3. THE WHITE REACTION

The black protesters on Canal Street met with distinct hostility on the part of angry whites who in the form of a mob gathered at Woolworth's (and other protest sites) and spat abuse. But what of the rest of the white population of the city? How did it view this assault on the venerable walls of segregation?

The day following the first protest on September 9, 1960, Oretha Castle-Haley was summarily fired from her job at Hotel Dieu Hospital: "The good nun gave me my paycheck and said, 'Take it, and get out of here, and don't ever come back.' I really thought they'd find a reason, you know, to say I was not doing my work adequately. I hadn't expected it was going to be immediate."

HISTORICAL POINT:

This is a good example of economic reprisal by white bosses on those black employees who took concrete action to change the status quo. One of the goals of the White Citizens' Council was to intimidate black people (and to dissuade them from registering to vote) by hurting them economically. To repeat, black people who challenged the system had a lot of lose: their job, their mortgage, their life.

QUOTE:

According to Avery Alexander, the white community generally viewed black protesters as "law breakers, renegades, and outlaws. The conservative white community felt that way. When they were talking about crime in the streets, they weren't talking about anybody going out and holding up people. We were the criminals. That was the crime in the streets, and we were marching and demonstrating for our rights."

The mayor of New Orleans, Chep Morrison, issued a statement on September 12, 1960, after the first sit-in on Canal Street: "I carefully reviewed the reports of these two initial demonstrations by a small group of misguided white and Negro students or former students. It is my considered opinion that regardless of the avowed purpose or intent of the participants, the effect of such demonstrations is not in the public interest of this community." The mayor banned further sit-ins, but to no avail.

On September 17, 1960, CORE chairman Rudy Lombard, Tulane student Sydney "Lanny" Goldfinch, Oretha Castle, and Dillard student Cecil Carter sat at the lunch counter at McCrory's department store on Canal Street. They were arrested. Goldfinch, who as a Jew was a particularly disagreeable white person, was charged with "criminal anarchy" which carried a $2,500 bond and the threat of ten years in prison.

Lolis Elie and the other lawyers for CORE were inexperienced in criminal cases and felt that Goldfinch especially needed a white lawyer. They asked John P. Nelson for assistance. He agreed. In the book Righteous Lives, Nelson said, "Once I had done that, I was hooked. I knew this was something." Nelson fully understood that by embracing a civil rights case, he was committing political suicide in the white community. He said, "It was not an act of despair." In 1963, Nelson argued the Lombard v. Louisiana case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

HISTORICAL POINT:

The white community was generally frightened and angered by the actions of CORE and other black activists in the city. It was also perplexed. The militant actions of the activists refuted all of the stereotypes the white community had embraced for centuries: blacks were content; blacks were passive; segregation was good for everybody.

QUOTE:

Dr. Henry Mitchell, of the New Orleans branch of the NAACP and the Consumer League, recalls that among his white colleagues in the medical field a persistent question arose:

Why can't you mature blacks talk to these radicals, 'they said, 'and tone down the discord, the disruption between whites and blacks.' As much as I had been a prominent figure in the NAACP, I pointed out that peaceful means hadn't worked.

QUESTION:

What choice did the black activists have?

4. NOPD

The New Orleans Police Department was at the center of the desegregation crisis in the city. Its superintendent at the time, Joseph Giarusso, is quoted at length in A House Divided. He maintains that he and the police force were enforcing the law when they arrested black protesters on Canal Street. The police department was not to blame, Giarusso explains, the state legislature is to blame. In contrast to "Bull" Connor and the police in Birmingham, Alabama, the police in New Orleans were not overtly brutal in their handling of black protesters. The city does not have the searing memory of black children being violently hosed down by police.

In A House Divided, Rudy Lombard makes this point: "I would think they (the police) were very deliberate about not trying to engage us in any overt political violence at least in public, and they succeeded in that."

It should be noted that Lombard says the police violence was absent "...at least in public..."

QUOTE:

In A House Divided, Joseph Giarusso, police superintendent, explains the actions of the police department in the following ways:

The black people were not fooled or deluded by the fact that the legislature was the one compelling the police into action situations that we could have done without, making the police do it.

At another point, Giarusso says, "You're following law. You're saying that, a lot of people don't want to hear that, if you believe in the principles of government, that when you're sworn to do something and you do it and don't exceed it, then you do it. I think that's what we did. We didn't go beyond."

In contrast, Jerome Smith of CORE offers this opinion: "A lot of people have died or been destroyed in the name of men doing their duty."

QUESTION:

Who is responsible? The juxtaposition of these two quotes, by Joseph Giarusso and Jerome Smith, provides an opportunity for students to discuss the topic "of men doing their duty." In many respects, a civilization depends on people following orders, but at the same time "just following orders" ( blindly, unthinkingly, coldly) has led to unparalleled hardship and death in this century.

When is it the responsibility of an individual not to obey orders?

5. ON THE EVE OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION

In New Orleans, Federal Judge Skelly Wright ordered the public schools to desegregate on Monday, November 14, 1960. Since the Brown v. the Board decision in 1954, the Orleans Parish School Board had fought desegregation through various law suits and appeals. The delaying tactics now came to an end, and the School Board begrudgingly acquiesced to desegregation. As a result, members of the School Board were shunned by their former friends.

The role of Judge Skelly Wright was critical. Lolis Elie, the black lawyer, said, "The only man I know who stood hard and fast for change was Judge Skelly Wright, the federal judge. He was forcing the city to face the reality of having to integrate the school system."

After the first day of school desegregation, Skelly's effigy was hung from a post outside a high school. His name was vilified. He and his wife were ostracized by Uptown society. Skelly was born into a milieu that now expelled him.

QUOTE:

In A House Divided, Skelly described his approach to the desegregation of the public schools:

As I came to these problems, I had no particular moral convictions. I was just another Southern guy who didn't give a lot of thought. But it became clear to me that not only was it legal, but it was also right.

HISTORICAL POINT:

A poll conducted by the Orleans Parish School Board indicated that eighty percent of white people in the city would prefer that the public schools be closed rather than integrated. In anticipation of the school desegregation crisis, following immediately in the footsteps of the Canal Street protests, the white leadership in the city, both political and business, failed completely to prepare for the anger and turmoil about to erupt on the streets in front of the two public schools designated for integration.

Iris Kelso, a newspaper reporter at the time, recalls sitting in Mayor Chep Morrison's office on the eve of the desegregation of the schools: "I sat in Chep Morrison's office one day when he was on a conference call desperately trying to round up business leaders, to sign up business leaders in favor of a simple statement that they were in favor of law and order. This was before the schools were about to open. He realized what would happen. He didn't get any support. One of the results is that the police didn't provide protection. He didn't make any plan for doing that in an orderly way."

Police superintendent Joseph Giarusso says this about the school desegregation crisis:"We were the first major city where had to do court order, and I can speak only for myself. I would have to say that I was ill-prepared. It was something that was thrust on me and I'm talking in the sense of the police department."

Each morning and afternoon of the desegregation crisis the quiet dignity of the handful of black children attending school contrasted sharply with the racial hatred spewed by angry whites who lined the entrances to the schools. The ugly spectacle caught the eye of the nation when it was replayed on the national news. It was an ignominious moment in the history of New Orleans.

6. BATON ROUGE

In Baton Rouge, the state capital, Governor Jimmie Davis reflected the will of the majority of the white populace and came out vehemently against school desegregation. 1960 was a gubernatorial election year, a coincidence which did help the political atmosphere. In order to obtain the majority of the white vote, the three candidates, including Jimmie Davis, played the race card to various degrees, inciting the fears of racial change.

In 1959, one of the gubernatorial candidates, state legislator Willie Rainach, a driving force behind the White Citizens' Council, addressed the state legislature on the subject of race: "I love the nigger, but I know he can't run this country. The breeding in him does not allow him to run a civilization, and I won't let our civilization go to ruin." Polite society turned up its nose at Willie Rainach, but the sentiments expressed by the North Louisiana legislator were the same sentiments overheard in the offices and homes of bankers, lawyers, doctors, and other members of the social and political elite.

Chep Morrison, the mayor of New Orleans, was the third gubernatorial candidate in 1960. He was criticized by his opponents as a "moderate" on the race question, a "kiss of death" among the white populace of the state. In the end, Jimmie Davis won reelection.

HISTORICAL POINT:

In the effort to thwart the desegregation of public schools, Governor Jimmie Davis threatened to resort to the tactic called "interposition." Unconstitutional in the extreme, "interposition" stated simply that a state did not have to obey a Federal law it did not like. Jimmie Davis stated his goal flatly: "I want to do everything...we will do everything a man can do to maintain segregation. Of course, 'interposition' would be the last thing before we succeeded from the Union."

Lloyd Rittiner, president of the Orleans Parish School Board, argued for the peaceful integration of the public schools. He had something of a duel with Governor Jimmie Davis and Attorney General Jack Gremellion over the issue of desegregation of public schools in Orleans Parish. He said, "I visited Jack Gremellion and Jimmie Davis in his office at the state capitol, and they told us we were under their jurisdiction and we had to take our orders from them, and that they wanted to close the schools on November 14 (1960). So I told the governor, I said, 'You may think we work for the state and you may think that we have to take orders from you (and they wanted the schools closed on November 14) but we are not going to close the schools on November 14. They will stay open.' He said he would see that they wouldn't stay open and implied that he would send the state police down to New Orleans and see that the principles closed the schools."

The state legislature passed a law which stopped state funding to integrated schools. Teachers at these schools were not paid. The legislature also abolished compulsory attendance at all public schools (allowing white students the opportunity to protest by staying away) and banned students at integrated schools from graduating.

Jimmie Davis issued Executive Order Number One. It called for state officials to take over the administration of public schools system in New Orleans. Lloyd Rittiner replied, "As many times they did that the Federal government kicked them out and put us back in."

The New Orleans White Citizens' Council, led by Leander Perez, protested the integration of the schools. In A House Divided, Samuel Rosenberg, a lawyer for the School Board, says, "They (the School Board members) were influenced by those who composed the White Citizens' Council who were determined the schools not be desegregated, and those people I think would have preferred for public schools to be closed completely, and for private schools to take over the education of all children in the state."

HISTORICAL POINT:

The two public schools chosen to be the initial targets of desegregation were McDonogh 19 and William Frantz Elementary School, both located in the 9th Ward of the city, a neighborhood of poor whites and equally poor blacks. Why this neighborhood was chosen, as opposed to a neighborhood in Uptown New Orleans where presumably the reception would be less hostile, has never been determined. In a particularly gross act of negligence, the teachers at these two schools were not informed of the events about to involve them.

Lloyd Rittiner of the Orleans Parish School Board describes his thoughts on the eve of school desegregation: "When we said we were going to integrate the schools and that we would have trouble, but I never dreamed that we would have as much trouble as we had."

Iris Kelso concludes Part IV with a chilling memory of the angry women who greeted the first black children, all first-graders, to integrate McDonogh 19 and William Frantz: "I saw them spit on the children."

PART IV: TERMS TEACHER COPY

Instructions: identify the following individuals and terms.

1. Vergie Castle

- Vergie Castle was the mother of CORE activists Oretha Castle and Doris Jean Castle. She encouraged her daughters to participate in civil rights activities and supported them at every turn.

2. A.L. Davis

- Reverend A.L. (Abraham Lincoln) "Jack" Davis was one of the founders of the Consumers' League which launched the Dryades Street Boycott in 1960. He was also a leader of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance which led the efforts to desegregate the street cars and buses in New Orleans (May 30, 1958). Reverend Davis offered support to CORE activists who picketed Canal Street and to the Freedom Riders who arrived in New Orleans in 1961.

3. Skelly Wright

- Skelly Wright, born in New Orleans, was the Federal judge who ordered the desegregation of public transportation and public schools in the city. In 1952, he ordered the desegregation of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and in 1963 he ordered the desegregation of Tulane University. Wright and his wife were ostracized by former friends. The Wrights left New Orleans when he was appointed to the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.

4. Jimmie Davis

- Jimmie Davis was Louisiana governor in the late 1950's and early '60's during the desegregation crisis. Reflecting the will of the majority of white voters in the state, Davis stood firmly against integration of schools. Under his direction, a plethora of bills ("hate bills") designed to prevent desegregation. He won popular support by advocating the "state's rights" position and by appearing to defy the Federal government. He wrote and sang the popular song "You are my sunshine."

5. CORE

- CORE, or the Congress of Racial Equality, was an integrated organization of activists committed to achieving civil and political rights for black people. In New Orleans, the CORE chapter was led by Rudy Lombard, the chairman, and by others including Oretha Castle and Jerome Smith. CORE was at odds with the NAACP, believing the NAACP relied too heavily on legal challenges rather than on militant protest and direct action. The CORE chapter in New Orleans included black students from Southern University of New Orleans, LSU of New Orleans (UNO), and a few from Dillard and Xavier Universities. In addition, several white students from Tulane University and LSU in New Orleans were CORE members.

6. Consumers' League

- The Consumers' League was established in 1959'-60 to protest job discrimination in the Dryades Street shopping district. It was organized by Avery Alexander, A.L. Davis, Dr. Henry Mitchell, and others. The actions undertaken by the Consumer's League were based on the argument that blacks should not shop in stores that did not hire black employees for jobs over the modern broom level.

7. Rudy Lombard

- Former student body president at Xavier University, Rudy Lombard became the chairman of CORE in New Orleans and was one of the leading participants of the sit-ins at stores on Canal Street.

8. Ernest "Dutch" Morial

- Ernest Morial was deeply influenced by A.P. Tureaud, the local counsel for the NAACP in New Orleans, who took Morial as a law partner. Morial was the first black graduate of LSU law school. With Lolis Elie, Nils Douglas, and Robert Collins, Morial helped defend black activists arrested in the 1960's. He served as head of the New Orleans chapter of the NAACP. In 1978, Morial was elected mayor of New Orleans, the first black man to hold that office.

9. Jack Nelson

- A decorated war veteran and a devout Catholic, Jack Nelson was the rare white lawyer who embraced civil rights. He was influenced by Father Twomey, a Jesuit priest and president of Loyola University. Nelson became involved in civil rights when he was asked to represent Rudy Lombard and other CORE members who had been arrested at their sit-in at McCrory's Department Store on September 17, 1960.

10. Interposition

- During the desegregation crisis, Governor Jimmie Davis argued that Louisiana did not have to obey Federal laws if it did not approve of the laws. This tactic, patently unconstitutional, was referred to as "interposition."

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