Entergy is proud to support programing on LPB and Greener practices that preserve Louisiana.

The goal of our environmental and sustainability initiatives really is to ensure that our kids and future generations can be left with a cleaner planet.

Additional support provided by the Fred B and Ruth B Zigler Foundation and the Zigler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana.

Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you and Southeastern States.

Have about 7.8% inflation?

Prices rising for consumers.

The reasons that rates go up really do ebb and flow with time.

The cost of ensuring a car skyrockets in Louisiana.

I didn't know it was a black owned hotel at all.

I thought it was just an abandoned building.

Another deep dove into safe haven Louisiana's Green Book.

These are traditions.

They didn't come out of nowhere.

This stuff dates back to medieval France.

The many ways Carnival is celebrated.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Kara St. Cyr.

And I'm Andre Moreau.

Governor John Bel Edwards this week ended the COVID mask mandate statewide.

It means masks are no longer mandatory in state run buildings.

Masking remains in place at airports, hospitals, on planes.

The COVID Health Emergency Declaration will be extended, though, as we enter the heart of Carnival season.

And New Orleans is keeping mask mandates in place for all indoor activities.

They'll also be requiring negative COVID test or proof of vaccination to enter all bars and restaurant venues throughout the carnival season.

Now we've reached the end of the American surge, but cases are still high.

This week, Louisiana recorded 1872 new cases and 49 new deaths.

And now a check on some of the other news headlines this week.

Water levels along our coast are expected to rise as much as two feet by 2050 and could rise by more than four feet by 2100.

The new estimates of the effects of global warming deliver an even more grim outlook for our future.

And could devastate coastal cities from New York down to New Orleans.

A rarely used tactic on the House floor killed a bill to give the state a second majority black Supreme Court district a vote to table it killed it.

A furious Baton Rouge Republican, Barry Ivey, who pushed for the bill, said afterwards.

We're to stupid to work together.

A California company is spending at least $750 million to build a biomass manufacturing plant near Geismar.

In Ascension Parish.

The plant will turn wood residue into a chemical used in plastic.

The project should create about 200 jobs.

Construction begins in April to replace the Intracoastal Bridge in West Baton Rouge Parish.

Dottie says the new bridge will be built alongside the current one.

The existing bridge is more than 50 years old and has needed a number of repairs in recent years.

Dinner Wednesday night at an LSU dining hall was business as usual until a raccoon fell from the ceiling.

The Rivoli reports the animal leapt onto tables and rummaged through book bags before being caught.

Bon appetit.

Economist originally painted a bleak image of the country's economic recovery following the pandemic.

But in 20, 21, the country rebounded with a 5.7% economic growth rate, creating a host of problems in the process, including inflation.

Andrew Fitzgerald with the Baton Rouge Area Chamber of Commerce explains how Louisiana is impacted by the increasing prices.

Americans can feel the rising costs of everyday necessities.

With every trip to the grocery store and the gas station.

Inflation has increased 7.5% nationally, which is the highest increase in 40 years.

Andrew Fitzgerald, with the Baton Rouge Area Chamber of Commerce, says Louisiana is feeling the burden of increased prices, but in different aspects than the rest of the country.

In the Southeast, which is as granular as the federal government data gets right now.

South eastern states have about 7.8% inflation, so it's about 0.3% higher than the national average Is there a reason why the Southeast went up so high?

It could be a number of reasons, ranging from supply chain to just more federal stimulus money.

So there was more money to spend and local places and more products were bought up, especially think about enhanced unemployment or the child tax credit.

Things like that that just put money into people's pockets.

There's also the added issue of the labor shortage.

Fitzgerald says that stimulus checks reduced the incentive to return to work.

If there aren't enough workers.

Companies can't produce enough product.

Businesses also suffer if they can't access the resources needed to produce.

Are there any cities in Louisiana that are being hit really hard by inflation rates?

In particular, New Orleans appears to be hit particularly hard.

It was around the national average pre-pandemic.

It's now almost 13% above the national average.

So that's an area where you're really seeing the crunch more than other parts of the state of home having around the same cost of living as Baton Rouge, a much larger metro with much higher wages.

That's also something that's a little bit surprising.

But Baton Rouge is different from the rest of the state and the country.

While there isn't a percentage of inflation on record yet, Fitzgerald can track it using quarterly cost of living measures before the pandemic.

There's a brick and index score of 99.

And how it works is the average U.S. town has a score, a score of 100.

So before the pandemic we had, we're 1% less expensive to live in than the average community in the U.S.. Now we stand at about 96 and a half percent.

So now we're three and a half percent less expensive in the rest of the country.

Now, that doesn't mean that prices went up or didn't go up.

It means that prices went up here at a lower rate than they did for the rest of the country.

So for the Southeast, we went up more quickly than the rest of the country.

But Baton Rouge specifically, we appear to have gone up at a slower rate than the country overall.

But the prices are still high and it's hitting small businesses as well.

The National Federation of Independent Business reported that 61% of small business owners have increased their prices.

Ben Johnson with a small business finance company, says business owners are struggling the most with raising wages and the growing labor shortage just like big corporations.

The impact is hits harder because these places don't have the same resources.

For small businesses, the most labor-intensive intensive businesses are the ones that are the most exposed.

So we think of restaurants, contractors, manufacturers, and brick and mortar retail businesses.

But then when I when I think about seasonal businesses such as landscapers, ERS farms, hospitality businesses and golf courses and ski areas, those are businesses that are in a really tight labor market.

May have trouble attracting temporary employees, especially when those temporary employees have opportunities of full time employment.

And so that can be challenging The Biden administration has a 72 step plan to reduce inflation rates that include regulations on meatpacking and new rules for cell phone repairs.

But critics argue that his plan will take years to solve a problem voters want fixed now.

Fitzgerald says we can see increased inflation rates linger if we don't address the root of the problem quickly.

Are there any solutions that could help with that?

Well, the number one thing is probably get the get the supply chain back in line.

We see ports across the country.

It was it was startling to see the port of greater Los Angeles wasn't open.

24 hours a day pre-pandemic.

It is important that we have clear lanes of shipping as a as an area state with two major ports in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

We realize the importance of that.

We've seen studies, traffic and our ports.

We're doing really well in terms of supply chain.

Economists predict the inflation increases will continue into the rest of the year.

In Louisiana, the price for car insurance is also inflated.

And you might want to brace yourself when you go to renew your premiums.

For example, data from the zebra dot com shows Baton Rouge rates are up an average of 41% It is a lot to stomach the cost to insure your car in Louisiana and the nation's leading insurance rate comparison site.

The zebra outcome says the reasons why our state tops all others and car insurance premiums is like a gumbo pot of misery.

With none of the ingredients.

Good.

One of the reasons.

So really, like I said, it all comes back to claims.

And this year specifically, we've seen an increase in car related deaths in Louisiana and New Orleans, specifically a 21% increase in car related deaths, as well as just in claims related to severe weather.

Obviously, Louisiana's prone to hurricanes, flooding damage.

And when that happens, a severe weather event strikes.

You have a lot of drivers filing claims at one time for damage related to their vehicle.

The CYBERCOM says you get a relative break if you live in Shreveport, where the average is about 20 $200.

New Orleans, though, is the highest with Baton Rouge right behind and the state average is more than 30 $200 a year in 2025 hurricanes hit Louisiana including cat four Laura and Cat three Zeta.

Last year, Cat four Ida pummeled us.

We haven't even mentioned uninsured drivers, but that's also a negative factor.

The criteria changes year over year, and it's just really reflective of what insurance providers are seeing.

So maybe over time we've seen a higher increase in claims related to severe weather over time.

Things have changed.

You know, within Louisiana, we've seen more car thefts.

Like you said, the reasons that rates to go up really do ebb and flow with time.

What do we do to try and beat this system that has us back against the wall right now?

Well, so if you do have any questions about your insurance increase in the place to start is with your insurance regulator because your insurance provider has to get any increases approved by your state regulator.

So if you feel like rates are going up more than you're comfortable with, you know, ask your regulator because insurance companies have to justify those increases to them.

As for what drivers can do, obviously practice safe driving, that is the number one thing that you can do is just drive carefully try not to get tickets, try not to cause accidents.

Drivers can also, you know, look at what they drive.

Obviously, a new car is going to be more expensive to drive than a used car.

And try to protect their vehicle if possible, from theft and weather related hazards.

We also recommend that drivers really compare policies every six to 12 months to see if they're still the best fit for them.

Different providers are good fits for different stages of life, so obviously you can use the Zero Dark time to compare rates and see what you think should be the best policy for you at this stage.

So tell me if I'll go to Z become what am I going to look for?

What will I see?

It really depends on you.

You enter some information about your age, your gender in some states, your credit score is taken into effect.

You know, we'll look at your vehicle and where specifically you live all the way down to the zip code to see what your rate would be with different providers and what kind of coverage you could get.

Tell us says you have to look at it like a pool of risk.

Everyone sort of pays into the pool and then takes out when they are in an accident or when they do need to file a claim.

And in a state like Louisiana where we're seeing more claims, that pool just needs to be bigger.

And unfortunately, if we're seeing claims go up, we're seeing rates go up for everyone, not just people filing claims or being in accidents.

What are some of our neighbors paying?

The Texas average is 1580 $4.

Arkansas.

1768.

Mississippi.

16 07.

Alabama.

1379.

The national average is $129.

That's up 3% from last year again, compared to a 41% increase for us.

Obviously, that's a really staggering difference and I'm sure drivers are going to want to be proactive in trying to decrease those rates here.

May you tell us.

Thank you for that information.

Check out the CYBERCOM.

For more info Built in 1955, Hotel Lincoln was one of the very few African-American owned and operated hotels in Baton Rouge during the Jim Crow era.

But it was much more than just a pit stop between busy travel days.

It was a sanctuary for freedom and celebrity cameos.

Nearly all the greats of the golden era of soul music stayed here, including Jesse Wilson and the Clovers.

The hotel appeared in the Green Book from 1957 to 1967 when the book was discontinued.

Lewis Hall, a Baton Rouge native and local historian, combed through his memory to bring Hotel Lincoln's legacy back to life.

It's hard to believe if I were to travel just 70 years ago.

This little guide could potentially save my life.

I'm Carol Sincere and this is Safe Haven.

Louisiana's Green Book Hotel Lincoln's history is shrouded in mystery.

It's an abandoned brick building sitting at the heart of Baton Rouge, just once prominent black commercial district.

It hasn't been open to the public since the seventies, and it shows, but some people still remember its glory days.

All right.

We are at Hotel Lincoln Lewis Hall is an 85 year old retired partygoer who still enjoys margaritas on a Wednesday night when he was in his teens and early twenties.

Hotel Lincoln was the official hangout spot for anybody who was anybody.

And Lewis was definitely somebody who was a disaster.

So I didn't know it was a black owned hotel.

I thought it was just an abandoned building.

Black owned hotel.

Can't find any pictures of it.

What do you want to go head inside?

I don't know what you see inside.

Some stuff.

You see something dangerous You're all right.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

This was the main lobby here.

This right here.

Right here.

Okay.

And here you came in here for fun.

This is what you go through.

This door to the cafe.

And what they would do is wear a cloak.

Long as they fix your food, your favorite and a white perspective.

Put it on the table, see what they serve.

What did they serve?

Oh, no.

Good food, especially breakfast, written eggs and stuff like that.

They have good coffee that everybody had good could.

The hotel was built by Dr. Aristotle Chapman in August 1955 and first appeared in the Green Book in 1957.

It had 46 rooms with baths and air conditioning throughout the entire building, which may seem like a no brainer, but localized air conditioning was hard to come by, especially in black owned businesses.

To Louis, this place was the epitome of style.

What made this one so modern?

What set it apart Because there's brick and mortar bathrooms and all that stuff, and you see the floor to see the floor at the bottom.

At the time, you know, it was a luxury Hotel Lincoln quickly became a hotspot for black travel and celebrity appearances.

Artists like the Clovers will perform at a nearby McKinley High School memorial stadium and Temple Roof Garden, which was a big nightclub.

No matter how famous the artist was, their hotel options were limited if they were black.

So Hotel Lincoln was the place and the fans knew it.

Lewis vividly remembers Jackie Wilson stopping his car outside the lobby to sign autographs.

So they would just kind of hang out celebrities.

Yeah, well, you know, downtown, no place to go, you know, and everybody come over here.

That's how it got for me with some of the guys, you know, like almost everything in the Green Book business started to decline in the late sixties.

Did you ever think that this hotel would turn into this?

No, but I felt like it because after you could see what was happening after integration and people just started backing off.

The building was sold in the late sixties and it officially closed down in the seventies, though many people have talked about it.

No one has been able to bring the Lincoln back to life.

A developer has taken interest in revamping it recently, and I can't wait to see what he'll do.

This place is special and it should be preserved for years to come.

ExxonMobil, Baton Rouge is proud to support Safe Haven Louisiana's Green Book.

For more than a hundred years, ExxonMobil has made a commitment to workforce diversity and the belief that reflecting on historic race relations is key to shaping a better future.

We have one more Green Book episode to show you guys next week.

This episode focuses on the taxicab business in New Orleans Mardi Gras Day is not until March 1st, but we have been in carnival season for more than a month.

Now.

There have already been parades and events and that pace, it gets more frenetic as we approach that Tuesday.

It's not like that everywhere in the state, though.

We went to one of the state's leading historians and tour guides for a history lesson on that.

Andre St Romain is a tour guide at the West Baton Rouge Museum in Port Allen But his work is not limited to the six acre campus itself, with the museum's outreach program to schools, for example.

He gets into character speaking far more French than English.

The character we invented for my program, his name is De De, which is my nickname in real life, you know, but I play a character from 18 03 that comes to talk to the students about what's going on in my life in Louisiana in 18 03.

The outreach focuses on Louisiana culture and is geared toward French immersion.

The carnival season, which is underway, is a major part of our culture.

And so on.

This day, Andre takes us back to how it began, how this carnival with itself into the tapestry of Louisiana.

Well, you know, these are traditions.

They didn't come out of nowhere.

This stuff dates back to medieval France and maybe even earlier, you know, some some pagan elements involved in the Mardi Gras celebrations.

That we do and a lot of people don't know about.

But it came with the French colonists from the very earliest days of colonial Louisiana.

And these traditions sort of developed in isolation.

You know, the people doing these country Mardi Gras as a courier of the Mardi Gras, they were living out essentially in the wilderness.

So they were creating these celebrations without any real idea of what was going on and even in the rest of the state.

And that's why the New Orleans Mardi Gras is so drastically different than and what they do out in the bayou regions.

That bayou region is a broad area to the west of New Orleans, reaching from along the Gulf Coast to near central Louisiana.

And it's more than just bayous.

The land goes from swampy to prairie and stretches all the way to Texas.

The region we're talking about is what came to be known as a katana the heart of which is centered around Lafayette.

So places like Mamou, Church, Point, Elton and many more all celebrate this type of carnival.

So in the country, Mardi Gras celebrations, the career, the Mardi Gras, the performers do their Mardi Gras parade essentially on horseback and in costumes, also masking.

So this is a mask created by hand, by a resident of the region.

It was made in the 1950s.

And these are the sort of masks they wore they made out of screen just like the kind of screen you would get out of a screen door.

You know, they're shaped to the person's face and then painted screen, of course.

And so that you can still get some fresh air.

But the idea is that you can wear these kind of masks and perform the pranks in your in your little village, maybe without being recognized.

What are the pranks?

Well, there'd be all kinds of different pranks.

A lot of times they would come and do things like maybe hide your stuff like this, maybe take your shoes off the front porch and hide them somewhere, you know, or I've read about ones that are pretty popular, like taking your rocking chairs and putting them on the roof, you know?

Or this was supposed to be funny or fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The idea was that the Mardi Gras celebration was a time to just break loose, you know, cause chaos.

Yeah.

Because Lent was coming, right?

And Lent was going to be long and somber, serious religious season.

So Mardi Gras was a time to get crazy.

The other thing I have here is a caption.

The caption was like a pointy hat.

With Fringe, you know, that you'd wear on top of this mask.

And from what I've read, the research says these hats originally were created in medieval France.

To mock the miners worn by the the Catholic leaders.

What are they doing exactly with the horse packing the chicken and all that?

So that's that's another part of it.

So the idea is that you beg for charity in France.

You call it Le Charity.

An idea is that this this group of masked men on horseback would ride to each of the houses in the little town or village, wherever they might be, to demand charity, specifically ingredients for a communal gumbo that was going to get made in the center of the village and served out to everybody at the end of the day.

So you would go from each house and you'd ask for whatever they had.

It could be a chicken, could be just a handful of rice or whatever, whatever they were willing to give you or they could give you like a coin on a five foot piece or something like that with the intention of buying ingredients, you know?

So somebody would make this big gumbo for all the residents of the town and at the end of the day, people would unmask.

Your identity was revealed and they would have about the Mardi Gras, which would be like a big dance.

And it's a gumbo that they would make would be served out to all of the town's residents.

Let's compare this to the Mardi Gras that we know in New Orleans, Lafayette or Homa, Thibodaux, every other city about Rouge.

Yeah, it's Mardi Gras.

Well, all of the city Mardi Gras with the big fancy parades and the floats and all that.

And they're all based on the New Orleans Mardi Gras.

Yes.

So New Orleans Mardi Gras was a whole different approach, the same basic idea of a parade is still there, you know, out in the country or they're on horseback for their parade.

And the idea is different.

In New Orleans, it's developed into a, you know, a gigantic parade with the floats and whatnot, because New Orleans wasn't developing these ideas in isolation.

You see, they were aware of the Carnival celebrations in France, all over the world.

You know, I mean, they do them in Italy.

They do them in in Brazil and all that.

So New Orleans being a port city with all these worldwide connections they were aware of the big celebrations that other folks were doing for Mardi Gras.

What was happening in New Orleans in the early 1740s was elegant society balls which became a model for the Mardi Gras balls of today.

1781 is when the earliest reference to a New Orleans carnival appears and clubs and carnival organizations began to form over the next 50 to 70 years.

New Orleans grew from a population of about 4000 to over 100,000 by the late 1830.

Street processions were part of the celebration.

And in 1856 with the crew of Comus, the first parade floats were seen antebellum.

New Orleans became the third largest city in America.

It was also the wealthiest and the nation's slave trade capital.

Who were the people that made up New Orleans?

Well, I mean, it was a city of mixed race, mixed ethnicities and multiple languages.

From the very beginning.

There was all kind of stuff going on.

It was really a gumbo And next week we will hear from Linda Collins, another of the outreach characters.

Her character is Rosie the Riveter.

There's an exhibit right now, Louisiana Wartime in the 1950s, and it's the women's role in that war time here at home.

And finally, we are premiering a very special program next week.

Beth Courtney, Fearless Visionary.

The special explores LPBs early growth, which is intertwined with the work of Courtney, the fearless visionary who made it happen.

The hour long program premieres Monday, February 20, first at 9 p.m. statewide on LPB.

The special also airs in New Orleans on Tuesday, February 22nd at 7 p.m. on ABC.

Everyone's going to want to see a special program for sure.

Well, everyone, that is our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything, LPB any time, wherever you are with our PBS app, you can catch LP News and Public Affairs shows, as well as other Louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years.

And please, like us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok for everyone in Louisiana Public Broadcasting, I'm Andre Moreau than I'm Kara St. Cyr.

Until next time, that's The State We're In.

Entergy is proud to support programing on LPB and greener practices that preserve Louisiana.

The goal of our environmental and sustainability initiatives really is to ensure that our kids and future generations can be left with a cleaner planet.

Additional support provided by the Fred B. and Ruth B. Zigler Foundation and the Zigler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you