What is the history of the Louisiana State Bar Association, and how is its two-hundred-year journey—from small, elitist guild to mandated professional association—relevant today?
A Bayou Bar tracks the LSBA's many incarnations over the decades while analyzing their interplay with the shifting culture of Louisiana. Like all bar associations, the LSBA developed out of the particular precedents of its home state. Louisiana, with its history of mixed Hispano-Franco colonial governance, provides a unique case study. From suspension and near-collapse in the wake of the Civil War, to dramatic clashes with the radical populist administration of Huey P. Long, to the influence of White supremacy and Jim Crow on operating norms, Billings renders a vivid portrait of the LSBA by drawing from primary source documents as well as his own expertise as a legal historian. A Bayou Bar makes an excellent case for the value of a deepened understanding of bar associations and the incisive light that their histories shine on the principalities in which they are domiciled.
