(Citizens for a New Louisiana) — Baton Rouge will soon host a weekend of events honoring Louisiana’s role in the American Revolution. Celebrating and preserving such history is more than an act of remembrance—it is a reaffirmation of the values, sacrifices, and cultural heritage that shaped our state and nation. Yet, in recent years, key parts of this heritage have faced persistent attacks from those who seek to diminish, reinterpret, or erase them under the guise of modern activism. These important events remind us why preserving our history and culture is still an important battle to wage. 

The Constitution Week Banquet

On Friday, September 26, 2025, the General Philemon Thomas Chapter of the Louisiana Society of the Sons of the American Revolution (LASSAR) will hold a Constitution Week Banquet at the Baton Rouge Country Club, featuring a Color Guard presentation, public service medal awards, and a keynote address. The next morning, Saturday, September 27, Galvez Plaza will be the site of the 248th Anniversary Remembrance of the Battle of Baton Rouge, a national SAR event commemorating Governor Bernardo de Gálvez’s 1779 victory that secured the lower Mississippi River for the American cause.

The program will include a muster and march by the SAR Southern District Color Guard, remarks from battle historian Stephen Estopinal, and participation from groups such as the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Order of Granaderos y Damas de Galvez de la Luisiana, and the Canary Islanders Heritage Association. Following the ceremony, talks will be held in the Old State Capitol Museum, and additional business at the River Center Branch Library. Events like these do more than honor the past. They remind us that culture and history shape the politics of today and tomorrow.

Culture Determines Politics 

There is an adage, “culture determines politics.” It speaks to the reality that laws, institutions, and political priorities inevitably reflect the deeper values and traditions of their culture. Political movements and legislation rarely arise in a vacuum. They mostly emerge from the shared beliefs, moral codes, and historical narratives that bind a community together. When cultural identity is deeply rooted in faith, heritage, and shared values, it provides a solid foundation for political stability and continuity. Conversely, when culture is eroded or redefined, political change follows, often in ways that can alter the course of a society for generations.

This is why the preservation of cultural heritage—whether through language, customs, religious practices, or symbols like the Acadiana flag—is more than an exercise in nostalgia. It is a defense of the very framework from which political life is built. When these cultural anchors are weakened, the political structures they once supported will inevitably shift, often in directions unmoored from the people’s original values. In this sense, guarding cultural identity is not simply about honoring the past. It is about safeguarding the political future. Louisiana’s own story makes this clear. In the crucible of the American Revolution, Cajun patriots embodied this very principle.

Cajun Patriots

During the American Revolution, Cajun militiamen stood shoulder to shoulder with Spanish and American forces under the command of Governor Bernardo de Gálvez, striking key blows against the British at Baton Rouge, Mobile, and Pensacola. These victories were not only military triumphs but also affirmations of loyalty from a people who had only recently found safe harbor in Spanish Louisiana. For the Cajuns—descendants of the exiled Acadians—this service was more than a matter of political alliance. This was an expression of gratitude toward the Catholic Spanish crown that had offered them land, protection, and the freedom to live their faith without fear.

Their journey to Louisiana began with the Great Upheaval (Le Grand Dérangement) of 1755, when British authorities expelled the Acadians from Nova Scotia. Seen as disloyal and marked by their Catholic faith, they suffered land seizures, family separations, and forced exile. Many endured hardship and persecution in the British colonies, where Catholic worship was often restricted. Only upon reaching Spanish Louisiana—where Catholicism was embraced—were they able to rebuild their lives. Fusing faith and culture into a resilient identity that would again rally to defend their home, an identity later enshrined in the very flag of Acadiana.

Birth of the Acadian Flag

In 1965, Dr. Thomas J. Arceneaux, dean of agriculture at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now UL Lafayette), designed a flag to symbolize the heritage of the Acadiana region. Drawing inspiration from heraldic traditions and the cultural history of the Acadian people, Arceneaux arranged the flag into three fields, each representing a key chapter in the region’s story. His design was first displayed locally and quickly gained recognition as a distinctive emblem of Cajun identity. Less than a decade later, in 1974, the Louisiana Legislature formally adopted the design as the official flag of Acadiana through House Concurrent Resolution No. 143, ensuring its recognition in state law and its display in public life.

Arceneaux’s symbolism is rooted in history and faith. The blue field bearing three silver fleurs-de-lis represents the French origins of the Acadian settlers, a direct reference to the arms of France. The red field with a gold castle is drawn from the arms of Castile, honoring Spain’s governance of Louisiana during the Acadian migration and the prosperity they found under Spanish rule. The white triangle with a single gold star carries layered meaning: it honors Our Lady of the Assumption, patron saint of the Acadians, and commemorates their active role in the American Revolution, particularly under the leadership of Spanish Governor Bernardo de Gálvez.

The Acadiana flag thus stands as both a cultural emblem and a visual narrative of exile, settlement, and resilience. It is the official symbol of the region, flying proudly at civic events, public buildings, and festivals throughout southern Louisiana. But it too has been the subject of attacks. 

Revising History

In 2018, Dr. Rick Swanson, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, proposed alternative flag designs to better reflect the full “diversity” of Acadiana’s population, particularly its African American heritage. One version recolored the white triangle to yellow and the gold star to green, while another re-oriented the layout into three vertical stripes. Swanson emphasized that these were meant as ‘complementary symbols’, not replacements, but the concepts drew sharp criticism from many who viewed them as unnecessary meddling with a beloved emblem of Cajun identity.

Two years later, in 2020, Lafayette artist Cory Stewart introduced a creative variation on the Acadiana flag that incorporated the Pan-African colors alongside its traditional symbols. Stewart’s design emerged during the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd’s death and was intended as a statement of unity—celebrating both Black heritage and regional identity.

At the same time, a quieter but potentially more impactful shift occurred in how the flag’s meaning is recorded. In a 2022 Wikipedia edit, key elements of Dr. Thomas Arceneaux’s original symbolism—particularly the gold star’s reference to Our Lady of the Assumption as patron saint of the Acadians and the Acadians’ service under Spanish Governor Bernardo de Gálvez during the American Revolution—WERE REMOVED. The edit reframed the star as simply representing “Acadian exiles in America” and “Roman Catholic heritage,” softening the religious specificity and erasing the Revolutionary War connection.

From Southern Heritage to American Heritage

In recent decades, there has been a marked trend toward the removal of monuments, renaming of public spaces, and reinterpreting of historical symbols associated with the American South. Statues of military leaders, memorials to the common soldier, and even culturally significant flags have been reclassified by some activists as unacceptable in public spaces, with little distinction made between honoring heritage and endorsing past injustices. This has led to the erasure of markers that, for generations, served as touchstones for understanding regional history—both its triumphs and its failures.

The reason the South must be denounced has less to do with slavery, which existed in the northern states as well, and more to do with stifling the honoring of tradition and/or a people who are willing to oppose federal overreach. It is about subjugating the powers of the sovereign states to the federal authority. In doing so, the American model is flipped on its head, where the central authority reigns supreme. It was about the right of people to self-government and political power vested in local communities. Rather than fulfilling our founders’ purpose of a national government as a melting pot of local cultures, Washington now seeks to recast every local community into its own image.

In Lafayette, former Mayor-President Josh Guillory played a pivotal role in removing the General Alfred Mouton statue, a Confederate memorial to a Cajun veteran that had stood in front of City Hall for nearly a century. Responding to long-standing local activism led by community group Move the Mindset, Guillory in 2020 unilaterally decided to relocate the statue. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, who had originally donated the statue in 1922 and opposed its removal, ultimately agreed to a settlement in July 2021. 

More Attacks

What began with monuments soon extended to national institutions. In 2021, Congress—overriding a presidential veto—established the Naming Commission via the National Defense Authorization Act to uproot Confederate legacies embedded in U.S. military base names. By 2023, bases long named after Confederate generals—like Fort Benning, Fort Bragg, Fort Hood, and Fort Polk —were officially renamed. Despite headlines announcing the restoration of the names of the bases in Louisiana and around the country, no such thing has happened. The original names will likely never be restored. It is all part of a long-term plan that seeks to make gradual measures over time to achieve a larger objective in the future.

Even the state calendar was not immune. Around the same time, the Louisiana Legislature moved to retire two state holidays tied to Confederate commemoration formally — Robert E. Lee Day and Confederate Memorial Day. Though seldom observed, these holidays remained on the legal calendar until 2022, when House Bill 248 was introduced by Matthew Willard (D 1/10) and passed with bipartisan support. The Louisiana House adopted the bill 62–20, followed by a 28–4 vote in the Senate. The measure should have died in committee, but for a single vote. Piece by piece, the cultural anchors of Louisiana — from statues to holidays — are being chipped away, often by the narrowest of margins.

The Target: American and Christian Foundations

In recent years, this impulse has grown beyond the South to encompass elements of American heritage at large. Figures once considered national icons—from Christopher Columbus to Theodore Roosevelt—have faced public condemnation, their monuments removed or vandalized. Founders like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are increasingly judged solely by modern moral standards, with little regard for their foundational contributions to the American confederated republic. National holidays have been renamed or recast, and historical narratives revised, often with a strong emphasis on present-day political and social values.

This widening scope reflects a cultural shift in how history is remembered—or, in some cases, deliberately erased. When heritage is removed, it leaves a void that is often filled with oversimplified or ideologically driven narratives, severing communities from the roots that ground their political and cultural identity.

Chipping Away at America’s Cornerstones

The danger in these developments lies not merely in the changes themselves, but in the slow, almost imperceptible way they take root. This is the hallmark of what critics describe as Marxist “woke” activism. It’s rarely an outright demand to destroy a tradition overnight, but rather a series of incremental reinterpretations, language shifts, and symbolic re-framings that, over time, can fundamentally alter a community’s self-understanding. The battle is often not fought in legislatures or public squares, but in classrooms, libraries, online archives, and cultural institutions, where minor edits that eventually transform the whole until the original meaning is blurred beyond recognition. If a people wish to preserve their heritage intact, they must be alert not only to the dramatic challenges but also to the quiet revisions, for it is often the latter that succeed in remaking history without ever admitting they have done so.

We should all be concerned by the quiet and subtle removal of Our Lady of the Assumption, the patron saint of the Acadians, and the Acadians’ service under Spanish Governor Bernardo de Gálvez during the American Revolution, from the description of the Acadian flags. These are attacks on our historic and religious foundations — the very things that make us who we are.