Most Rev. Jules B. Jeanmard, D.D.

Jeanmard's record on race belongs in the account. In 1911 Black Catholics in Lafayette asked for a church of their own, and St. Paul the Apostle was founded; the diocese then held roughly a quarter of the nation's Black Catholics, about 50,000 people. As bishop he welcomed Black priests in 1934 and created separate, which is to say segregated, parishes, intended according to Wikipedia as protection from white intimidation. With Katharine Drexel's money he helped open rural schools for Black children, and in 1952 he ordained Louis Ledoux, reportedly a first in the Deep South.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 5.0 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Vermilionville — 7.1 mi
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 11 mi
  A bayou-side state site on former Attakapas hunting ground, with a raised Creole cottage of about 1815, a reproduction 1800 farmstead and its slave quarters, and the story behind Longfellow's Evangeline.
• St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church — 11 mi
  The Mother Church of the Acadians, founded in 1765 on St. Martin Square in St. Martinville, with a late 1870s Lourdes grotto and, a block away, the Evangeline Oak on Bayou Teche.

More markers nearby

• Pont Breaux, Louisiane — steps away
• Cajun Warrior — steps away
• Scholastique Picou Breaux — steps away
• Breaux Bridge / Pont-Breaux — steps away