"I Will Not Speak French on the School Grounds,"
from an exhibit at the Vermilionville
living history museum, Lafayette, La.

From approximately 1920 to 1960, educators routinely punished children in Louisiana's public school system for speaking French — often their primary if not sole language — on school grounds. As I write in my book The Cajuns: Americanization of a People (2003):

Some educators helped to bring about this change [Americanization] by punishing Cajun children who were caught speaking French at school. . . . Caught up in the Americanism of World War I and the following Red Scare sparked by the Russian Revolution, numerous states had designated English as the sole language of classroom instruction. Louisiana was among those states: in 1916 the state’s Board of Education banned French from classrooms, a move sanctioned by lawmakers in the state constitution of 1921.(1)

While many secondary sources refer to these two linguistic bans, I do not know of any that actually quote the governmental primary sources in question. As a result, I compile the below primary-source references pertaining to the banning of French in the Louisiana public-school classroom — an event that opened the door to the punishment of Cajun children (and Creole children, too, I should add) for daring to speak their ancestral tongues on school grounds.

Some of the below information came to me from my mentor, Professor Carl A. Brasseaux (retired), who I thank for sharing his knowledge on this topic.

To the point — the Louisiana state constitution in effect in 1920 stated:
"The general exercises in the public schools shall be conducted in the English language; provided, that the French language may be taught in those parishes or localities where the French language predominates, if no additional expense is incurred thereby."(2)
This article had appeared in the state's various constitutions since 1879, when it was first adopted, albeit with slightly different wording:
"The general exercises in the public schools shall be conducted in the English language and the elementary branches taught therein; provided, that these elementary branches may be also taught in the French language in those parishes in the State or localities where the French language predominates, if no additional expense is incurred thereby."(3)
From the 1879 state constitution.
In 1921, however, a new state constitution was ratified, which in regard to language in the classroom read:
"The general exercises in the public schools shall be conducted in the English language."(4)
From the 1921 state constitution.
In other words, from one year to the next — 1920 to 1921 — the French language became unacceptable for communication or instruction in Louisiana's public-school classrooms. (This ban did not affect the teaching of conversational French — explaining why, for instance, in 1952 the Louisiana Department of Education issued a 24-page document titled French Can Enrich Your Elementary School Program: A Progress Report on the Teaching of Conversational French in Several Louisiana School Systems.)(5)
This proscription, however, officially ended with ratification of the Louisiana state constitution of 1974, which contained this article:
"The right of the people to preserve, foster, and promote their respective historic linguistic and cultural origins is recognized."(6)
A caveat: Despite frequent reference by historians and others to the state Board of Education banning English from public classrooms in 1916 — five years before such a ban appeared in the new state constitution — I cannot locate any proof of such a declaration (which, in any event, would have been unconstitutional because, as shown, the state constitution at the time provided for French instruction "in those parishes or localities where the French language predominates." I continue to look for this 1916 directive, if it even exists.
NOTES
(1)Shane K. Bernard, The Cajuns: Americanization of a People (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), p. 18.
(2)Article 226, Public Education, in Constitution of the State of Louisiana Adopted in Convention, at the City of New Orleans, the Twenty-Third Day of July, A.D. 1879 (New Orleans: Jas. H. Cosgrove, 1879), p. 55
(3)Article 251, in Constitution and Statutes of Louisiana . . . to January 1920, Vol. III, comp. Solomon Wolff (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1920), p. 2320.
(4)Article XII, Public Education, Section 12, in Constitution of the State of Louisiana Adopted in Convention at the City of Baton Rouge, June 18, 1921 (Baton Rouge: Ramirez-Jones Printing Company, [1921]), p. 93.
(5)Mabel Collette and Thomas R. Landry, French Can Enrich Your Elementary School Program: A Progress Report on the Teaching of Conversational French in Several Louisiana School Systems (Louisiana Department of Education, Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, 1952).
(6)Article XII: General Provisions, in Louisiana Constitution [1974 state constitution with amendments to 2024], Justia.com, https://law.justia.com/consti.../louisiana/Article12.html..., accessed 9 October 2024.