Southdown High School

Houma's Black high school began with hand-me-downs. It opened in 1946 as Houma Colored High School, was renamed Southtown in 1949, and took the Southdown name in its final building on St. Charles Street; its first books came from the white Terrebonne High and South Terrebonne High. A 64 Parishes article adds that two former naval air station buildings went to the school board for the parish's first Black high school. Southdown closed in 1969 after desegregation, and its students moved to South Terrebonne and Terrebonne High.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Southdown Plantation and Terrebonne Museum — 0.4 mi
  A Greek Revival sugar plantation house in Houma, worked by 233 enslaved people by 1852, with the last Terrebonne mill's story and a worker's cabin of about 1885.
• Mandalay National Wildlife Refuge — 4.4 mi
  A 4,212-acre refuge of freshwater marsh and cypress-tupelo swamp southwest of Houma, with a nature trail to a boardwalk and observation deck and mostly boat-only access.
• Laurel Valley Village — 14 mi
  A sugar plantation's workers' village south of Thibodaux, with cabins of about 1845, shotgun houses, a store and cemetery, and the 1887 strike and massacre in the parish around it.
• Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center — 15 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

• Southdown Plantation — 0.3 mi
• Saint Francis de Sales Church — 1.2 mi
• Terrebonne Parish Courthouse Square Oaks — 1.2 mi
• 1834-1934 — 1.2 mi