June 1, 1892
Union Station (pictured) , designed by famed Chicago architect Louis Sullivan and his chief draftsman, Frank Lloyd Wright, opened today in 1892 on Loyola Avenue in New Orleans. In 1954, the station would be torn down and replaced by the Union Passenger Terminal that occupies the site today. The new station replaced not only the old Union Station , but five other rail stations in the city.
June 1, 1885
The British claim to have invented brunch in the 1880’s, but perhaps they stole the idea from Louisianan Elizabeth Begue. Elizabeth Begue came to New Orleans from Bavaria in 1853. Along with a Creole butcher named Dutrey, a Creole butcher, she opened “Dutrey’s Place” at 207 Old Levee (now 823 Decatur), catering mainly to butchers in French Market who ate a light breakfast at dawn and came to the restaurant for a leisurely second breakfast. In 1885, “the French Market breakfast” gained international attention when visitors to the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, which closed this week in 1885, dined at Bégué’s (pictured) and returned home praising its notable cuisine.
June 2, 1964
After two weeks of filming in Los Angeles, principal photography of Hush…Hush.. Sweet Charlotte began in Baton Rouge this week in 1964. Scenes outside the Hollis mansion were shot on location at Houmas House and Oak Alley plantations in Louisiana. Scenes of the interior were shot on a soundstage in Hollywood. Agnes Moorehead won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. The film also received seven nominations for the 37th Academy Awards, breaking the record as the most for a horror film up to that time. The film is sometimes remembered for who WASN’T in it. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford had appeared together in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane in 1964, and Crawford was originally cast in the role of Miriam Deering in the 1964 film Hush, Hush…. but was replaced by a dispute with director Robert Aldrich and a short hospital stay for an unspecified illness.
June 2, 1961
Today in 1961, arguments were heard in federal court in New Orleans on Hart v. St. Helena Parish School Board. In 1960, the court had enjoined the parish from continuing the practice of racial segregation in the public schools. In early 1961, Act 2 of a Special Session called by Governor Earl Long established the “local option law,” to continue segregation by changing public schools to “private” schools operated in the same way, in the same buildings, with the same furnishings, with the same money,
and under the same supervision as public schools. Not surprisingly, the court rejected the arguments of segregationist Attorney General Jack Gremillion and overturned the law. St. Helena Courthouse is pictured.
June 3, 2023
Who’s the goodest girl? This week in 2023, the Guiness Book of World Records declared that a Labrador/German Shepherd mix in Metairie had claimed the world’s record for the longest tongue on a living dog. Bisbee, an English Setter from Tucson, Arizona, previously held the record at 3.74 inches. Zoey’s owners, Sadie and Drew Williams, thought she would grow into her tongue, but as time went on, people began to comment on how long it was. “It would be slobbering all over the place,” Drew Williams added. Woof.
June 3, 1966
Today in 1966, Governor John McKeithen announced that the files of the Louisiana Sovereignty Commission would be opened for public review. The Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission was formed in June 1960 and based out of the State Capitol in Baton Rouge. The Louisiana commission’s philosophy espoused states rights, anti-communist and segregationist ideas, with a particular focus on maintaining the status
quo in race relations. The newly-opened files would not reveal that McKeithen himself had used the commission to send privately raised money to the Ku Klux Klan in the first years of his administration to “insure that no violence occurred.”
June 4, 1915
Today in 1915 on June 4, the the Garyville Northern Railroad Company was incorporated under the general laws of Louisiana. This railroad was, no doubt, incorporated as a separate company by the owners of the Lyon Lumber company to build a railroad to connect their mill to an appropriate crossing location with the Baton Rouge to Hammond railroad, which was then known as the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad, and is now the Illinois Central Gulf. The Lyon Lumber Company itself had been incorporated in Louisiana on January 3, 1903. At an early meeting of the company’s board of directors in 1903, there was a discussion of what to name the new town at the site of the mill. None of the directors wanted the honor, so the town was given the name “Garyville” in honor of John William Gary, one of the directors who’d been absent from the meeting that day.
June 4, 1942
While the World War II Battle of Midway was about to unfold half a world away, life was proceeding as normally as possible for 250 high school boys and girls attending the annual 4-H summer camp at Camp Dennison near Denham Springs. The boys and girls began their days with setting up exercises, followed by a dip in the nearby Amite River and discussions of patriotism, nature and farm and home management. Evening entertainments included “sound” motion pictures of farm life in Cuba, Mexico and other countries. The war was not entirely forgotten as war coupon books were given as prizes for the best essays about farm and household mechanics.
June 5, 1863
John Baptiste (“J.B.”) Lafargue was born into slavery today in Rapides Parish. During the course of his extraordinary life, he would establish the Peabody Industrial and Normal School (named for its benefactor. Philanthropist George Foster Peabody) in 1895, During the same year, he started the Louisiana Progress, the state’s first newspaper aimed at an African-American audience. In 1907, he advocated the creation of a Carnegie lending library in Alexandria, even though it would be decades before African-Americans would be allowed to use it. Over the years, Lafargue would befriend President William McKinley and Booker T. Washington, who would come to Alexandria to speak to the National Negro Conference, which he had organized.
June 5, 1917
World War I got very serious for men across Louisiana and the United States as registration for the draft got underway today in 1917. Men had been conscripted for military service for both sides of the Civil War, but there would be no systematic registration of men eligible for service until the Selective Service Act was enacted by Congress in early 1917. The draft meant explosive growth at military facilities like Camp Beauregard near Alexandria, a National Guard facility before the war that swelled to include more than 1,300 buildings on fifteen square miles. At its peak
enrollment in the summer and fall of 1918, more than 22,000 men.
June 6, 1944
After D-Day, General Eisenhower would famously say that it could not have happened without Higgins boats. Andrew Jackson Higgins was born in Columbus, Nebraska in 1885, and came south to own and manage lumber mills in Alabama and Mississippi in 1908. He moved to New Orleans in 1915 and established in 1915 and later established Higgins Industries in 1930. In 1936, Higgins designed the Eureka boat, a shallow vessel used by oil drillers and trappers along the Gulf Coast and Mississippi River, which the Marine Corps adapted as a landing craft for infantrymen in 1939. Higgins also designed torpedo boats and patrol boats used during World War II.
June 6, 1942
It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it. The legislature created the post of Poet Laureate of Louisiana this week in 1942. Not even World War II could stop Shreveport state senator Wellborn Jack, Jr., from introducing the legislation. After the bill was signed, Governor Sam Jones appointed the first: Shreveport resident (surprise!) Emma Wilson Emery. According to a profile by Rien Fertel published in “64 Parishes”, her debut collection of poems, “Velvet Shadow,” was released in 1934. The most popular of Emery’s poems was titled “Lovely Louisiana.” Fertel writes that it “was printed in state textbooks, distributed on pocket-sized cards to homesick military men and women during World War II.” Emery held the title of poet laureate until her death in 1970. Since that time, sixteen men and women have held the position.
June 7, 1965
Today in 1965, the U.S. S. Orleck assisted in the recovery of the Gemini IV space mission, the second successful launch in NASA’s Gemini program. The Orleck (DD-886) was laid down on November 28, 1944, in Orange, Texas. After decommissioning and a brief career in the Turkish navy, the Orleck returned to Orange as a memorial and museum in 2000. After the ship was damaged in Hurricane Rita and removed for repair, the City of Orange refused to allow her to return. In May 2009, the Lake Charles City Council voted bring the Orleck to Lake Charles, where the ship’s Grand Opening was held in April 2011.
June 7, 1892
On June 7, 1892, New Orleans Creole Homer Plessy bought a ticket on a train from New Orleans bound for Covington and took a vacant seat in a whites-only car. After refusing to leave the car at the conductor’s insistence, he was arrested and jailed. Convicted by a New Orleans court, Plessy filed a petition against the presiding judge, John H. Ferguson, claiming that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The ultimate Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v Ferguson in 1896 would become the wellspring for hundreds of Jim Crow laws around the South and beyond that would follow and finally be reversed by the ruling in Brown v Board of Education in 1954.
June 8, 2021
This week in 2021, Louisiana got an official State Butterfly to go along with our State Amphibian (the Green Tree Frog) , State Reptile (alligator), State Insect (honeybee), State Dog (Catahoula Leopard Dog), and a menagerie of other official critters. While the Gulf Fritillary may sound like a seafood dish, Agraulis vanillae is very attractive for an insect and is said to be a great pollinator. It’s found from South Florida to South America. Louisiana is among 21 states with an Official State Butterfly. How the other 29 can bear to look at themselves in the mirror is a mystery.
June 8, 1971
Piyush “Bobby” Jindal was born in Baton Rouge this week in 1971. He graduated from the Baton Rouge Magnet High School in 1988 and attend Brown University, before enrolling at New College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. At Oxford, the theme of his thesis was “A needs-based approach to health care.” Governor Mike Foster appointed him secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals in 1992, and in 1999, at age 28, he was named president of the University of Louisiana System. He was elected to Congress In 2004 and 2006, and in 2007, he became the second youngest governor of Louisiana after Huey P. Long.
June 9, 1824
Philanthropist Leon Godchaux was born in Alsace-Lorraine this week in 1824. He emigrated to the United States and started buying sugar plantations, eventually becoming known as the ‘Sugar King of the South.” But he also knew something about retail, opening the Leon Godchaux Clothing Company (pictured), which became a New Orleans staple for more than 140 years. Eventually, the store opened seven locations before declaring bankruptcy and shuttering all of them in 1986. Meanwhile in Baton Rouge, brothers Bernard and Jake Goudchaux opened their own clothing store in 1907 which grew to become one of the city’s most beloved institutions. Goudchaux’s would open its own satellite stores in Lafayette and acquire the Maison Blanche department stores in Louisiana in the early 1980’s. Needless to say, some shoppers were confused. Eventually, the retailers themselves tried to have some fun with the similarity. At one point, Goudchaux’s adopted the slogan, “Goudchaux’s, Where the Difference is ‘u’.”
June 9, 1857
The Times-Picayune waxed poetical on the languid summer atmosphere this morning in 1857, with an Ode to the Levee: “The levee begins to wear a sober, summer air-tho hot sun amusing itself by frying pitch from the pine covering of the wharves, and a vagrant breeze occasionally grasping up a handful of dust and waltzing round and round in a listless, lazy manner…June is but a junior partner in the great business of months, and the senior members of firm look on it with something of disdain. Cotton, their staple sovereign, has disappeared on a European tour, and his ample throne, the Levee, stares vacantly about and sighs for his return.”
June 10, 601
Today is the feast day of St. Landry ( or Landericus) of Paris who died in 661. He is memorialized in Louisiana as the namesake of St. Landry Parish, which was established by the territorial legislature in 1805. Landry was Bishop of Paris, and during the famine of 650-51, he sold all of his personal possessions, as well as some of the furniture and sacred vessels of the church, to feed the poor. He is credited with building the first major hospital in the city, dedicating it to Saint Christopher, now the Hôtel-Dieu.
June 10, 1868
Straight College (pictured) in New Orleans was founded this week in 1868. Responding to the post-Civil War need to educate newly freed African Americans in the city, the American Missionary Association of the Congregational Church founded Straight College, and in 1930, it would merge with New Orleans University to become Dillard University. James Hardy Dillard, a native of Virginia, had moved to New Orleans in 1891, and had been an academic and pioneer in race relations. He led a movement to establish a branch for African Americans and served as a director of the Negro rural school fund and other organizations.
June 11, 1864
The Civil War wasn’t over yet today in 1864 when the Black community of New Orleans held a celebration in Congo Square to celebrate the state’s new constitution and the end of slavery with an “Emancipation Jubilee.” Thousands gathered to listen to speakers, sing, and celebrate. To a large extent, the program (photo) was coordinated by members of the Société d’Economie et d’Assistance Mutuelle. The Société is generally considered to be the city’s first social aid and pleasure clubs that would proliferate in the second half of the 19th century. One of the major functions of the Société and other clubs would be coordinating funeral processions and other activities for members and others in th community. In 1875, brass bands would become a major components of those processions and tradition of the second line was born. Today, second line funerary parades with brass bands are still a major component of New Orleans culture, but second lines have also become a part of almost everything from weddings to conventions.
June 11, 2002
American Idol debuted as a summer replacement series tonight in 2002. The judges included Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Baton Rougean Randy Jackson (pictured). In his long musical career, he’d recorded, produced, or toured with many well-known artists and bands, including Mariah Carey, ‘N Sync, Whitney Houston, Céline Dion and Madonna. His credits as a musician include George Benson, Blue Öyster Cult, Jon Bon Jovi, Michael Bolton, Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin and playing at the Grand Ole Opry with The Charlie Daniels Band. In March, 2008, Jackson released an album produced entirely by himself. In 2009. He would continue to judge American Idol until the long-running show wrapped in 2014.
June 12, 1941
“Gruesome Gertie” was born today in 1941. In 1940, Louisiana legislature changed the state’s method of execution, making execution by electrocution effective from June 1, 1941. Louisiana’s electric chair did not have a permanent home at first, and was taken from parish to parish to perform the executions. Eugene Johnson, convicted of robbing and murdering Albany farmer Steven Bench, was the first to be executed. In 1957, all executions were carried out at the State Penitentiary at Angola. Between 1941 and its discontinuation in 1991, it claimed 87 souls. “Gruesome Gertie” was reinstated in 2024, along with the addition of nitrogen hypoxia.
June 12, 1863
This date in 1863 is remembered in St. Francisville as “The Day the Civil War Stopped.” The U.S.S. Albatross, captained by Lt. Commander John E. Hart was in the Mississippi River above Port Hudson, shelling positions along the river north of the Confederate fortifications including St. Francisville. Grace Episcopal Church stood high atop the ridge overlooking the Mississippi and was used as a target. Aboard the
Albatross, delirious from fever, Hart, a Mason, had taken his own life. A messenger under a white flag asked for permission to bury Hart in the cemetery of Grace Church. Permission was granted, and Hart was buried in the cemetery with honors. (Reenacted in photo.)
June 13, 1962
Poverty Point in West Carroll Parish was designated as a National Historic Landmark today in 1962. To date, it is Louisiana’s only UNESCO World Heritage Site, a recognition it was given in January, 2013. In 2014, it was designated as a National Monument. Today, nobody really knows who built Poverty Point, when or why they built it, or what was the reasoning for the six concentric “C”-shaped earthen structures surrounding a flat plaza. It is estimated that it was built built by indigenous people between 1700 and 1100 BC during the Late Archaic period in North America. Archaeologists have proposed a variety of possible functions for the site, including as a settlement, a trading center, or perhaps a ceremonial religious complex.
June 13, 1950
Nordoff, sired by the German Derby champion Nordlicht won at Aqueduct Race Track today in 1950. Nordoff had been sired by Nordlicht, one of the great German racehorses of the mid-20th century and had been the personal property of Adolf Hitler. He was confiscated as a “spoil of war” by the US Army in 1945 and brought to the United States to be sold at auction by the Army Remount Service in Virginia. He was sold for $20,300 to a syndicate that included Christopher Chenery, the breeder of Riva Ridge and Secretariat. Nordoff aside, Nordlicht’s stud career was not stellar. He was buried at La Branche Plantation in St. Charles Parish.
June 14, 1954
When Mr. Charlie, a moveable, barge drilling platform, left its New Orleans shipyard for the Gulf of Mexico this week in 1954, it became the world’s first Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU). As it experimented with operating methods, the self-sufficient Mr. Charlie went to work for Shell Oil Company in a recently discovered oilfield in East Bay, near the mouth of the Mississippi River.The world’s first MODU began in the mind of World War II Navy veteran Alden “Doc” Laborde, who believed a self-sufficient oil rig could be placed on a barge for deeper offshore drilling. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2012 designated Mr. Charlie an ASME Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. Today, Laborde’s offshore platform is a Louisiana museum and education center, a national historic landmark, and “glimpse into the past” for the offshore petroleum industry.
June 14, 1861
On this Flag Day, spare a moment for the flag that served as Louisiana’s official state flag from 1861 until 1912. After secession in 1861, the legislature of the new Republic of Louisiana adopted a flag with thirteen stripes alternated red and blue stripes with white stripes, and the upper left-hand corner featured a pale yellow star on a red background. Officially, the flag would remain in use until the end of the Civil War, but
by the end of 1861, the familiar blue flag with pelican and state motto of “Union, Justice, Confidence” was already put into unofficial use. It would be named the official state flag in 1912.
June 15, 1863
A fierce battle was fought during the Civil War today at Richmond, after which the victorious Union general Ulysses S. Grant ordered the place to be burned to the ground. No, not that Richmond. Richmond, Louisiana, had been an important trading center and had been named the parish seat of Madison Parish in 1838. But today in 1863, it found itself between the Union Army of the Mississippi and the nearby stronghold of Vicksburg. Union forces, led by Brig. Gen. Joseph Mower, advanced on Richmond, leading to a battle and artillery duel near Roundaway Bayou. After the Confederates had retreated, and Grant ordered the town to be burned. Richmond never recovered, and the parish seat was moved to Delta, and later to Tallulah.
June 15, 1908
Evangeline Parish was created by the legislature today in 1908. Residents in the northern part of St. Landry Parish, one of the nineteen original parishes in the state, lived far from the parish seat at Opelousas. Some having to travel as far forty or fifty miles to pay their taxes, attend court or tend to other legal business. In 1908, the bill providing for the creation of Evangeline Parish was signed into law, and the location of the parish seat was left up to the voters of the parish. Ville Platte was chosen by
voters in 1909, and Eunice, smarting over not being selected, elected to remain in St. Landry Parish.