"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

-- Abraham Lincoln

In an effort meriting the applause of grateful citizens, Xavier University produced the documentary A House Divided to record the history of the Civil Rights movement (1950-1965) in New Orleans. This study guide, prepared by the Southern Institute for Education and Research, is for teachers who intend to use A House Divided as an instructional resource in the classroom.

This period in our history is little known by subsequent generations, black or white, despite the fact that participants in that epoch often live nearby. Students of today have little or no inkling of racial segregation as it was practiced and enforced in this city only thirty years ago. This is an unpardonable lapse in memory and responsibility.

The Civil Rights period represents the great divide in our city, the divide between the past in which segregation was the law and degradation the rule, and the future in which hope is too often obscured by race, poverty, crime, and fear. It is impossible to understand present-day New Orleans without an understanding of the events which occurred so recently in the city and with such dramatic results.

The documentary A House Divided focuses on the years in New Orleans between 1950 and 1965. The major events of those years are the subject of vivid recollections by those who participated directly in the changes of that epochal time.

The segregated public library system was one of the first bastions to fall, as Rosa Keller tells us. Judge Revius Ortique relates the story behind the McDonogh Day Boycott. In protest of the second class status accorded to black children at the annual ceremonies honoring the philanthropist (and slaveholder), black teachers and community leaders staged a boycott of McDonogh Day in May 1954. According to Judge Ortique, the McDonogh Day Boycott represented "the first concerted challenge that color crossed all segments of the black community and we spoke as one."

Landmark events followed in quick succession: the black boycott of Mardi Gras in 1957 and 1958; the quiet integration of street cars and buses in 1958; the bitter Dryades Street Boycott in 1960; the sit-in and pickets on Canal Street in 1960-'65; the searing desegregation of the public schools and (two years later) the parochial schools; the massive Freedom March in 1963.

One of the final events of the Civil Rights period in New Orleans occurred on a day that will live in infamy in the history of the city: October 31, 1963. Testing the assurances of desegregation in the cafeteria of City Hall, Reverend Avery Alexander was arrested by police and dragged by his heels up two flights of stairs to a paddy wagon.

"Kick him, Rev.' Kick him," said a few youngsters while viewing the footage of Avery Alexander being bounced up the stairs. Why the Reverend did not "kick him" is a subject of no passing interest.

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A House Divided is an account of the fear which gripped much of the white and a part of the black communities in New Orleans. It was one of the most fundamental fears of all, the fear of change, the fear of straying from what is understood. New Orleanians, black and white, found themselves in an historical epoch in which the rules of the world were brought into question. This was hard even for those people who desired change, let alone for those who were unsure of everything except the often misused notion of tradition.

In another sense, A House Divided is a portrayal of the remarkable individuals at the heart of the struggle to end Jim Crow segregation. Great changes are often brought about by a relative handful of people. Most people find comfort in what they are accustomed to or in what is known to them. It is only the few who are capable of seeing things differently, of risking everything for what they view as a higher purpose. They are the ones who are able to cut the sinews of societal pressure conformity, the ones who are able to conquer the fear within themselves.

The fundamental question is this: what made these individuals different? Why did Oretha Castle risk her job (and, indeed, lose it) at Hotel Dieu Hospital by helping to organize and then partaking in the Canal St. sit-ins? Why did Jerome Smith take the despised but sacrosanct race screen on the St. Claude bus and "pitch it" to the floor? Why did Jimmy and Daisy Gabrielle risk their livelihood and indeed their lives to keep their children in an integrated school? Why did Kit Senter and Betty Wisdom drive children to school, in defiance of threats and ostracization?

The question the student should ask him or herself while viewing and discussing A House Divided is one which requires a certain honesty and introspection. It is this: what would I have done? It is a question with no answers, but with a loud echo. It does no harm to a student to ask he or she to enter the world of another person in another time in history, to understand how that person thinks, how that person acts. The point is simple: through the lives and experiences of others we can reach a better understanding of ourselves.

Life is such that at one time or another circumstances will demand a certain moral courage of the student, a decision which defines the character of a person. It is helpful to have already gone the process of decision making, the process of determining where you stand, before the moment arrives.

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A HOUSE DIVIDED

The period of legal segregation, known as the Jim Crow years, lasted from the 1890's until the Brown v. the Board of Education decision in 1954. In many localities throughout the South and the nation, the barriers of segregation did not fall until long after 1954. In some localities, the barriers remain to this day.

The documentary A House Divided is an account of New Orleans between 1950 and 1965. It is the period of history when a relatively small group of activists in the black community, joined by a few white people, confronted the inequities of Jim Crow segregation in the effort to enjoy the fruits of promises made almost a century before.

PART I--LECTURE NOTES

"Knowing about the past is important for planning for the future. We learn from the experiences and activities of others. Common sense dictates that we avoid the mistakes of the past, and, more importantly, that we build on the good and positive."

-- Dr. Norman Francis,
President, Xavier University

Part I of A House Divided begins with an introduction by Dr. Norman Francis, President of Xavier University. This is followed by a sequence of sound bites from people who were directly impacted by Jim Crow segregation, beginning with Reverend Avery Alexander, one of the central figures in the Civil Rights struggles in New Orleans.

OBJECTIVE:

For many students, the inherent inequities and the daily acts of humiliation in segregated New Orleans will be difficult to believe. The students should recognize that they are living in the aftermath of an historic transformation of society, and that their elders were involved in that transformation, either as direct participants or as mere observers. The opportunity for students to engage in an oral history project with local participants or observers of the Civil Rights movement is available.

PREPARATION:

Before the students view Part I of A House Divided, present a brief lecture to them based on the following information.

1. COMPILE A LIST

It is important that the student understand the innumerable ways in which segregation made itself felt. First of all, the student should begin compiling a list of all the examples of segregation that become apparent in the documentary A House Divided.

QUESTION:

Ask the students to keep in mind the following questions:

What was the purpose of segregation?
What was the meaning behind it?
How did segregation harm people?
Which examples of segregation were the most harmful?
Which the most subtle?
Which the most ridiculous?

In the documentary, Andrew Young, the UN representative who was born and largely raised in New Orleans, says that he was never physically harmed by segregation in New Orleans, but that he later concluded the subtle effects of segregation had been harmful indeed.

"I was not beat up or cussed out. I was protected by my parents. But the subtleties of segregation did more damage than I thought."

Andrew Young does not explain what the "subtleties" of segregation were, or what the "damage" to him might have been. It is up to the students to explore these questions.

The student should consider how the subtle effects of segregation might harm a person particularly from the point of view of self-worth, of personal esteem, of inherent dignity.

QUESTION:

What was the meaning behind segregation? In other words, what was the meaning behind segregated water fountains, separate bathrooms, segregated seating on streetcars? What was one race saying to the other?

ANSWER:

The answers, of course, are innumerable. For one, Kenneth Clark, the noted psychologist whose testings of black children demonstrated the unfairness of "separate but equal" in public education, defined segregation this way: "Segregation is the way in which a society tells a group of human beings that they are inferior to other groups."

2. DEFINE THE STEREOTYPES

In A House Divided, many of the stereotypes that whites hold of blacks, and blacks hold of whites, become apparent.

QUESTION:

What is a stereotype? Define it. How does a stereotype take root in a society?

The student should begin thinking about the stereotypes that he or she has of other people and what those stereotypes are based on. Ask the students to compile a list of the stereotypes with which the student views people of a different race.

In Part I, a reference is made to segregated wings in Charity hospital and to the rigid segregation of blood distribution. No white person could receive blood from a black person, nor vice a versa. Explain to the students that this is the most elemental form of racism: the blood of two people must not mix; race-mixing is the greatest evil; it "pollutes" a people and weakens it. Likewise, the students should recognize that Nazi Germany was based on so-called "purity of blood," meaning that no true German had Jewish ancestors in the four preceding generations.

In the documentary, Silas Lee, a professor at Xavier University, offers this opinion about segregation: "If you want to promote myths and untruths and tales about not just a race but another group of people, you separate them."

Ask the students if they agree with Silas Lee's statement? Then ask the students some frank questions: what are the differences between white and black people in New Orleans? What are the similarities? What divides the races? What unites them?

ANSWER:

A stereotype is a generalization about the characteristics of a group of people. It is usually based upon a "kernel"of truth. The lowest common denominator of a people is seized upon to describe the whole people. The stereotype is difficult to combat because the lowest common denominator of a group is invariably quite visible in everyday life. No people is free of the bad example. It is, however, unfair to argue that the actions of a segment of a people defines the behavior of the majority of that people.

3. LEGACY OF SEGREGATION

One of the central themes of A House Divided concerns the legacy of segregation, and what can be done to extricate New Orleans from the grave circumstances it has inherited.

QUESTION:

What is the legacy of segregation? What are its consequences? What is our inheritance?

ANSWER:

The legacy of segregation is found in every facet of life in New Orleans. The examples are innumerable. For one, some of the "best and brightest" of the black community left the city to find opportunity elsewhere. During segregation, what could a black person aspire to be? A teacher, a preacher, a funeral home director, very rarely a physician, very rarely a lawyer. Little industry existed. There were few jobs. Many in the black community fled to the North or to California to have an opportunity to succeed.

Andrew Young was an example of this disastrous exodus forced upon New Orleans by segregation, and an example of how segregation harmed the South in general.

As Dr. Daniel Thompson says in A House Divided, "It was tragic to find the brightest and best of people who were educated in New Orleans who had to seek a career elsewhere."

The period of segregation influenced greatly the way in which white and black people view one another today. The stereotypes woven into the fabric of the culture through the course of generations (dating back to the arrival of the first slaves in 1720) are difficult to unravel. Misunderstanding, resentment, hatred, and anger, each have been inherited from the past and amplified by the present. Each characterizes relations today in a city where racial polarization appears to intensify daily.

One of the most devastating consequences of segregation was the unfairness of the public school system. Many white people did not see the need for black education at all. Black schools were miserably under-funded. Generations of black children did not have the opportunity to learn. The system encouraged ignorance. An educated black person was seen as a threat to the status quo.

At the very end of Part I, Dave Treen, the Republican governor of Louisiana between 1980-84, reflects on what he describes as "the denial" of equality in public schools: "As time goes on we have realized that this denial has had a profound and very negative effect on the black race."

4. RIGHTEOUS LIVES

A relatively small group of individuals played important roles during the Civil Rights movement in New Orleans: Avery Alexander, Jerome Smith, Oretha Castle, Lolis Elie, Rudy Lombard, Raphael Cassimire, Rosa Keller, Harry Kelleher, J. Skelly Wright, Jack Nelson, and others. Instruct the students to focus on these individuals, to analyze their opinions and actions. In this way, the student enters the world of another person and begins to understand what motivates other people.

QUESTION:

Why were these individuals motivated to action?

The historian Erwin Staub has written, "Goodness, like evil, often begins in small steps. Heroes evolve; they aren't born."

Ask your students if they agree or disagree with this statement. Why? Why not? Who is a hero? What constitutes the behavior of a hero? Ask the student who their "heroes" are and why? Who has influenced them by a moral example?

ANSWER:

History turns on the work of a few people. There are plenty of theories, but nobody knows for sure what motivates some people to take a moral stance while others, the majority, are content to remain on the sidelines and to watch events unfold. The pressures of social conformity cripples many people from acting. Fear cripples others.

The people who become moral leaders are often those who reject social conformity and are able to overcome their own fears. They are the ones capable of feeling the pain suffered by another person. Often they are influenced by an incident in which injustice is triumphant. Sometimes they are simply natural fighters. The example of others makes a difference. As Albert Schweitzer observed, "Example is not the main thing influencing others. It is the only thing."

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