New Orleans school desegregation crisis
The New Orleans school desegregation crisis emerged in the early 1960s as a direct response to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Despite this ruling, many Southern communities, including New Orleans, resisted desegregation vehemently. In November 1960, a federal district court ordered the Orleans Parish School District to implement a desegregation plan, leading to the admission of Black students to previously all-white schools—an event met with violent protests and hostility from segregationist groups. Among the first students was Ruby Bridges, a six-year-old girl who became an enduring symbol of the civil rights movement after facing extreme harassment while attending school under U.S. Marshal protection. Although initial resistance was fierce, the eventual integration of schools in New Orleans progressed over the following decade, reflecting broader national struggles for civil rights and educational equality. The complex social dynamics and the fierce opposition to desegregation highlight the significant challenges faced in the pursuit of racial equity in education during this period.
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New Orleans school desegregation crisis
The New Orleans school desegregation crisis was a violent public resistance to the US Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education that ruled against the racial segregation of public schools. For years after this decision, New Orleans’ public schools remained segregated due to public outcry. When a circuit judge eventually ordered desegregation to begin in 1960 and the first Black students were admitted into previously white schools in the city, angry mobs gathered and assailed the students with taunts, racial slurs, and death threats. One of the students, six-year-old Ruby Bridges, became a civil rights icon after she was photographed being escorted to and from her school by US Marshals. Many white parents also refused to send their children to the newly segregated schools for several days. Although the initial resistance lasted for only a short time, it ultimately took more than a decade for New Orleans’ schools to fully integrate.
Background
The US Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education marked a crucial turning point in the nascent civil rights movement. In that landmark case, the court swiftly reversed course on a major decision that it made in an equally important case decades earlier. In Plessy v. Ferguson(1896), the court ruled that racially segregated public facilities were legally permissible as long as the facilities made available to Black citizens were equal to those provided for whites. Although the “separate but equal” doctrine might have appeared to be fair on paper, it was anything but in practice. Public facilities intended for Black citizens were significantly inferior to white-only facilities. As such, separate but equal was not equal at all.
The inherent unequalness of segregation policies was painfully clear by the 1950s. To shine a light on this injustice and hopefully spur much needed change, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began filing lawsuits aimed at challenging segregation laws. One of these cases was filed on behalf of a plaintiff named Oliver Brown, whose daughter was denied permission to attend an all-white school in Kansas. The crux of the lawsuit was Brown’s claim that schools for Black students were not equal to schools for white students. He also argued that segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. Brown v. Education eventually made it all the way to the US Supreme Court, where NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund head and future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall represented the plaintiffs. On May 17, 1954, after hearing the case, the Supreme Court announced its decision that racial segregation of public facilities was unconstitutional because segregated schools were plainly unequal, which meant that Black students were not receiving equal protection of the laws as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Although the Supreme Court ruled against segregation in public schools and ordered local school districts to begin desegregating, it did not establish a specific method or timetable for this to be done. In the South, school districts that opposed desegregation used the lack of specificity in the Court’s decision to justify keeping their facilities segregated for as long as possible.
Overview
In some southern communities, the federal government’s order to begin desegregation was met with furor. Such was notably the case in Little Rock, Arkansas, where angry mobs harangued Black students attempting to enter white schools, threatened further violence, and called on state officials to resist the federal desegregation mandate. Similar incidents subsequently occurred in other towns and cities, including New Orleans.
The public battle over desegregation in New Orleans reached its zenith in 1960 when federal district court judge J. Skelly Wright ordered the Orleans Parish School District to formulate a legitimate desegregation plan. A long-time supporter of desegregation, Wright persisted even in the face of numerous appeals and protests from segregationists and doggedly held firm to his decision that a desegregation plan had to be in motion by September 1960. In the month leading up to Wright’s deadline, Louisiana governor James Davis, a well-known segregationist, attempted to make a final stand against desegregation by staging an uprising like the one that previously unfolded in Little Rock. Through a legislative bill dubbed ACT 496, Davis usurped the local school board’s authority and took responsibility for deciding whether schools in Orleans Parish would desegregate. This forced the question of desegregation back into the courtroom, where Wright eventually ruled that Davis and the state legislature had illegally interfered in the Orleans Parish School Board’s affairs. He also set November 14, 1960, as the new deadline for desegregation.
On the day desegregation was to begin, the school district made only a paltry attempt to comply with Wright’s order. Rather than immediately desegregating all classes, the district only desegregated kindergarten and first grade. In addition, officials only granted entry to a total of four Black students, including Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne at McDonogh 19 Elementary School and Ruby Bridges at William Franz Elementary School. The public response to the students’ arrival at the previously all-white schools was vicious and intense. Just a day later, violent bands of so-called “cheerleaders” consisting of young working-class white mothers assembled in front of both schools to stop the students from entering. The cheerleaders shouted racial epithets and spat at the children. Many white parents subsequently pulled their students out of the schools in question. For several months in 1961, Bridges, who later became the subject of Norman Rockwell’s famous painting “The Problem We All Live With,” was the only student who attended William Frantz. While the unrest continued for some time, the hostilities eventually subsided as it became clear that segregation would never be reinstated and the 1961–1962 school year proceeded with little incident. In a sign of solidarity the following year, Catholic schools in Orleans Parish also voluntarily desegregated. Still, the process of fully desegregating all of Louisiana’s public schools would take more than a decade to complete.
Bibliography
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“Brown v. Board of Education.” History.com, 11 Jan. 2022, www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka. Accessed 17 Jan. 2022.
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McGill, Kevin. “New Orleans Marks 61st Anniversary of Public School Integration, Pays Tribute to Women.” FOX 7 Austin, 14 Nov. 2021, www.fox7austin.com/news/new-orleans-marks-61st-anniversary-of-public-school-integration-pays-tribute-to-women. Accessed 17 Jan. 2022.
Michals, Debra. “Ruby Bridges.” National Women’s History Museum, 2015, www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ruby-bridges. Accessed 17 Jan. 2022.
“NOLA Resistance Oral History Project: Integrating McDonogh 19 – Introduction.” The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2022, www.hnoc.org/interactive-lesson/nola-resistance/integrating-mcdonogh-19%E2%80%94introduction. Accessed 17 Jan. 2022.
“Ruby Bridges and the Integration of New Orleans Schools.” PBS American Experience, 2022, www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/neworleans-ruby-bridges-and-integration-new-orleans-schools. Accessed 17 Jan. 2022.
“White Mobs Violently Riot Against Six-Year-Old Ruby Bridges Integrating Elementary School.” Equal Justice Initiative, 2022, calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/nov/14. Accessed 17 Jan. 2022.