Photo by Drake LeBlanc
As a gathering place and cultural center for the St. Martin Parish community, the True Friends of LaPointe Benevolent Society regularly hosts traditional activities such as trail rides.
When you turn down True Friends Road in Parks, Louisiana, you eventually come across a sky-blue events hall. Most weekdays, a handful of people are inside, occasionally speaking Creole French, sitting at the bar retelling stories and sharing ideas of what the future might hold.
Since 1906, the men’s organization True Friends of LaPointe's purpose has been to aid, improve, and sustain its rural St. Martin Parish community. The aptly named group is one of a handful of benevolent societies still active in Acadiana. Historically, in Louisiana, benevolent societies were formed by free and enslaved Africans as early as the late 1700s as communal support systems, sharing resources to provide financial and medical aid and to ensure proper burials. Many are still in operation today, running much like other civic clubs or fraternal organizations while providing mutual aid to their members and the communities they support.
In the early nineteenth century, these Black benevolent societies—usually operating out of a meeting hall of some kind—found that a way to serve their community was to provide a physical space for gathering, especially for Black organizations with few places to congregate.
In 1911, five years after becoming an official nonprofit organization, the founders of the True Friends of LaPointe purchased its first physical building—a property that included the former St. Martin Normal and Industrial Institute building. Soon after, the group bought a second piece of land owned by the organization’s founding Vice President Isadore Michell, who stipulated that the land be used for educational purposes.
Photo by Drake LeBlanc
Young girls taking part in a December 2024 True Friends trailride with the Avenue Riders—an event held to raise money for Breast Cancer awareness.
This site served as the center of the True Friends’ operations and a community center for the surrounding area for eighty-two years, until in 1993, an electrical fire destroyed the original True Friends wooden building. After nine months of fundraising, two years of building, and hours of contributions from volunteers, a new metal building, the current True Friends of LaPointe Hall, was completed in October of 1996.
Today the Hall still plays host to vital community gatherings and continues to prioritize education opportunities for the surrounding area.
“One of the things (the founders) sought was to make sure that they were able to—[even] if it was just one person that they could reach out to—connect [people] to some form of funding to get them an education,” said Jonathan Narcisse, current True Friends of LaPointe president.
Since 1991, the organization has given out $100,000 in scholarships to local students. In 2024 alone, nine students were awarded $500 each.
Most weekends at the hall, music, chatter, and even the clip-clop of horses can be heard from down the road. The space hosts events ranging from birthdays and trail rides to an annual post-Crawfish Festival party. When it’s not a party, it's a community benefit dinner to offset a community member’s medical expenses or sponsored trips to a local church’s family festival.
But despite hosting over twenty-five well-attended events a year for the surrounding community, the True Friends of LaPointe’s biggest challenge in recent years has been its aging and declining membership. In 2024 alone, nine members died, leaving only thirty-eight active members, twelve retired, and ten board members.
Most weekends at the hall, music, chatter, and even the clip-clop of horses can be heard from down the road. The space hosts events ranging from birthdays and trail rides to an annual post-Crawfish Festival party. When it’s not a party, it's a community benefit dinner to offset a community member’s medical expenses or sponsored trips to a local church’s family festival.
Issues contributing to this lack of participation include shifting generational values, confusion around what a benevolent society is, and lack of awareness of the group itself.
“The one thing that keeps me up at night is … how do I want, not just my legacy, but the legacy of this organization, to remain intact no matter who replaces us?” Narcisse said. “It's up to us to represent the importance of this organization going beyond just some brotherhood.”
Narcisse, who became president in 2022, knew something had to be done. In the past two years, he and the current board have recruited nine members with a tactic of tradition-meets-modern appeals. Members are chefs, business owners, handymen, and educators—all part of the St. Martin Parish community.
Each current member has a personal reason for joining. Tremaine Rossyion, thirty-eight, one of three members in their thirties, remembers spending time at True Friends with his grandfather, who was also a member. His grandfather pushed him to join right out of high school, and though he initially resisted, he’s glad to be a part of it now.
For Carl Robertson, a member for fifteen years and a board member with a litany of titles ranging from treasurer to event planner, the motivation was LaPointe.
“I wanted to continue to try to help the community,” the sixty-nine-year-old retired postal worker said, while looking at a photo of his great-grandfather—who once served as president of True Friends.
The current board has also focused on improving the organization's financial health. True Friends was awarded its first grant in 2022, which helped to pay off a loan, replace the stove, expand storage, and update the bathrooms. Since the original grant, two others have followed, allowing True Friends to pour back even more into the community.
Photo by Drake LeBlanc
Live zydeco performances and traditional dancing are a big part of the cultural landscape of St. Martin Parish that the True Friends Benevolent Society cultivates and maintains.
Under Narcisse’s leadership, True Friends has held multiple events focused on community involvement and betterment—including a community resource fair and a Juneteenth celebration. Narcisse believes in 2025, True Friends will broaden its reach beyond the hall itself, by taking advantage of opportunities to speak at the local schools and host additional programs.
As these shifts in approach continue to prove effective, Narcisse knows additional changes, like allowing women to join, are needed to carry forth the founding mission of the True Friends of LaPointe, so that it might celebrate another 118 years of providing for the community while fostering its founding principles of “good character and fellowship dedicated to uplifting humanity.”
And while undergoing the necessary changes to serve a new generation, True Friends holds fast to its traditions as a gathering place for the Black community it serves, a place to create memories and share history—while also providing mutual aid by funding burial expenses and other community needs.
“We continue because of our ancestors,” Narcisse said. “We all have a story in terms of living through their struggles and appreciating what they were able to accomplish. And we can see how much it has transformed us in that we're, in a sense, trying to present that in a way to a different generation.”
