Desegregation of Public Schools: 1960-1971

The integration of Louisiana public schools was a time of great conflict. Jimmie Davis was the first governor to have to deal with federal enforcement of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas. Judge Skelly Wright of the United States for the Eastern District of Louisiana ordered the Orleans Parish School Board to submit a plan for desegregation by May 16, 1960, and the board began to comply.

Many Louisiana legislators and Governor Davis had been elected because of their promises to fight desegregation. So while, the Orleans Parish School Board began compliance (in a fashion), state officials began their fight.

The Orleans Parish School Board possessed legal and constitutional power over the schools. The legislature, however, passed an act revoking the board's power and giving the governor direct control of the schools. Governor Davis ordered the schools to be opened in September 1960 on a segregated basis. Judge Wright declared Davis' actions unconstitutional and again charged the school board to begin desegregation. The Orleans Parish School Board announced that it would comply.

The governor called a special session of the legislature. When the legislature convened early in November, it passed more than two dozen laws affecting Louisiana's public schools. More than half the laws dealt directly with the situation in New Orleans. The most extreme of the measures removed all educational authority from the Orleans Parish School Board, divested it of all state funds , and replaced it with an eight-man legislative committee. In another extreme measure, the legislature denied accreditation to all racially integrated schools and deprived their students of the right to graduate or go on to attend state colleges or universities.

Whites began to riot in New Orleans and blacks were sometimes injured as they tried to sue city sidewalks or streets. In December, appalled by the violence and the negative effects of the bad publicity on the economy, over 150 of New Orleans' business and professional leaders decided to put together a media campaign to encourage compliance with the Federal Judges orders.

A new New Orleans mayor in 1961 also campaigned for an end to violence and promoted peaceful desegregation of the New Orleans schools. In the fall of 1961, six New Orleans schools peacefully integrated and in 1962 the parochial schools integrated.

The next governor, John McKeithen, accepted the inevitability of public school desegregation in the state. Governor McKeithen appointed a biracial commission to deal with the problem and used the National Guard to protect civil rights marchers. Governor McKeithen also saw to it that the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enforced in Louisiana. By 1971, more than 200,000 children attended racially integrated public schools in Louisiana. Many parish school boards did not abolish segregation until they were forced to do so by federal court order. But in the end, federal court orders were peacefully obeyed.

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