THE SOUTH: D-Day in New Orleans

The first court-ordered racial integration of public schools in the Deep South began last week in New Orleans, and the deep-seated force of racism squared off against the push of sociological change.

Two men stood at the head of the opposing forces. In the state capital of Baton Rouge, segregationist Governor Jimmie Davis—a smudged, folk-singing carbon of Arkansas’ Orval Faubus—guided his legislature through a stormy special session, signing into law a paroxysm of sweeping resolutions aimed at tearing apart the New Orleans school system and whooping up segregationist emotion. In New Orleans’ federal courtroom, U.S. District Court Judge J. (for James) Skelly Wright, who had ordered the school integration, countered every new law with a restraining order. New Orleans-born Judge Wright, in an unprecedented display of judicial power, eventually enjoined the Governor, the state attorney general, a whole host of city officials and the entire legislature from interfering with integration.

Caught between the fires was the five-man Orleans Parish (New Orleans) School Board, which fought desegregation for nearly eight years, then gave up to prepare for Monday, Nov. 14—marked on the desk calendar of School Board President Lloyd Rittiner as Dday.

Hoots & Hoses. D-day morning came last week, humid and sultry. By 8 a.m. crowds had begun to gather in front of McDonogh 19* and William J. Frantz, the two elementary schools chosen for integrated first-grade classes. Squads of city police stood guard, some joking with the baiters, carefully refusing to answer the taunting question: “Are the niggers here yet?” Shortly after 9, when the white children were safely in class, patrolmen herded traffic away from the two schools. Up drove several carloads of U.S. marshals with their charges: three neatly dressed, hair-ribboned, six-year-old Negro girls for McDonogh 19, one for William Frantz. The crowds, composed mostly of angry housewives, booed and yelled as the little girls were marched up the school steps by the marshals. Later, when white mothers stormed past police lines to take their children home, the fast-growing mobs applauded and brandished crudely lettered signs, e.g., “WE WANT SEGRAGATION.” But New Orleans’ four pioneering Negro pupils stayed in class all day, were escorted safely home at night.

Next morning a mob of some 350 teenagers from nearby Nicholls High School cut classes and charged toward McDonogh 19, roaring out a football-styled chant: “Two-Four-Six-Eight, We Don’t Want to Integrate.” Police steered the students away from their target, but segregationist tempers started to flare. That night 6,000 whites jammed into a White Citizen’s Council rally at the municipal auditorium. They stamped and shouted as former State Senator Willie Rainach ranted warnings of the “conspiracy for the destruction of the white race,” and Leander Perez, the notorious political boss of Plaquemines Parish in the Mississippi Delta, foamed at Jews, Catholics, Negroes, “Judge J. Scallywag Wright,” and at Mayor de Lesseps Morrison as “weasel, snakehead Morrison.”

Next day 2,000 riled-up teen-agers cut classes again (one of the legislature’s special acts aimed to make truancy legal) to make another futile dash at McDonogh 19. Joined this time by a throng of adults, they headed downtown for a protest “interview” with Mayor Morrison. At city hall police again blocked the way, ordered them to disperse. Instead, the mob moved on to Carondelet Street, headquarters of the city’s school board. There fire trucks backed up another police line, finally scattered them with billowing streams of water. All afternoon and evening, gangs of whites and Negroes prowled the narrow, ill-lit streets of the French Quarter, stoning cars, attacking luckless individuals who came their way, tossing homemade Molotov cocktails through darkened windows. Before the rioting ended, New Orleans’ tough, alert police, working on extralong, twelve-hour shifts, had arrested 240 persons (215 of them Negro) on charges ranging from loitering to assault.

Hip Deep. By week’s end it was apparent that New Orleans would be no Little Rock. For one thing, Jimmie Davis and his legislature, perhaps mindful of Little Rock, did not care to back their last-ditch segregation laws with National ‘Guard power, and after flare-ups of violence they began calling for moderation. For another, New Orleans’ 1,073-man police force, firmly directed by Mayor Morrison and his youthful (37) Chief Joseph Giarrusso, held the violence in check, gave Davis little justification for moving in with emergency troops. Davis actually had little support among New Orleans’ civic leaders. Rather than see schools closed, as Davis wanted, lawyers for the school board and for a committee of white parents worked with the N.A.A.C.P. and Judge Wright in the court war against the legislature.

After hearing arguments from both sides, a special three-man panel of federal judges agreed to rule on the constitutionality of the Louisiana legislature’s surge of segregation laws. In addition, the school board asked for a temporary suspension of integration while the court ruled on the state’s effort to interpose its authority between Judge Wright and the board. But until the motions are ruled on, the judges decreed, integration will continue.

Regardless of the judges’ decision, the New Orleans school board is likely to be hip-deep in trouble for some time. Reason: in its frenzy the state legislature attempted to abolish the board and actually did cut off all state aid to New Orleans schools. Until the state turns the financial flow back on (normally 57% of the city’s educational budget), the board lacks borrowing power to meet immediate bills. All this week, while schools are closed for a holiday (the combination of Thanksgiving and a teachers’ convention), board lawyers will meet with bankers, try to raise $2,300,000 for an imminent teacher payroll.

After D-day plus five, the forces of law and order and decency were still holding their ground—but were still embattled.

*One of 22 named for Philanthropist John McDonogh, who bequeathed part of his fortune to establish public schools in New Orleans.