Ouachita Parish History Tidbits

Author: Lora Diane Peppers

  • The Negro Motorist Green-Book – 1940

    Lets say you were an African-American living in the United States decades before the Civil Rights movement. You wanted to take your family on vacation out of state, but didn’t…

  • African-American Woman Fishing In Monroe

    Some photos leave you wanting more. This one does for me. It is a photo taken in Monroe circa 1930 of a woman sitting on the bank of a bayou/river…

  • Queen Janus I

    Last month, I went to visit the Biedenharn Museum and Garden, and for the Mardi Gras season, they had some past Krewe of Janus royal costumes on display. I think…

  • A Proposed New Building For the Monroe Academy

    Wouldn’t this have been a gorgeous building? This was published in the Monroe News Star back in 1913. Professor Foster and the trustees of the Monroe Academy were looking to…

  • Students in Other Parish schools

    Last week, I told you about the Monroe Academy, a Leland University affiliate private school for African-American students at the turn of the last century. Leland had affiliate schools all…

  • Students and Faculty of the North Louisiana Industrial Institute

    The bulletin for Leland University I found these lists of students in, can be seen on the Internet Archives here : https://archive.org/details/bulletin189798191011lela/page/n121/mode/2up?q=%22Monroe%2C+LA%22 . I also found them digitized on the…

  • Monroe’s Ties to a Lost Black University

    I am just recently hearing about a private school for African-Americans that was here in the 1890’s and the early 1900’s. To call out my own biases, I thought that…

  • Lincoln School

    This picture is amazing! https://www.louisianadigitallibrary.org/islandora/object/oplib-bsc%3A44 It shows the faculty and staff of Lincoln School, which was an African American school during segregation. In 1962 or so, the Elm Street Elementary…

  • A & W Sandwich Shop – 1936

    It seems every town once had an A & W Sandwich shop at one time! This one was located at 326 DeSiard Street. The ad appeared in the 1936 telephone…

  • Ouachita Parish School Board, 1965-1966.

    https://www.louisianadigitallibrary.org/islandora/object/oplib-bsc%3A63 A similar picture to this one in our collection was found in the 1966 West Monroe High School yearbook, the Rebelaire. It identified the men in the photo as:…