The Acadiana Bicentennial Celebration Association was formed in January 1954 following a meeting called by the Louisiana Department of Commerce and Industry. The effort was headed by Dr. Thomas J. Arceneaux, Dean of the College of Agriculture at Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now University of Louisiana at Lafayette). The Association had representatives from each Congressional District in the state. Celebrations were held throughout the state in 1955, but were centered in St. Martinville. The events were to commemorate the expulsion of Acadians from their homeland in Acadia (present-day Nova Scotia) by the British in 1755. They were scattered to many of the Atlantic British colonies as well as some Caribbean islands, France, and Britain. Nearly half of them died during this dispersal. Eventually about 4,000 of them immigrated to Louisiana, where today more than 50,000 of their descendants, known as Cajuns, live.

Arceneaux also headed a celebration in 1965 to commemorate the bicentennial of the arrival of the largest shipment of Acadians to Louisiana in 1765.