Opelousas Catholic School

The 1971 merger joined schools the Church had kept apart by race. The Academy of the Immaculate Conception, opened in 1856 and staffed by the Marianites of Holy Cross, was a segregated white girls' school. Holy Ghost High School began in 1874 as St. Joseph's Academy for Colored, the parish's first Catholic school for Black students. In July 1970 eighteen families sued the Diocese of Lafayette and two Opelousas school boards to end segregation in local Catholic schools, and in September 1971 the two schools combined.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Le Vieux Village and the Venus House — 0.8 mi
  A heritage park in Opelousas built around the Venus House of about 1791, the home of a free Creole woman of color, Marie Francois Venus, with an old schoolhouse, Methodist church and the visitor center's zydeco music exhibit.
• Prairie Acadian Cultural Center — 21 mi
  A National Park Service center in Eunice on the Cajun prairie, with exhibits on the Acadians who settled the prairies, a Courir de Mardi Gras display, free music and cooking demonstrations, and the shuttered Liberty Theatre nearby.
• Vermilionville — 23 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.
• Atchafalaya Welcome Center — 25 mi
  A state welcome center inside the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest river swamp, with exhibits on Basin history and life, a film, a crawfishing boat and French-speaking staff.

More markers nearby

• St. Landry Catholic Church — steps away
• Lt. Fr. Joseph "Verbis" Lafleur — steps away
• Black Academy At Mt. Olive Baptist Church — 0.4 mi
• Louisiana Memorial Methodist Church — 0.7 mi