Obligatory not a historian, but I did some research for this for a paper I wrote ages ago examining how Cajun-ness was suppressed but later became an important part of identity building and pride in Louisiana. I'll try to summarize what I found and give some sources, which will hopefully help answer your question and be sufficient for this sub.

Cajuns (also known as Acadians) were the peasant French who first moved to Acadia (modern day Nova Scotia) before being forcibly exiled by the English and settling in large numbers in the rural swamps of Louisiana between 1765 and 1785. By 1865, this group had split into the genteel elite Acadians and the lowly peasant Cajuns (Henry 1998.) Isolated and stigmatized by the French elite of New Orleans and Anglo newcomers, Cajuns continued to develop a unique culture separate from the rest of the state. Ethnic jokes at their expense were common and they were considered lazy and ignorant. Non-Cajuns called them derogatory names such as coonass, a highly charged term with disputed etymology but which likely references Cajun status as inferior to blacks, and boogerlee, meaning someone of low class with mixed peasant French and black heritage (Henry 1998.)

Indeed, many Cajuns married local Native Americans and descendents of black slave maroon communities. Many also lived in states of extreme poverty, without roads, electricity, or access to schools in some areas as late as the 1960s. Yet, while the Carpetbag Constitution of 1868 had banned French as an official language, Cajuns maintained a rich culture of art, folklore, music, language and dance that was transmitted orally through Cajun French from generation to generation (Brasseaux 1978, Heylen 1994.)

In the early 20th century, Louisiana undertook an aggressive effort to Anglicize Cajuns. They were forbidden from speaking Creole French in schools, encouraged to adopt more “American” last names, and to give up traditional lifeways. In the 1950s, however, a movement begun within the Cajun community rejected this Anglo-hegemony and reclaimed their culture as a source of pride. In 1968, Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) was established to preserve and promote Cajun culture.

Part of this included marketing Acadian lifeways to tourists. Cajun pride was further bolstered with the election of the initially very popular, though very corrupt, Cajun governor Edwin Edwards in 1972 who ended up serving four terms. Increased exposure led to regional and eventually national interest, which cities such as New Orleans and Lafayette successfully turned into tourist pulls. Cajun tours, villages, crafts, music, dancing, and food are now popular tourist attractions that generate large amounts of money for those regions.

But as equally important, Cajuns are now proud of their ethnic and cultural heritage and little stigma remains. In 1976, South Louisiana audiences cheered as presidential candidate Ronald Reagan announced he had been appointed an, “honorary Cajun coonass,” though some of the older generation winced at the term. It seems that as the French elite and Anglo middle class began to realize the money making potential and academic interest in Cajun heritage they were willing to set aside age-old stereotypes and biases in order to make the most of this new opportunity (Bernard 2003.) That is not to say that anti-Cajun sentiment is entirely gone, but there has developed a recognition that Cajun-ness is positive for the state with regards to tourism and claims to unique cultural practices. It has also been embraced within Cajun communities as an identity to celebrate rather than hide or feel shameful about.

• Bernard, Shane K. 2003 The Cajuns: Americanization of a People. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.

• Brasseaux, Carl A. 1978 Acadian Education: From Cultural Isolation to Mainstream America. In The Cajuns: Essays on Their History and Culture. Glenn R. Conrad, ed. Pp. 212-224.

• Henry, Jacques. 1998 Summer From “Acadien” to “Cajun” to “Cadien”: Ethnic Labelization and Construction of Identity. Journal of American Ethnic History 17(4):29-62.

EDIT: TLDR; there were both social pressures as well as active governmental pressures to conform to normative Anglicized ideas about being American. NPR did an interview with Shane Bernard, the author of a book on this issue that I cite, which you might find helpful in understanding the issue: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1693790

Try posting this in /r/acadiana . Growing up in Cajun Louisiana I was taught that Cajun French was once actively suppressed in the school system. Also, Google CODOFIL.

Follow-up, where there any similar measures taken by the US anywhere else in the US to maintain heritage? As for Italians on the east coast or swedes in the Mid West or any other culture with mass immigration in the early 20th and 19th/18th centuries.

This is perhaps too broad to give an answer to, but I'd really like to hear anyone chime in about the "traditional" Cajun narrative on the suppression of Cajun culture, and whether mainstream historians on the subject generally agree or disagree with it. Would anyone have any recommendations for academic works regarding the suppression of Cajun culture in the early 20th century?

Seems like there have been a few good answers here already, but my sister gave me another answer to provide (Source: She's a PhD student in French Linguistics at LSU):

"It’s a pretty broad question – that I don’t think I could really FULLY delve into here, but the basics are as follows. It was partly a numbers game. Both Louisiana and Québec had very high concentrations of French speakers in an otherwise anglophone country but Québec’s percentages were much better. “La revanche des berceaux” (“revenge of the cradles,” the push for demographic superiority if they couldn’t have much political influence in anglophone-dominated Canada) helped to more than triple the population of Quebec between 1900 and 1960 (http://www.economist.com/node/12891035).

Even in the 1901 census, Quebec’s population was almost a third of the entire population of Canada (even in the 60s it was still roughly 28%) http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census/1901/pages/about-census.aspx

Compare this to Louisiana – in 1920, Louisiana’s population (of which francophones were a sizable minority but NOT a majority as in Quebec) made up just 1.7% of the US population. The US was fighting pluralism all over the place, trying to assimilate the waves of immigrants and languages other than English were suppressed everywhere not just Louisiana (think Teddy Roosevelt’s “We have room for but one language here and that is the English language”) – in Louisiana, the mixture of mandatory schooling in 1916 – and that schooling was in English with sometimes severe punishment for speaking French –(see the preface to the Dictionary of Louisiana French, ed. Valdman, p. xii) and the VAST changes that came in the first half of the 20th century – the influx of anglophones who ran the oil industry, a far more lucrative career choice than farming but one that required knowledge of English; the creation of roads and eventually interstates(!) connecting previously isolated villages; the Americanizing effects of World War II (if you are fighting/dying next to Americans, you might start to see yourself as American); and a number of other factors convinced an large minority population that the only way forward was English, and that French would be a hindrance to their children’s success. So by the time counter culture movements started in the 60s, that generation of children (the Boomers) was already born and growing up and speaking, you guessed it, English.

Even with the creation of CODOFIL in 1968, its founder was very careful to NOT go the Quebec route because the authorities were already a bit nervous about the idea of a separatist movement. http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census/1901/pages/about-census.aspx

Sorry I can’t go into more detail – but that’s the gist, if you ask me. I’ve got to go run to work (teaching French in Louisiana – we’re down but we ain’t out yet...)"

Hiya, everyone,

We've unfortunately had to remove a large number of speculative, short or otherwise insufficient comments from this thread. The bulk of these have been personal anecdotes from peoples' experiences in German / French / Spanish speaking minority communities throughout the Americas which, while neat, aren't in-of-themselves acceptable for /r/AskHistorians.

Please keep in mind that we maintain very high standards in contributions to this community, and while personal stories can certainly be really neat, they're better off told over on /r/history.

Thanks all.