Fort Butler African American Soldiers Memorial

This memorial turns the fort's story toward the men who held it. Its panels carry the words of Captain James H. Ingraham of the 1st Regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards and of historian Donald S. Frazier. After the war freedpeople settled in Donaldsonville in numbers that made it the third largest Black community in Louisiana, and in 1868 the town elected Pierre Caliste Landry, a man born into slavery on a nearby plantation, as mayor. The fort's defenders in 1863 and the town's Black voters five years later belong to one story.

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 — 22 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 — 24 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

• Fort Butler UDC Monument — steps away
• Fort Butler — steps away
• Bayou Lafourche — steps away
• Historic Donaldsonville — 0.2 mi