The Southern Institute for Education and Research

GLOSSARY N - Z
NAACP - The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909 "to achieve, through peaceful and lawful means, equal citizenship rights for all American citizens by eliminating segregation and discrimination in housing, employment, voting, schools, the courts, transportation, recreation." The group was racially mixed. A white Boston lawyer, Moorfield Storey, was the first president. Under the NAACP's legal counsel Thurgood Marshall, the organization adopted a legalistic approach to overturning the system of segregation. One of the notable victories by the NAACP was the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. the Board of Education, which declared that segregation in public education was "inherently unequal." For much of the 20th century, the NAACP in Louisiana was led by A.P. Tureaud, who filed law suits to reverse legal segregation.The NAACP Youth Group, a militant arm of the NAACP, was led by Raphael Cassimire. The NAACP was bitterly resented by segregationists in the South, who depicted the organization as a communist inspired "Trojan horse" by which to weaken the white race and overthrow the "pure southern way of life."
JOHN P. NELSON, JR. - As a young man during the depression, John Nelson spent time on his family's sugar plantation and remembers the "strange affection" between the races. Nelson served with distinction in the Pacific Theater during World War II. He attended Loyola University as an undergraduate and then as a law student. At Loyola Nelson was influenced by Father Louis Twomey, the president of Loyola and a Jesuit priest active in race relations and labor education. Nelson became a civil rights lawyer almost by accident. His friend Lolis Elie asked him to help with the CORE activists arrested on Canal Street in September 1960. Nelson agreed, knowing it was "a kiss of death" from the political point of view. In 1958, Nelson ran for the School Board but lost to arch-segregationist Emile Wagner. Nelson handled many important civil rights cases, including the desegregation of Tulane University in 1963. This was not a "friendly" law suit, he attests.
REVIUS O. ORTIQUE, JR. - Revius Ortique attended Xavier and Dillard Universities. He was deeply influenced by the president of Dillard, Albert Dent, and by A.P. Tureaud, local counsel for the NAACP. As a young black attorney, Ortique became involved in black protest in the 1950's. He helped organize the McDonogh Day Boycott in 1954 and other demonstrations demanding civil rights. He was head of the Urban League in the 1950's and fought job discrimination. Ortique was elected to a judgeship in 1979.
LEANDER PEREZ - Leander Perez was a lawyer, judge, and land owner in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. He was one of the leading forces behind the White Citizens' Council of Greater New Orleans, an ultra segregationist organization. He equated integration with communism, and blamed the Jews for both. Due to his stance against integration of Catholic schools, Perez was excommunicated by the Pope.
PLESSY V. FERGUSON - In 1892, Homer Plessy, a light skinned black man from New Orleans, tested the state's segregation law by purposely sitting in an "all white" coach on the train from New Orleans to Covington, Louisiana. Plessy was arrested. He promptly sued the railroad. The U.S. Supreme Court heard the case and rendered its decision: the separation of the races is within the bounds of the constitution so long as equal accommodations are made for black people. The decision gave legal validity to the idea of "separate but equal" and to the system of Jim Crow segregation.
WILLIAM M. "WILLIE" RAINACH - "Willie" Rainach, a state legislator from Claiborne Parish in north Louisiana, led the state's Massive Resistance to desegregation. Rainach formed the first White Citizens' Council in Louisiana. He led the drive to pass the "pupil placement law" which made parish school superintendents responsible for assigning individual students to schools. It was a way of maintaining all white schools. Like his associate Leander Perez, "Willie" Rainach equated integration with communism. His racist speech to the state legislature in 1959, the year in which he ran for governor, is a dark classic in the history of Louisiana politics. Rainach later committed suicide.
RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION - Radical Reconstruction refers to the period of history between 1867 to 1877. This was the brief interlude when black people in the South enjoyed civil and political rights. Whites maintained that Radical Reconstruction was a time of unparrelled corruption. Blacks gradually lost their civil and political rights after the white Southern leadership, the so-called Redeemers, came to power following the departure of Federal troops from the state in 1877, the year representing the end of Radical Reconstruction.
ARCHBISHOP FRANCIS RUMMEL - In 1953, Archbishop Francis Rummel gave full support to mostly black sugar cane workers on strike in south Louisiana. In a 1956 pastoral letter, Rummel said that racial segregation was "morally wrong and sinful" and insisted that "the alleged mental defects, moral and criminal propensities, economic short comings and social disabilities," far from being an indictment of black people and an argument against integration, was "an indictment against continuing segregation." Rummel promised to integrate the Catholic schools "no earlier than September 1956."He then ran into a storm of protest. The Catholic schools were finally integrated in 1962, two years after the first public schools. Historian Adam Fairclough has written, "Instead of setting a moral and practical example to the public schools, the church set an example of procrastination and delay.".
SAVE OUR SCHOOLS (SOS) - SOS was a small group of liberal white women who were dedicated to keeping the public schools open. In 1956, Gladys Cahn and Ann Dlugos arranged the first meeting. Mary Sand was a leading participant. This group believed that segregation was morally wrong, but they did not publicity advocate integration; the topic was too controversial. Members of the SOS transported children to the integrated schools and braved the angry crowd of white people who stood outside. They encouraged the parents of these children to stay in the integrated schools.
SCLC - The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC ) was one of the important results of the Montgomery Bus Boycott which began in December 1955. In January 1957, ministers from eleven southern states met at Martin Luther King, Sr.'s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. The ministers decided to establish a formal organization to continue the Civil Rights struggle.In February 1957, this decision was re-confirmed in a vote taken at the New Zion Baptist Church in New Orleans (and for this reason New Orleans claims it is the birthplace of SCLC). Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was elected the president of the new organization. One of the leaders of the New Orleans branch of the SCLC was Reverend A.L. Davis.
The purpose of SCLC was to fight racial discrimination and establish equal opportunity and to do both in a non-violent manner based on Ghandian principles. In much of the nation, SCLC, closely associated with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led the civil rights struggle. SCLC played a relatively minor role in New Orleans.
JEROME SMITH - Jerome Smith was born in New Orleans, the son of a merchant seaman who taught Jerome "to protect the house" in his absences and to demand that whites who came to the door show courtesy to his mother.His mother read poetry to the children each night and told Jerome about Paul Robeson and Mary McLeod Bethune. As a child, Smith was impressed by the Mardi Gras Indians and their proud heritage. At age 11, imitating his father, Smith "pitched" the despised race screen onto the floor of a bus. Smith studied at Southern University in Baton Rouge where he joined the black protest marches in 1960. He left to devote himself to the "movement." In New Orleans, he worked as a longshoreman (as his grandfather had done) and then joined the Dryades Street Boycott in the spring of 1960. There he met Rudy Lombard, Oretha Castle, and others. This group formed a New Orleans chapter of CORE in the summer of 1960. In September 1960, the CORE activists began the sit-ins at segregated Canal Street stores. In 1961, Smith participated in the Freedom Rides. He was beaten in McComb, Mississippi.
SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE (SCLC) - SCLC was launched at a meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, in January 1957. The purpose was to offer a response to the banning of the NAACP in Alabama and acts of violence against black people. In February 1957, about one hundred people at the New Zion Baptist Church in New Orleans voted to establish SCLC as a permanent organization. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was the leader of SCLC. The movement was devoted to direct action non-violence based on Ghandian principles.
A.P. TUREAUD - A.P. Tureaud might be described as the father of the modern civil rights movement in New Orleans. His name was Alexander Pierre Tureaud, but he used his initials so that white people would not address him on a first-name basis, one of the patronizing characteristics of Jim Crow segregation. Tureaud joined the NAACP in 1922. He served as local counsel for the NAACP in New Orleans. In 1947, he was the only black lawyer in Louisiana. For almost fifty years, Tureaud litigated virtually every school and university suit filed by the NAACP in Louisiana, in addition to suits integrating buses, parks, and public buildings. In the 1950's, he was forced to leave the NAACP due to threats by the White Citizens' Council. Tureaud was mentor to Revius Ortique, Ernest "Dutch" Morial, and other black lawyers who fought in the civil rights struggles.
LOUIS TWOMEY - Louis Twomey was president of Loyola University. He taught there for more than twenty years.His classes on jurisprudence had a strong emphasis on social justice and natural rights. His students included "Moon" Landriu, John Nelson, and other prominent civil rights attorneys and Catholic layman.
UNITED CLUBS - In 1953, Dr. Leonard Burns and several colleagues organized the United Clubs, a group of four social and pleasure clubs and the local musicians' union. The first goal of the United Clubs was to desegregate Municipal Auditorium. This was accomplished in 1953. The United Clubs also helped lead the 1957 and 1960 boycotts of Mardi Gras. These boycotts protested the "hate bills" the Louisiana legislature had passed and also honored the boycotters in Montgomery, Alabama.
WHITE CITIZENS' COUNCIL - After the Brown v. the Board decision of May 1954, a new kind of white hate group emerged. It comprised urban, middle-class whites determined to fight desegregation. The White Citizens' Councils, which began in Mississippi but spread to all Southern states, aimed to intimidate blacks by inflicting economic reprisals. The tactics of the White Citizens' Council were different from the violent tactics of the Ku Klux Klan, but both groups shared the same goal of preventing desegregation.
In Louisiana, the first White Citizens' Council was organized in Homer, Claiborne Parish, by state legislator Willie Rainach. Membership was not secret. The White Citizens' Council of Greater New Orleans was started by Emile Wagner, Leander Perez, Robert G. Robinson, and other representatives of the Uptown elite. The New Orleans branch became the largest of the ultra-segregationist groups in Louisiana and perhaps the largest in the entire South. It attacked the NAACP, tried to reduce black voter registration (through intimidation and economic reprisals), and united whites behind the defense of segregated schools.
In 1956, the FBI reported that the White Citizens' Councils comprised "the most prominent and influential people...Practically all of the established sources who are normally contacted in these cases are in sympathy with the aims and purposes of the Citizens' Councils."
BETTY WISDOM - The daughter of a prominent businessman and niece of Judge John Minor Wisdom, Betty Wisdom was a member of Save Our Schools (SOS), a small group of liberal white women devoted to keeping the public schools open during the desegregation crisis. Like virtually all SOS members, Wisdom received threatening phone calls.
JUDGE JOHN MINOR WISDOM - Judge John Minor Wisdom, whose grandfather had fought on the side of the White League in the Battle of Liberty Place in 1874, was nominated to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appals in 1957. He emerged as the most influential liberal on the southern bench and served as a key ally of civil rights. Wisdom had been involved in civil rights before his appointment; he had been a key member of the Urban League.
JUDGE SKELLY WRIGHT - Federal Judge Skelly Wright ordered the admission of blacks to LSU's law school in 1951. He described it as a turning point in his life: "Ordering LSU Law School integrated was my first integration order. Until that time, I was just another 'Southern boy.' After it, there was no turning back." In an interview with historian Kim Lacy Rogers, Wright described the world he grew up in: "When I shake hands with a Negro, I have a different feeling than when I shake hands with a white. You ...you don't erase a whole life in a few years...."
He said, "I once observed a Christmas party, and I saw that the party was held in separate groups, blacks and whites, and I realized they were all blind." Wright sensed the irrationality of segregation. When he told this story to journalist W.J. Weatherby, Wright "was so moved that he could not complete the story for several minutes."
Judge Wright decided many of the early desegregation cases in New Orleans, including the integration of City Park in 1957, the desegregation of the street cars and buses in 1958, the desegregation of the public schools in 1960 (he was the first district judge to hand down a school integration decree, in February 1956), and the desegregation of Tulane University in 1963. He and his wife were ostracized by many of their former friends. The feelings against integration were very hard. Wright was appointed by President John Kennedy to Federal Appeals Court in Washington, D.C. This appointment enabled Wright and his family to leave New Orleans.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fairclough, Adam. Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972 (Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1995).

To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1987).

Foner, Eric. A Short History of Reconstruction: 1863-1877 (New York: Harper and Row, 1990).

Hair, William Ivy. Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest: Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest 1877-1900. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969).

Lacy, Kim Rogers. Righteous Lives: Narratives of the New Orleans Civil Rights Movement. (New York: New York University Press, 1993).

Lincoln, Abraham. The Gettysburg Address and Other Speeches. (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1995).

Melloch, James (ed). Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember (An Oral History). (New York: Avon Books, 1990).

Northup, Solomon. Twelve Years a Slave. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968).

Tunnell, Ted (ed). Carpetbagger From Vermont: The Autobiography of Marshall Harvey Twitchell. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989).

Westwood, Howard C. Black Troops, White Commanders, and Freedmen During the Civil War. (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992).

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