Louisiana's America

The year-long NEH-supported Louisiana's America project at the New Orleans Foundation for Francophone Cultures (NOUS) marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with a series of events, exhibitions, and publications that invite audiences to explore how Louisiana became part of the United States.

The program includes the exhibition Vie, Liberté et Recherche du Bonheur: The Reception of the Declaration of Independence in Louisiana, opening September 2026. Drawing on primary documents from archives in Louisiana, France, and Spain, the exhibition examines how the French-speaking colonists of Louisiana, who lived under Spanish rule in 1776, interpreted and reacted to the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. The exhibit shows the complex web of politics, ideals, and power struggle that shaped Louisiana’s involvement in the American Revolution and laid the groundwork for the colony to join the United States in 1803.

The organization's March 2026 symposium "One Single Place: Louisiana and the Shaping of the Early American Republic" brought together scholars, writers, filmmakers, and performers for a multi-media examination of the years following the Revolutionary War, when cultural exchange and trade—particularly between Native Americans and Francophone colonists along the Mississippi River—changed the perception of what it means to be American. The symposium ran alongside the NOUS exhibition Becoming Louisiana: Borders in Motion (1688–1812), on the founding of the early American Republic and the integration of New Orleans and the Mississippi River Valley into the bourgeoning country, which featured reproductions of navigation maps, urban plans, and architectural renderings from the Historic New Orleans Collection and Library of Congress.

“While Louisiana wasn’t formally a part of the United States at the country’s founding, communities up and down the river played a major role in how the country evolved in its first decades," Scott Tilton, co-founder and co-director of New Orleans Foundation for Francophone Cultures told Louisiana Life magazine. "These people were not passengers of history, but protagonists whose impacts are still felt today."