Editing Waterproof, Louisiana (section)

===20th century to present===
[[Jim Crow]] rules were strong through the segregation era, and the [[Ku Klux Klan]] was active in southwest Louisiana through the late 20th century. Although there were 7,000 blacks living in the parish in 1964, none had been registered to vote. The 4,000 whites controlled parish and city politics for decades. The first 15 blacks were registered to vote in 1964, after passage of national civil rights legislation.<ref name="flaherty"/>

Three young Waterproof men died in action in the [[Vietnam War]]: Carl Raymond Goodfellow, a navy ensign; Robert Lee Ross, an army private; and Douglas Mac Washington, an army sergeant.<ref>[http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/la/tensas/military/milit005.txt Tensas Parish: Military], Rootsweb</ref>

As of 1990, Waterproof hosted "a general store, a grocery, two gas stations, two banks and the Western Auto franchise".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Sullivan |first=Christopher |date=1990-05-16 |title=Many remember river's good old days |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/enterprise-journal-many-remember-rivers/151236914/ |access-date=2024-07-13 |work=Enterprise-Journal |pages=17 |agency=Associated Press}}</ref>

The village has the Tensas Parish Detention Center South. This prison facility holds inmates sentenced in Waterproof and Tensas Parish courts and courts of other cities in the Tensas Parish area. It has recently been used to detain undocumented immigrants. The listed address of Tensas Parish Detention Center South is 8606 Highway 65.

On December 8, 2018, the village elected its youngest mayor in history, Jarrod Randell Bottley, an African American male. He was 31 years old at the time and serves the town on a full-time basis.