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Recently I’ve seen more interest in our local history. Topics that come up from time to time are stories about Reconstruction following the Civil War, and the events of the late 1860s in Opelousas. Those years of Reconstruction were a troubling time in our history. For over a decade Opelousas saw a lot of unpleasantness. Politics became toxic, filled with horrible name-calling and hurtful speech. This led to the Opelousas Massacre of September 1868. Parlons discussed a part of this story recently in an article about the St. Landry Progress newspaper of that time. But there is much more to this story since the effects of that 1868 incident lasted for many years. ....
I’m in the process of completing another book for the Opelousas Tales Series that will focus on the newspaper history in Opelousas. Our town has seen the creation of more newspapers than most other small towns across America. So many that Opelousas is known as the Graveyard of Newspapers. While reviewing the materials I’ve collected over the last 40-plus years of researching this subject, I feel an important paper to the history of our town is one that was almost forgotten. Let’s talk about the St. Landry Progress. Studying the history of newspapers in Opelousas you’ll come across two named the St. Landry Progress one created in the 1800s and one created in the 1900s. Both were short-lived for different reasons. The St. Landry Progress of 1916, owned by Richard Price and Lawrence A. Andrepont, published by Louis Hebert, was first issued in December 1916. The last edition was in February 1917. ....