By Kelly Richman-Abdou on July 6, 2020

“The history of the school desegregation in New Orleans has not been told correctly…it’s time people learned the truth.”

On May 17, 1954, the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision deemed laws calling for racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. As a result of this momentous ruling, educational institutions across the country were ordered to enroll and educate both black and white students.

Even after the Supreme Court decision was made, however, schools based in the South showed increasing reluctance to start the desegregation process. This prompted a federal judge to formally order the Orleans Parish School Board, an entity of the New Orleans Public School System, to officially desegregate its schools on November 14, 1960.

Over 100 black families applied for their school-age children to play a part in this process. While six were selected, two withdrew, leaving Etienne, Prevost, Bridges, and Tate, who poignantly perceived that monumental day as any six-year-old would. “I remember waking up to a house filled with family and friends helping my mother get prepared,” Tate tells us. “I can also remember being escorted to school with two U.S. Marshals and my mother. We were greeted by masses of people being held back by police on horseback and I was thinking a parade was coming.”

These “masses of people” were actually angry mobs of white protestors—most of whom had children enrolled in the school. In fact, parents were so enraged by integration that they pulled their children from McDonogh 19 altogether, leaving Tate, Etienne, and Prevost as the only members of the first-grade class for the entire school year.

Still, grasping the severity of the situation was a gradual process for Tate, who left McDonogh 19 after two tumultuous years. “I didn’t understand how much my life was affected for quite some time,” she admits to us. “My life changed drastically. I was confined to my house and school. I always had protection by the U.S. Marshals or the New Orleans Police Department. I began to understand the difference in third grade but I learned the significance when my junior high school gym teacher said she was reading a book and I was in it.”[…]

Continue reading: Leona Tate Turns School She Helped Desegregate Into Center for Equality