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Shreveport, Louisiana

City in Louisiana, United States

  • 34 min read
  • 12 chapters
Red River Bridge in Shreveport, LA, USA
Roman Eugeniusz · CC BY-SA 3.0

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Shreveport was founded in 1836 by the Shreve Town Company, a corporation established to develop a town at the juncture of the newly navigable Red River and the Texas Trail, an overland route into the newly independent Republic of Texas. It grew throughout the 20th century and, after the discovery of oil in Louisiana, became a national center for the oil industry. Standard Oil of Louisiana and United Gas Corporation were headquartered in the city until the 1960s and 1980s, respectively. After the loss of jobs in the oil industry, the closure of General Motors' Shreveport Operations, and other economic problems, it struggled with a declining population, poverty, drugs, and violent crime. The city continues in its efforts to revitalize its infrastructure, revive the economy through diversification, and lower crime.

Shreveport is the educational, commercial and cultural center of the Ark-La-Tex region, where Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas meet. It is the location of Centenary College of Louisiana, Louisiana State University Shreveport, Louisiana Tech University Shreveport, Southern University at Shreveport, and Louisiana Baptist University. It forms part of the I-20 Cyber Corridor linking Shreveport to Dallas and Atlanta. Companies with significant operations or headquarters in Shreveport are Amazon, Regions Financial Corporation, JPMorgan Chase, Sam's Town Hotel and Gambling Hall, AT&T Mobility, United Parcel Service, Walmart, SWEPCO, General Electric, UOP LLC, Calumet Specialty Products Partners, and APS Payroll.

History

Early settlers

Shreveport was established to create a town at the meeting point of the Red River and the Texas Trail. The Red River was made navigable by Captain Henry Miller Shreve, who led the United States Army Corps of Engineers efforts to clear it. A 180-mile-long (290 km) stretch of intermittent natural log jam, the Great Raft, had previously obstructed passage to shipping. Shreve used a specially modified riverboat, the Heliopolis, to remove the log jam. The company and the village of Shreve Town were named in Shreve's honor.

Shreve Town was originally contained within the boundaries of a piece of land sold to the company in 1835 by the indigenous Caddo Indians. In 1838 Caddo Parish was created from the large Natchitoches Parish, and Shreve Town became its parish seat. On March 20, 1839, the town was incorporated as Shreveport. Originally, the town consisted of 64 city blocks, created by eight streets running west from the Red River and eight streets running south from Cross Bayou, one of its tributaries.

Shreveport soon became a center of steamboat commerce, carrying mostly cotton and agricultural crops from the plantations of Caddo Parish. Shreveport also had a slave market, though slave trading was not as widespread as in other parts of the state. By 1860, Shreveport had a population of 2,200 free people and 1,300 enslaved people within the city limits.

Civil War and Reconstruction

During the American Civil War, Shreveport was the capital of the Confederate state of Louisiana from 1863 to 1865, having succeeded Baton Rouge and Opelousas after each fell under Union control. The city was a Southern stronghold throughout the war and was the site of the headquarters of the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederate Army. Fort Albert Sidney Johnston was built on a ridge northwest of the city. Because of limited development in that area, the site is relatively undisturbed in the 21st century.

Isolated from events in the east, the Civil War continued in the Trans-Mississippi theater for several weeks after Robert E. Lee's surrender in April 1865, and the Trans-Mississippi was the last Confederate command to surrender, on May 26, 1865. "The period May 13–21, 1865, was filled with great uncertainly after soldiers learned of the surrenders of Lee and Johnston, the Good Friday assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the rapid departure of their own generals." In the confusion there was a breakdown of military discipline and rioting by soldiers. They destroyed buildings containing service records, a loss that later made it difficult for many to gain Confederate pensions from state governments.

The Red River, opened by Shreve in the 1830s, remained navigable throughout the Civil War. But seasonal water levels got so low at one point that Union Admiral David Dixon Porter was trapped with his gunboats north of Alexandria. His engineers quickly constructed a temporary dam to raise the water level and free his fleet.

In 1873, Shreveport lost 759 citizens in an 80-day period to a yellow fever epidemic, with over 400 additional victims eventually succumbing. The total death toll from August through November was approximately 1,200. In aggregate it is estimated that about one quarter of the population of Shreveport was lost, making it one of the deadliest local epidemics in American history. About 800 were interred in a mass grave at Oakland Cemetery. Five Roman Catholic priests in the city and two religious sisters died while caring for yellow fever victims in the city.

Providence Academy was established for African American students in the city.

20th century to present

Greenwood Cemetery was established in 1893. A number of local African American musicians became nationally famous. By the 1910s, Huddie William Ledbetter—also known as "Lead Belly", a blues singer and guitarist—was performing for Shreveport audiences in St. Paul's Bottoms, the notable red-light district of Shreveport that operated legally from 1903 to 1917. Ledbetter began to develop his own style of music after exposure to a variety of musical influences on Fannin Street, a row of saloons, brothels, and dance halls in the Bottoms. Bluesmen Jesse Thomas, Dave Alexander, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and the early jazz and ragtime composers Bill Wray and Willian Christopher O'Hare were all from Shreveport. Lead Belly achieved international fame.

By 1914, neglect and lack of use, due to diversion of freight traffic to railroad lines, resulted in the Red River becoming unnavigable. In projects accomplished over decades, in 1994, the United States Army Corps of Engineers restored navigability by completion of a series of federally funded lock-and-dam structures and a navigation channel.

As early as 1924, the citizens of Shreveport became interested in hosting a military flying field. In 1926, Shreveport citizens learned that the 3rd Attack Wing stationed at Fort Crockett, Texas, would be enlarged by 500 percent and would require at least 20,000 acres (81 km2) to support aerial gunnery and a bombing range. The efforts to procure the government's commitment to build the facility in the Greater Shreveport metropolitan area resulted in today's Barksdale Air Force Base.

In September, 1941, the capture of the city of Shreveport was the objective of a U.S. Army war game, or military exercise, known as the Louisiana Maneuvers. The field exercise's mission was accomplished largely due to General George S. Patton, who commanded the mock "Blue" army's 2nd Armored Division.

Shreveport was home to the Louisiana Hayride radio program, broadcast weekly from the Shreveport Municipal Memorial Auditorium. During its heyday from 1948 to 1960, this Country music program stimulated the careers of some of the greatest figures in American music. Among them were Hank Williams and Elvis Presley, who made his broadcasting debut there in 1954. In the mid-1950s, KWKH was the first major radio station to feature the music of Presley on its long-running Louisiana Hayride program at the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium. Horace Logan, long-term KWKH program manager and originator of the Hayride, and Frank Page introduced Presley on the Hayride.

African American veterans of World War II were among activists in Shreveport through the 1960s who worked in the civil rights movement to correct injustices under Jim Crow and the disenfranchisement of blacks. While activism gradually increased, 1963 was a particularly violent year in Shreveport because of white resistance. The Shreveport home of Dr. C. O. Simpkins was bombed in retaliation for his work with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In September 1963 George W. D'Artois, Public Service Commissioner, refused a permit for a march to the Little Union Baptist Church in Shreveport, where mourners gathered to honor and commemorate four black girls killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing on September 15 in Birmingham, Alabama. D'Artois and other officers entered the church on horseback and took out the pastor, Dr. Harry Blake, beating him severely.

Also in 1963, headlines across the country reported that African American musician Sam Cooke was arrested in Shreveport after his band tried to register at a "whites-only" Holiday Inn, where they planned to stay before performing in the city. Public facilities in Louisiana were still segregated. In the months following, Cooke recorded the civil rights era song, "A Change Is Gonna Come". In 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act to end segregation of public facilities.

In the mid-1990s, the coming of riverboat gambling to Shreveport attracted numerous new patrons to the downtown and spurred a revitalization of the adjacent riverfront areas. Many downtown streets were given a facelift through the "Streetscape" project. Traditional brick sidewalks and crosswalks were built, and statues, sculptures, and mosaics were added to create a better pedestrian environment. The O.K. Allen Bridge, commonly known as the Texas Street bridge, was lit with neon lights. Residents predictably had a variety of reactions to these changes. Shreveport was named an All-American City in 1953, 1979, and 1999.

In the 1990s, Shreveport became known for its rap music scene, and acquired its famous aka name, Ratchet City. The term was first used by the group Lava House in its 1999 single "Ratchet".

During the September 11, 2001 attacks, President George W. Bush was taken to the nearby Barksdale Air Force Base. He also made a visit to speak in the city on March 11, 2005.

Since the downturn in the oil industry and other economic problems, the city has struggled with a declining population, unemployment, poverty, drugs and violent crime. City data from 2017 showed a dramatic increase in certain violent crimes from the previous year, including a 138 percent increase in homicides, a 21 percent increase in forcible rapes and more than 130 percent increases in both business armed robberies and business burglaries. In 2018 the local government and police authorities reported a crime drop in most categories; it was part of an overall reduction in crime since the late 20th century. As Shreveport continued its economic resurgence, the Adrian Perkins administration saw the coming of Advanced Aero Services, Tomakk Glass Partners, and the revitalization plan of the Shreveport Economic Recovery Task Force after the Cross Bayou redevelopment plan was rejected.

In June 2020, rapper Hurricane Chris was arrested in Shreveport for second-degree murder. Following the George Floyd killing in Minnesota, multiple protests were held in the city. The city experienced the largest number of homicides in its recorded history in 2021, eclipsing the previous record set in 1993.

On Sunday, April 19, 2026, a man opened fire at three homes in Shreveport, leaving eight children dead and two women injured. It is the deadliest mass shooting in the United States since the 2024 Joliet shootings.

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