BACK IN BLACK A new installment from the Images of America series offers a trove of historic photographs and little-known or long-forgotten details on the contributions of Acadiana’s black population. Authored by Sherry Broussard, African Americans in Lafayette and Southwest Louisiana ($21.99, Arcadia Publishing) spans the 19th to 21st centuries, offering insights on the cultural, civic, political, commercial, religious and athletic histories of our region’s black population. Broussard is a Lafayette educator, storyteller and community activist with a keen sense of place and time. African Americans in Lafayette and Southwest Louisiana is available at ArcadiaPublishing.com. — Walter Pierce
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
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.
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.