African American Life

Pierre Caliste Landry's life ran from the auction block to the pulpit. Born April 19, 1841, in Ascension Parish, he was held on the Prevost sugar plantation and sold at 13 to the Bringier family. He was elected mayor of Donaldsonville in 1868, the first Black mayor elected in the United States by this account, won a seat in the Louisiana House in 1872 and sat in the state Senate from 1874. Later he became a Methodist minister, pastor in Shreveport from 1889 and presiding elder of the South New Orleans District in 1891. He died in 1921.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• E. D. White Historic Site — 20 mi
  A National Historic Landmark house of about 1790 on Bayou Lafourche, built by enslaved people and home to two Whites, a governor and a Chief Justice, with an exhibit on the bayou's history.
• Whitney Plantation — 21 mi
  A museum on a former sugar plantation along the River Road that tells its story through the people who were enslaved there, with memorials to 107,000 enslaved Louisianans and 2,200 children.
• LSU Rural Life Museum — 23 mi
  Four slave cabins moved from Welham Plantation and a working-plantation row of more than twenty saved buildings, on land the Burden family held as Windrush plantation since the 1830s.
• Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center — 23 mi
  A Jean Lafitte National Historical Park center on Bayou Lafourche with Acadian and bayou-life exhibits, a 200-seat theater and ranger-guided boat tours to the E. D. White house.

More markers nearby

• Central Agricultural School — steps away
• The Culture — steps away
• The Swamp — steps away
• Bicentennial Jazz Plaza — steps away