Le Louisianais (Convent, La.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
439 issues from 1865 to 1881, published in Convent, Louisiana, digitised for Chronicling America.
Le Louisianais was published from 1865 to 1883 in Convent, a small community in St. James Parish, Louisiana, located about halfway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. In the 19th century, this area was known for its large, affluent sugar plantations.
Jean Sylvain Gentil (1829-1911) founded Le Louisianais. Born near Blois, France, Gentil was imprisoned and exiled in 1850 by Emperor Napoleon III for writing incendiary articles in the republican journal Le Courrier de Loir-et-Cher. He lived briefly in London before immigrating to the United States in 1852, eventually settling in Convent, where he taught French, Spanish, Latin, and Greek at Jefferson College, a small Catholic school. At the end of the Civil War, Gentil began publishing Le Louisianais in partnership with Armand Victor Romain (1835-1872), a math professor at Jefferson College. The first issue appeared on August 12, 1865. By November of that year, it was the official journal of St. James Parish.
Le Louisianais was initially published weekly on a single double-sided sheet; in 1877 it expanded to four pages. Primarily in French, it had varying amounts of English-language content. Each issue typically carried miscellaneous news from around the world; political commentary, with an emphasis on race relations, suffrage, and the post-Civil War recovery of the South; advertisements and announcements; essays on science, history, art, and literature; and an assortment of poetry and fiction. A unique aspect of the paper…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Convent, Louisiana, United States
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress