Oscar, Louisiana

Oscar is an unincorporated community located in the southeastern portion of Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is located primarily along Louisiana Highway 1 on the southern end of False River. This community was formerly home to the Oxbow restaurant and Bonaventure's Landing.^[2]

Oscar
Unincorporated community
Oscar Location of Oscar in Louisiana
Coordinates: 30°36′55″N 91°27′40″W
Country	United States
State	Louisiana
Yar	Pointe Coupee
Elevation	10 m (33 ft)
Population  (2009)
• Total	900
Time zone	UTC-6 (CST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC-5 (CDT)
ZIP code	70762
Area code	225
GNIS feature ID	543560[1]
FIPS code	22-58290

Oscar's most noted resident was the novelist Ernest J. Gaines, who was the fifth generation of his family to be born on the River Lake plantation, where his ancestors had been enslaved and then sharecroppers. Gaines left Oscar for California at age 15, and went on to a storied career as a novelist, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, the National Humanities Medal, and a MacArthur "genius grant". In retirement, he purchased a portion of the plantation and built a house on it.^[3]

Oscar was the site of substantial racial violence in the decades following the Civil War. In 1903, the founder of a Black school there, the Rev. LaForest A. Planving (born Petrus LaForest Albert Plantevigne) was murdered by local whites who had previously ordered him to leave town and fired shots into his home and the school.^[4][5] A few months later, the American Missionary Association sent another teacher, Alfred Lawless, to Oscar to reopen the school. Whites shot at him in the school, too. After asking local officials for protection, he was instead told to leave town.^[4]

Lawless then returned to New Orleans; the first high school in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, Alfred Lawless High School, was named in his honor. His son, who was living with his father in Oscar at the time, became the noted doctor and philanthropist Theodore K. Lawless.

Notable people

• Ernest Gaines, novelist^[6]
• Theodore K. Lawless, doctor and philanthropist
• Major Thibaut, former member of the Louisiana House of Representatives

References

1. "Oscar". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior.
2. Oscar Topo Map in Pointe Coupee LA
3. Seelye, Katharine Q. (October 21, 2010). "Writer Tends Land Where Ancestors Were Slaves". The New York Times. Retrieved December 3, 2021.
4. Joe M. Richardson; Maxine D. Jones (September 30, 2015). Education for Liberation: The American Missionary Association and African Americans, 1890 to the Civil Rights Movement. University of Alabama Press. pp. 6–. ISBN 978-0-8173-5848-8. OCLC 1261020684.
5. The American Missionary, Volume 57. American Missionary Association. 1903. pp. 238–. OCLC 1480434.
6. "Ernest Gaines to Address Freshman Convocation". Archived from the original on February 4, 2007. Retrieved December 4, 2007.