page_title: Demographics of Louisiana
section_title: Ethnicity
hierarchical_section_title: Demographics of Louisiana / Ethnicity
caption_attribution_description: English: Louisiana state welcome signFrançais&#160;: Panneau de Bienvenue dans l'état de Louisiane
context_page_description: The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Louisiana was 4,670,724 on July 1, 2015, a 3.03% increase since the 2010 United States Census.
  As of July 2005, Louisiana has an estimated population of 4,670,724, which is an increase of 21,048, or 0.4%, from the prior year and an increase of 137,352, or 3.03%, since 2010. This includes a natural increase since the last census of 129,889 people and a decrease due to net migration of 69,373 people out of the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 20,174 people, and migration within the country produced a net loss of 89,547 people. The population density of the state is 104.9 people per square mile.
  The center of population of Louisiana is located in Pointe Coupee Parish, in the city of New Roads.
  According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 14.7% of the population aged 5 and older speak French or Cajun French at home, while 1.5% speak Spanish.
context_section_description: Cajuns and Creoles of French ancestry are dominant in much of the southern part of the state. Louisiana Cajuns are the descendants of French-speaking Acadians from colonial French Acadia, which are now the present-day Canadian provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Cajuns remained isolated in the swamps of South Louisiana well into the 20th century. During the early part of the 20th century, attempts were made to suppress Cajun culture by measures such as forbidding the use of the Cajun French language in schools.
  The Creole people of Louisiana are split into two racial divisions. Créole was the term first given to French settlers born in Louisiana when it was a colony of France.  In Spanish the term for natives was criollo.  Given the immigration and settlement patterns, white Creoles are predominantly of French and Spanish ancestry.  As the slave population grew in Louisiana, there were also enslaved blacks who could be called Creoles, in the sense of having been born in the colony.
  The special meaning of Louisiana Creole, however, is associated with free people of color (gens de couleur libres), which was generally a third class of mixed-race people who were concentrated in southern Louisiana and New Orleans.  This group was formed under French and Spanish rule, made up at first of descendants from relationships between colonial men and enslaved women, mostly African.  As time went on, colonial men chose companions who were often women of color, or mixed-race.  Often the men would free their companions and children if still enslaved.  The arrangements were formalized in New Orleans as plaçage, often associated with property settlements for the young women and education for their children, or at least for sons.  Creoles who were free people of color during French and Spanish rule formed a distinct class – many were educated and became wealthy property owners or artisans, and they were politically active.  Often these mixed-race Creoles married only among themselves.  They were a distinct group between French and Spanish descendants, and the mass of enslaved Africans.
  After the Haitian Revolution, the class of free people of color in New Orleans and Louisiana was increased by French-speaking refugees and immigrants from Haiti.  At the same time, French-speaking whites entered the city, some bringing slaves with them, who in Haiti were mostly African natives. In 1809, nearly 10,000 refugees from Saint-Domingue arrived from Cuba, where they had first fled, to settle en masse in New Orleans. They doubled that city’s population and helped preserve its French language and culture for several generations.
  Creoles of color today are frequently racially mixed, being of  African, French (and/or Spanish) and/or Native American heritage. Their families have historically adhered to the French or Creole-speaking environment and culture. The separate status of Creoles of color was diminished after the Louisiana Purchase, and even more so after the American Civil War. Those Creoles who had been free for generations before the Civil War lost some of their legal and social standing.
  Louisiana's population has the second largest proportion of black Americans (32% according to 2010 census) in the United States, after Mississippi, at 37%.
  Official census statistics do not distinguish among people of African ancestry. Consequently, no distinction is made between those in Louisiana of English-speaking heritage and those of French-speaking heritage.
  Creoles of color, multiracial Americans in Louisiana with French, African, and/or Native American ancestry, predominate in the southeast, central, and northern parts of the state, particularly those parishes along the Mississippi River valley.
  Whites of Southern U.S. background predominate in northern Louisiana. These people are predominantly of English, Huguenot French, Welsh, and Irish/Scots Irish backgrounds, and share a common, mostly Protestant culture with Americans of neighboring states.
  Before the Louisiana Purchase, some German families had settled in a rural ar
caption: Louisiana's bilingual state welcome sign, recognizing its French heritage
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