So interesting as I was dragged down the same Louisiana rabbit hole but even deeper recently as a result my genetic test. Except I was coming from the mirror direction, having been born “white” in the North and raised that way. I still have more work to do, but I’ve learned a great deal. My first slave ancestor came in the early 1700’s from Senegal on one of 23 slave ships, according to one source. The French controlled the state until 1763, so that was the ‘end’ temporarily of French “imports.” Then the Spanish took over Louisiana after winning a war as part of a settlement and controlled it until 2 weeks before American purchased it in 1803. It had to technically be transferred back to the French for the sale to take place it appears.
The Spanish brought slaves in in greater numbers, but they practiced “slavery lite”, as the French had done until then. That is, they allowed slaves to free themselves after a time by purchasing their freedom, or self-manumit. As a result, there were a lot more freed blacks in Louisiana then elsewhere, by the early 1800s practicing many professions. There were two black property owners who had $ and $5 million dollars wroth of property. There was most like a lot of “crossbreeding” before the Spanish times, as the French tried to bring more white women to the state as it was mostly French trappers and adventurers, but failed to do so. Thus a whole creole population was born. It may have been that my grandfather’s grandfather, born in 1790 and became governor in 1849 serving until 1853, Walker, was born part black or creole. I don’t know yet. He could have bred with a slave as he owned a plantation in the middle of the state.
But things got worse and my other black ancestor arrived in the “second wave” of French slavery. This wave came with whites from the sugar plantations after the revolution in Haiti overthrew French rule. The French brought sugar cropping with them and were far more violent, as sugar cropping is very hard work and plantation owners in the Caribbean had developed more brutal techniques of whipping combined with brainwashing slaves into Christianity with the salve bible, thus committing genocide. (According to the UN definition you don’t have to kill people to have a genocide, “only” out their ethnic background and ethnic language and ethnic religion, which they did with great efficiency in their sugar concentration camps. Thus my second wave black ancestor arrived I believe then, as it is Western Bantu, Aka and Khoisan roots typically of slave reading from Congo/Cameroon region where French kidnapped slaves from their Caribbean plantations.
The French actually abolitionist slavery as a result of the Haitian revolution in 1993 by civil commissioners. Napoleon reinvaded in 1801 but lost and withdrew, with the French still immigrating out. However, the slave owners that fled Louisiana were having none of this slavery abolition that happened in France, and protected their sugar wealth by moving it to Louisiana with all their slaves. When the Americans took over from the Purchase, they brought their brutal brand of “slavery heavy” with them, with no chance of self-manumission. Thus, the sugar plantation French and American slavery tactics overlapped in a more complete repressiveness. However, still the legacy of earlier times meant more freemen in Louisiana than elsewhere before the Civil War, with a network of middle class freemen helping black escaped slaves by providing a sort of underground network of assistance.
After the Civil War things got worse of course, with ex-slaves now not being “worth” anything as property or being made into national guards and the white confederates fighting to regain control and killing them the New Orleans, Coushatta and Colfax massacres-genocides. Thus the perception of blacks was lowered even more, as they became a pawn for the politicians to regain control and drive out the white troops occupying their state. Louisiana was thus one state for 150 years that started off “OK” as far as treatment of blacks and slaves, but continually got worse in treatment over time, continuing to eliminate “black hope” At freedom from oppression.

Thanks much and keep us updated on further news.