6. LATTER MEMORIAL
In New Orleans, as everywhere in the South, the public libraries were segregated. The libraries for
blacks received less of everything and what they received was of an inferior quality, usually hand-me-downs from a white library (just as black schools received worn textbooks from white
schools). In the aftermath of Brown v. the Board of Education, the Orleans Parish School Board
made a futile effort to improve black education and to make it truly "separate but equal" in the
forlorn hopes of preserving the segregated system.
HISTORICAL POINT:Segregated libraries were an attempt to
keep black children less educated, less capable, and less willing to
challenge the system. Segregation was not just a matter
of black children receiving second hand books from the white schools. It was a matter of black
children receiving an inferior education which, in turn, prepared them for an inferior role in a
segregated system.
In 1954, the New Orleans League of Classroom Teaches petitioned the city's Library Board to
desegregate Latter Memorial Library on St. Charles Avenue in Uptown New Orleans. Albert
Dent, president of Dillard University, urged three clergy men ("a Catholic, a Jew, and a
Protestant") to urge the Library Board to integrate the libraries.
In 1953, Rosa Keller was appointed to the Library Board by Mayor Chep Morrison. She was the
first woman appointed to the board. Keller was astonished to discover that black children in
Uptown New Orleans were not permitted to use Latter Memorial Library. Keller suggested to the
Library Board that Latter Memorial be open to all children regardless of color. It was "as if the
roof fell in," she says in A House Divided. The resistance was so great that Keller
apologized to Mayor Morrison, saying she had "gotten in over my head." Much to her surprise,
the mayor replied, "No, you're right. They're wrong." He was evidentally aware that the Brown v.
the Board decision made the integration of libraries inevitable. Morrison urged Keller to continue
in the efforts to desegregate the library. She did, and in 1955 Latter Memorial was open to all. By
the end of 1955, all public libraries in the city were integrated. However, water fountains and bath
rooms remained segregated.
The integration of the libraries was one of the few civil rights gains achieved without a lawsuit
and protest. The victory was quietly celebrated; the media honored the request not to publicize
the first day. Nonetheless, word of the desegregation leaked out, and some whites protested by
removing the chairs from at least some of the libraries.
QUOTE:Rosa Keller, a daughter of the wealthy and socially
connected Freeman family,
was one of the few white people who fought for Civil Rights in New Orleans. In the 1950's, she
was president of the Urban League, an integrated organization devoted to increasing black
employment. Her comments about the attitudes of her fellow white people are instructive: "Let
these people (black people) get as good as we are, to our level" before the system is changed.
Keller describes that attitude as "junk." Another attitude typical of the white community:
segregation was "a benefit" to black people, who, according to the stereotype, were inferior and
thus incapable of taking care of themselves. "Change," she reflects at another point in the
documentary, "is hard for people."
The overwhelming majority of white people in New Orleans did not object to segregation. They
did not see it as a moral problem. Indeed, they feared that the slightest change to the complicated
system of segregation would destroy their economic, political, and social privileges. They evinced
a fear of racial change that was not unlike the fear evinced by their ancestors during the turbulent
and violent time of Radical Reconstruction.
QUESTION:Emphasize to the students that people like Rosa
Keller were few and far between. However, it is precisely because there
were so few people like her that these people are
so important to remember, and to study. The essential question: what made Rosa Keller
different?
ANSWER:The answer, of course, is we don't know. Here are
some clues:
Keller was
raised a Presbyterian and lectured by her family "to do what is right, even if it hurts you." She
defied convention when she married a U.S. Army officer who was Jewish. She traveled with him
to various outposts and saw the world beyond New Orleans. She also became familiar with anti-Semitism through her husband's eyes.
Keller was deeply influenced in her view on segregation by the Nazi annihilation of Jews in
Europe during World War II. To her, the Holocaust was not only a demonstration of racial hatred
pursued to a murderous conclusion, but of the failure of one people to accept another and to live
side by side that people despite the differences and in honor of the similarities.
The circumstances between Germans and Jews (and Poles and Jews) were quite different than the
circumstances between whites and blacks in her own homeland, but the echo was quite distinct,
and required Keller to stand up and do something.
QUESTION:Rosa Keller was influenced by the righteous example
of her parents and
also by the murderous example of the Holocaust. Ask the students this question: what are some of
the events and who are the individuals that have impacted you and helped shape your own view of
people, of the race question, of the world? And why?
ANSWER:This is a question that requires a personal
answer.
7. STREET CARS AND BUSES
Public transportation in New Orleans remained segregated until May 30,
1958. That day, a
Monday, that buses and street cars in the city were ordered desegregated by Federal Judge Skelly
Wright. However, it took longer to overcome certain attitudes and
fears.
QUOTE: In A House Divided, Avery Alexander remembers,
"We had to put on a
campaign to get blacks to ride in front of the bus, in front of a white person, and whites would get
on the bus and stand up behind the driver before they would sit behind
blacks."
HISTORICAL POINT:It is not mentioned in A House
Divided, but black people
in New Orleans, honoring the Montgomery Bus Boycott, were urged to boycott Mardi Gras in
1957. An advertisement in a black newspaper read: "No dancing in New Orleans while blacks are
walking in Montgomery." The boycott was honored by major black carnival organizations except
Zulu, which refused to participate in the boycott and paraded hurriedly on Mardi Gras morning
amidst dire threats.
Members of the black community in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, under the leadership of J.T.
Jemison, a Baptist minister, launched a boycott of public transportation in that city in the summer
of 1953. This was the first act of organized resistance to segregated public transportation in the
South, and it served as a model for the Montgomery boycott two years later.
PART III: TERMS - - TEACHER COPY
Instructions:Identify the following individuals and terms in
complete sentences.
1. Revius Ortique- Revius Ortique, born in New Orleans,
was a black attorney who
helped organize the McDonogh Day Boycott in 1954 and other black protests. He also worked
with the Urban League. Ortique was influenced by Albert Dent, president of Dillard University,
and by A.P. Tureaud, a lawyer for the NAACP in Louisiana in the 1950's, both of whom inspired
Ortique to fight for civil rights. Ortique was later elected a civil court
judge in New Orleans.
2. A.P. Tureaud- A.P. Tureaud, a lawyer for the New
Orleans branch of the NAACP,
filed a series of law suits to force the desegregation of public facilities in Louisiana, including
Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge which occurred in 1952. In 1951, he filed suit in Bush
v. Orleans Parish School Board in 1951. It called for the desegregation of public schools in New
Orleans. Tureaud was a leading figure in the early days of the modern Civil Rights movement in
Louisiana.
3. Leander Perez- Leander Perez, a lawyer, a judge, and a
white supremacist, led the
White Citizens' Council in its fight against desegregation. His contempt of blacks was equal to
hatred of Jews. He viewed integration as a communist inspired effort to destroy the United States.
As a result of his vehement opposition to the integration of Catholic schools, Perez was
excommunicated by the Pope.
4. Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)- The
Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, founded in New Orleans in 1957, was based on the Ghandian principles
of non-violence and direct action. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the director of the SCLC, which
played a leading role in the struggle for civil rights across the country, but, relatively speaking, a
minor role in New Orleans.
5. John McDonogh- John McDonogh was a 19th century
philanthropist who endowed
the New Orleans public schools. Each year both white and black students from Orleans Parish
public schools paid homage to McDonogh in ceremonies that were segregated. In 1954, black
schools boycotted McDonogh Day in one of the city's first organized black protests of the
modern Civil Rights period.
6. Arthur Chapital- Arthur Chapital was director of the New
Orleans branch of the
NAACP in the 1950's. He was an early leader of the black community, helping to organize the
McDonogh Day Boycott in 1954.
7. Chep Morrison- Chep Morrison was mayor of New Orleans
in the late 1950's and
early '60's. He did not believe in desegregation, but he desired the limited black vote and thus
worked for improvements for the black community within the limits of segregation. He built
Shakespeare Park for his black constituency, and he backed the construction of Ponchartrain
Park, a housing development for middle-class black people. Morrison arranged for the
desegregation of public libraries in New Orleans, but he did not arrange for the police to protect
the black children who entered public school in November 1960. Morrison ran for governor that
same year and was not entirely free of playing the race card. He lost but subsequently was
appointed ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS).
8. Rosa Keller- Rosa Keller was one of the few white people
who fought for racial
change in New Orleans. Her husband was Jewish and she became familiar with prejudice through
his eyes. Keller was also deeply influenced by the Nazi Holocaust in Europe. It was an example of
unbridled racism, and she was left to wonder about racism in her own country. In addition to her
other work in facilitating racial change in New Orleans, Keller was instrumental in the
desegregation of the public libraries in 1955. She later served as president of the Urban League of
New Orleans.
9. John Holland- In 1896, John Holland was the U.S. Supreme
Court Justice who voiced a dissenting opinion in the Plessy v. Ferguson
case. He said that the two races "were indissolubly linked."
10. Oliver Bush- With the help of the local branch of the
NAACP, Oliver Bush filed
suit in 1941 on behalf of his son Earl who wanted to a neighborhood school that happened to be
all white. This was one of the early desegregation law suits. Judgement on the desegregation issue
was rendered by Brown v. the Board in 1954.
PART III: TERMS - - STUDENT COPY
Instructions:Identify the following individuals and terms in
complete sentences.
1. Revius Ortique
2. A.P. Tureaud
3. Leander Perez
4. Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
5. John McDonogh
6. Arthur Chapital
7. Chep Morrison
8. Rosa Keller
9. John Holland
10. Oliver Bush
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