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S u n d ay, S e p t e m b e r 7, 2025
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WALK THE TALK Cajuns’ running game thrives in win over McNeese
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‘This isn’t business as usual’ Louisiana national park tells a story of slavery that some fear will be erased
BY JENNA ROSS Staff writer
DERRY — Rolanda Teal strode onto the old plantation at Cane River Creole National Historical Park, blowing past a map. The anthropology professor knows this park and its stories. As a student, she helped tell them. Teal once sifted through dirt beside the Magnolia Plantation’s slave quarters to find dice and coins. She interviewed former tenant farmers to trace the outlines of a typical day. She gave tours, once to a man who had lived there. Over the years, the oral histories she collected made their way into archives and onto the dozens of historic signs and markers arranged across the national park’s two sister plantations, set a few miles apart along the winding Cane River in Natchitoches Parish. One sign near the entrance of Magnolia describes the scale of the plantation at its height: 275 enslaved people living in 70 cabins cultivated cotton and other crops. Near those small brick cabins, later home to tenant farmers, a sepia sign describes the gardens that once encircled them, quoting from one of Teal’s interviews. “We had a big garden... Peas, okra, tomatoes, pumpkins...” Now, the 62-year-old worries about what stories this place will soon tell. Signs posted across this national park’s 63 acres, like those at parks,
ABOVE: University of Louisiana at Lafayette coach Michael Desormeaux, right, greets young fans during the Cajun Walk before the UL-McNeese State game at Our Lady of Lourdes Stadium in Lafayette on Saturday. UL and McNeese were once big rivals from the late 1960s to mid-1980s. Until Saturday, the two teams have played only twice since 1986 when McNeese won 38-17 in 2007 and UL won 30-22 in 2016. McNeese coach Matt Viator was an assistant coach with the Cajuns from 2021-23. RIGHT: Lil’Nate and the Zydeco Big Timers play during Cajun Walk before the UL-McNeese State game on Saturday.
ä See PARK, page 4A
STAFF PHOTOS By BRAD KEMP
STAFF PHOTO By SOPHIA GERMER
Rolanda Teal walks past signs for the Magnolia Plantation at Cane River Creole National Historical Park in Derry on Aug. 20.
ä SEE COMPLETE COVERAGE OF THE CAJUNS GAME. PAGE 1C
New rules snarl COVID vaccine access in Louisiana Pharmacies, doctors, patients left navigating confusion
BY EMILY WOODRUFF Staff writer
Louisiana is heading into respiratory virus season on the downswing from a busy summer of COVID-19, when wastewater samples showed some of the nation’s highest virus levels. But health officials caution that COVID-19 is unusual: Unlike flu or RSV, it typically
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ä Trump, Kennedy take different stances on COVID vaccine. PAGE 6A
peaks twice, once in summer and again around January. That makes fall an ideal time to get a vaccine, especially because newly formulated shots protect against the latest strain. But this year, new federal recommendations are complicating access. Few drugstores are carrying the vaccine in Louisiana right now, and patients are currently
ä See RULES, page 5A
Trial of Lafayette ADA begins Monday Federal case involves bribery and kickback scheme BY CLAIRE TAYLOR Staff writer
The federal case against Lafayette Assistant District Attorney Gary Haynes for involvement in a bribery and kickback scheme in the 15th Judicial District Attorney’s Office is set for trial Monday. Haynes, who was in charge of the pretrial intervention program in Lafayette, was indicted
by a federal grand jury in Sep- 10 days. In the week before the trial, tember 2024 on six charges, a federal judge denied including bribery, conHaynes’ motion to exspiracy to commit money laundering, obstruction clude files seized in a of justice and using his May 2022 raid by the cellphone in furtherance FBI and Justice Departof bribery. ment on the 15th JudiHis trial is scheduled to cial District Attorney’s begin at 9 a.m. Monday at Office. the federal courthouse in Haynes Haynes had argued Lafayette. Jury selection that the files were inadis expected to be the first order of missible because they were copbusiness. Records show the court ies, not the originals, and because will question potential jurors folders that held the documents first, then provide the prosecu- and may have contained attorney tion and defense each 20 minutes notes were not copied. The judge for questioning. ä See TRIAL, page 5A The trial could take as long as
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101ST yEAR, NO. 69