The Cajuns: Americanization of a People

FOUR: From Coonass to Cajun Power

FROM COONASS TO CAJUN POWER 85 I believe that this effort must be made now; otherwise, the French language as a native tongue will be lost forever. —Cajun activist leader James “Jimmy” Domengeaux, 1968 En 1968, la Louisiane a été officiellement déclarée un état bilingue. Et quoi c’est que ça veut dire? Ça veut dire que quelque part à Bâton Rouge, Signé, timbré, enterré dans un dossier, Il y a un papier qui dit Qu’en 1968, la Louisiane a été officiellement déclarée un état bilingue. [In 1968, Louisiana was officially declared a bilingual state. What does that mean? That means that somewhere in Baton Rouge, Signed, sealed, and buried in a folder, There is a paper which says That in 1968, Louisiana was officially declared a bilingual state.] —Cajun poet Jean Arceneaux, “Un état bilingue,” 1978 FOUR On May 9, 1972, Edwin Washington Edwards went to morning Mass looking like “the best-dressed pimp to ever strut through a whorehouse,” according to one observer. Afterward, Edwards reigned as grand marshal of his own Mardi Gras-style parade. Mobs cheered, marching bands strutted, beauty queens waved from colorful floats, and doubloons splashed on the pavement as the “Cajun Prince” smiled from a limousine’s sunroof, gesturing V for victory . “I don’t like playing turtle,” he told his entourage. “Let’s get out and walk!” Edwards worked the parade goers on foot, shaking hands, grinning, charming them as he so expertly did every crowd. A short time later, in front of the state capitol, jubilant thousands listened in anticipation as Edwards stepped forward, poised to speak on a decorated rostrum. An explosion shook the grandstands. Spectators scattered. Aides drew handguns and shoved Edwards down. The blast turned out to be only a barrage of artillery salvos, fired in honor of the occasion. Edwards regained his composure, stepped forward, and first in French, then in English, took the oath of office as governor of the State of Louisiana. Louisiana had sworn in its first Cajun governor, an event that Edwards himself viewed as significant.“While we Cajuns as a group have prospered in Louisiana,” he remarked in his inaugural address, “the myth existed that the governor’s chair was not available to one of us—a subtle myth without substance and another barrier which this election has destroyed.” Edwards had chosen “Cajun Power!” as his campaign slogan. The phrase adorned hats, buttons, banners, T-shirts, license plates, and bumper stickers. Next to it often appeared the image of a white clenched fist, adopted from the defiant gesture of the era’s militant black power movement. But there was something oddly benevolent about this particular fist—its fingers were clasped tightly around a bright red crawfish, a jovial symbol of Cajun ethnicity. “‘Cajun Power’ is a half-jesting assertion of an accomplished fact, not a distant goal,” a New York Times journalist observed from the inauguration. When the journalist asked Edwards what the average Cajun thought about his election, the governor answered, “They probably think ‘He has proved that a Cajun is as good as anybody else.’”1 Only a few years earlier the notion of Cajun Power would have seemed laughable.“The term ‘Cajun,’” noted a travel writer in 1957,“is used by some 86 FROM COONASS TO CAJUN POWER as a term of disregard, applied to the most ignorant of the lower classes.” Aware of negative traits attributed to themselves, many Cajuns believed that they were indeed a backward people. Their ethnicity became a source of shame, something to conceal or discard in the rush toward Americanization and its promise of a better way of life.2 Clearly, however, something dramatic had occurred to reverse this trend and to spark the outpouring of Cajun pride and empowerment that manifested itself by the early 1970s. That something was the 1960s, which exerted a major impact on ethnic groups across America. A new “Age of Ethnicity” developed in reaction to the Anglo-conformism of previous times, as minorities demanded their rights and honored their heritage. This trend grew out of the civil rights and black power movements as well as the counterculture , all of which had declared war on traditional attitudes. Ethnic groups rebelled against the old melting pot idea, which held that a homogenous national ethnic group could be created from an amalgam of minorities, the outcome being distinctly WASP in character. By 1970...