Louisiana’s Department of Tourism launched the state’s African-American Heritage Trail in March of this year. This week, the New York Times travel section is featuring the trail as a summer road trip. With 26 sites scattered from New Orleans to Shreveport, the trail is a long haul; and as the NYT sees it, difficult traveling with kids in tow. Nonetheless, exploring sites deeply rooted in the state’s African heritage and culture are well worth the trek. Destinations span the state, from St. Augustine Catholic Church in Tremé to the African House, built on Melrose Plantation outside of Natchitoches, and later decorated by Louisiana’s most celebrated folk artist, Clementine Hunter. Stops in Acadiana on the trail are The Creole Heritage Folk Life Center in Opelousas, The African American Museum in St. Martinville and Lake Charles’ Black Heritage Festival.
Conceived by Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu as one of many initiatives to jump start the state’s tourism economy, post-Katrina, the trail documents history while asking visitors to engage in a dialogue about race. “We want to transform the discussion about race and poverty in America,” Landrieu told the NYT. “Many, many white people and black people of good will have been separated by ideological fights that have been powerful. But you can’t transform the discussion if you can’t remember what happened.”
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
Philip deMahy Sr., a once respected New Iberia ad exec, was sentenced May 2 to spend the next two years (he faced up to 100 years) in a state penitentiary after state and federal investigators found dozens of images depicting children engaged in lewd sexual acts on his personal computer.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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