Cockfighting in Louisiana
Volume 2 | Issue 4 - Sport and Leisure
Article by Ralph Dempsey. Edited by Ellie Veryard. Additional Research by Emily Spencer.
On Friday 15th August 2008 Louisiana finally passed two amendments banning cockfighting. Cockfighting had long appeared an uncomfortable archaism; to most people inside and outside Louisiana it appeared brutal, highly immoral and starkly primitive. As the last state in the Union to ban the practice, it had become an easy target for derision. Louisianans’ tolerance towards cockfighting conformed to stereotypes of the state as an underdeveloped realm of savage rednecks; an attitude exemplified in the 1981 film Southern Comfort, where national guardsmen encounter clans of superstitious and primitive Cajuns, stereotyped as contemporary savages residing in the bayou. Many Louisiana columnists celebrated the decision, hoping that the end of the peculiar institution of cockfighting would help to signal an end to the negative popular stereotypes held about Louisiana.
However, for the supporters of cockfighting the passage of the amendments marked the final chapter of a very long and complex legacy of the sport in Louisiana. Cockfighting for this close knit group had been a noble sport requiring great skill in the rearing and training of the birds. Furthermore, in a state were many people were commonly isolated in ethnically separate groups such as Cajun, Creole, Hispanic and African American and where racial animosity was not uncommon, cockfighting had appeared a unique activity. Amongst the gambling, drinking blood and feathers these people had felt a welcomed common bond; as one commentator noted ‘the pit serves its historical function of cultural middle ground, meeting- and melting point of southern subcultures, ethnic groups and economic classes.’
Cockfighting was Louisiana’s (and almost certainly America’s) oldest spectator sport. Since the arrival of Europeans in isolated settlements in the late seventeenth century, men had sought respite from the stresses of the difficult settler life; whiling away days watching the birds fight it out while enjoying sipping a local speciality aptly named “bust head”. Women for their part, where their sentiments are recorded, have their own legacy of loathing the pits. In their minds they were places of vice and moral decay, where their good for nothing husbands whiled away their meagre incomes gambling and drinking, later more often than not coming home impoverished and intoxicated.
When Louisiana joined the United States of America following the 1803 purchase from Napoleon, cockfighting reflected the demographic changes sweeping the region. The land proved ideal for sugar cultivation at a time when sugar was a booming commodity supported by slavery. A new aristocracy developed seemingly overnight of planters, merchants, slave traders and speculators; an aristocracy with a well recorded taste for hedonism and lavish spending. Here, cockfighting formed a sphere where the class barrier was broken, the new aristocracy mixing with their poorer neighbours. The cockpit naturally became a common ground for business of all kinds; a place where new acquaintances could be made and deals struck whilst enjoying the fights and strong liquor. The slaves themselves found the cockpit a place where they could, albeit with a great deal of risk, experience the opportunity to acquire coveted hard currency while enjoying a brief respite from lives of hard labour on the sugar plantations.
However, as the nineteenth century moved into the twentieth cockfighting began its long decline. From the pulpit came the leading attacks on the cockpit; cockfighting was un-Christian, seemingly committing with impunity a whole plethora of sins, encouraging lust, greed, extravagance and gluttony in the face of Christian restraint and piety. As temperance unions began to appear in the state in the early part of the twentieth century, the cockpit alongside the honky tonk became an easy target of the prohibitionists, associated as it always had been with drunkenness and debauchery. As the numbers in attendance began to fall, the negative stereotypes attached to the bloodspot began to increase. Seemingly, now far from a mythical time when men of all stations had enjoyed their time at the pit, cockfighting became associated with a particular brand of rural backwardness, ignorance and sloth; the problems which seemed to be holding Louisiana back from development more generally.
From the 1950s onwards cockfighting began to slip into the backwaters of life in Louisiana; people now preferred their leisure time at the cinema or enjoying sports without the abhorrent blood content. Cockfighting became increasingly seen as a churlish, antiquated pastime. As opposition mounted, those still practicing the sport attempted to desperately hold onto what they claimed as a long held cultural tradition. The Cajuns in particular, claimed that attacks on cockfighting were really veiled attacks at the Cajun way of life by outsiders who had motives other than animal welfare at heart. However, the tide had now most defiantly turned. While an influx of Hispanic workers from the 1960’s onwards did much to keep the sport alive through their enthusiastic participation, this was simply not enough to buck the overarching changes in how Louisianans desired to spend their leisure time. Furthermore, as animal welfare began to be better understood, all blood sports, cockfighting included, began to be seen as an anathema; contrary to now widely held values of compassion over cruelty.
Eventually, as the number of states nationwide allowing the sport began to rapidly decline throughout the 1980’s and ‘90’s opposition in Louisiana reached its apex. Derided as cruel, backward and associated with drunkenness and crime, it could only be a matter of time before the final fight. At the national level there began to be calls for federal prohibition of animal cruelty. By 2007 New Mexico finally outlawed the practice leaving Louisiana isolated in its legal tolerance. The stigma against the sport now overwhelming, that the legislature would outlaw the sport was a foregone conclusion; it fell to state governor Kathleen Blanco to sign the bills into law a few months after New Mexico.
Whilst many prefer to focus inside and outside the state on the more positive parts of Louisiana’s rich cultural history: the tradition of Mardi Gras, the story of jazz, the unique cultural histories of the Creoles and Cajuns, there is a case for examining cockfighting as an integral part of that history. Brutal and abhorrent it may be, however, it is a practice which spans the State’s history like no other. Its story takes the historian on a journey spanning over three hundred years of life in Louisiana. While, many will be relieved to consign cockfighting to the history of Louisiana, it must be acknowledged as a vital part of that history which has revealed much about the changing character of the state; cockfighting has had a complex and varied history, scorned for its cruelty and immorality it also served as a platform for uniting diverse communities and bridging ethnic and class divides. Certainly, an examination of cockfighting provides us with a greater insight into the period and social groups involved, even if we do not necessarily share their choice of past time.