows and tragedies.

If you mean that drink the sale of which pours into our treasury untold millions of dollars to provide the tender care we need for our little crippled children Our deaf.

Our dumb and blind.

Our pitiful.

Aged and infirm.

To build highways, hospitals and schools.

Look, certainly I'm for it.

This is my story.

And I will not retreat.

I will not compromise.

Well, Soggy Sweat certainly could have been elected in Louisiana with his ever so colorful reminder that there are always two sides to every story.

Hey, you know we're different.

Hey.

Hey.

Coming up, more flavors in the g If you didn't know how to make meatballs by the time you were five years old, maybe you're not Italian.

A man stopped me and said: Jimmy Swaggart.

He said: And who is your distributor?

Said the Holy Spirit.

He said: The Holy who?

And the pot really begins to boil.

Do you remember when you were given the name the Soul Queen of New Orleans?

Jay, pick it up Buddy.

Coach, everybody in Louisiana is excited that you're back.

This is the only place where people at the airport will gather round the TV to watch a college baseball game.

It feels to me like people should know more about your contribution to Louisiana history.

I'm kind of a big deal.

Louisiana's disproportionate impact on music and sports and art for our size and for our population.

The impact Louisiana made on the world is is unparalleled.

How█d we do?