New Orleans area Catholic schools integrated 2 years after the city's public schools

[Beau_Ouiville]

An interesting historical note. I had been in parochial school for years in 1962.

"In New Orleans the day after Labor Day in 1962, almost 200 African-American children began arriving at many of the 153 Catholic elementary and high schools that the Archdiocese of New Orleans previously reserved only for white families.

On that day 48 years ago, seventh-grader Cynthia Soniat, 12 years old but lady-like in her pressed cotton dress and shiny black flats, walked to her first day of school at all-white Mater Dolorosa Elementary in Carrollton. She and her eighth-grade brother, Donald, were there because their father, Llewelyn, a civil rights activist, wanted his black children to help breach the racial barriers he had spent his life assaulting."

nola.com/religion/index.ssf/2010/11/new_orleans_catholic_schools_integrated_2_years_after_their_public_counterparts.html

 

[dusty_david]

White people did not want black kids going to school with white kids. You know that better I do – I’m from the rural south. Sadly, that’s what the times were. And white people really really really believed that black kids should not be in white schools. I think that idea crossed all religious lines but Jews and Quakers.

 

[Beau_Ouiville]

Well, I was very surprised to learn that Catholic parishioners would beat two black youths who were rash enough to sit in the front pews at Mass.

 

[dusty_david]

Not catholic here so I don’t know the temper of white Catholics in Louisiana in 1962. But if two young African American men tried to sit on the front pews of a white southern baptist church in Georgia in 1962, they would be lucky to escape with just a beating.That’s just the way things were.

I’m glad this subject came up. Several of my friends/neighbors from a rural traditional background tend to downplay or even deny that black people faced legal discrimination after the civil war. I guess in the southwest most people did not have first hand knowledge of Jim Crow laws.

 

[Beau_Ouiville]

I’m glad this subject came up. Several of my friends/neighbors from a rural traditional background tend to downplay or even deny that black people faced legal discrimination after the civil war. I guess in the southwest most people did not have first hand knowledge of Jim Crow laws.

There was Jim Crow in the Southwest. In celebrated incidents, Paul Robeson and Bill Robinson could only appear before segregated audiences. Robeson declined.

 

[dusty_david]

There was Jim Crow in the Southwest. In celebrated incidents, Paul Robeson and Bill Robinson could only appear before segregated audiences. Robeson declined.

Thank you! I looked them up and look forward to telling the boys that the southwest also discriminated against blacks. Probably will not make me popular but I’m sort of used to that . Also the brown people that white people here are concerned about now are Mexicans, not African Americans. And the beat goes on …

 

[Tsuwano]

This is certainly an interesting, if painful, part of our history as Catholic Americans, especially if you are from Louisiana. I have one question however. Wasn’t it Archbishop Rummel who excommunicated Leander Perez and other white Catholics over their militant stand against integration in Catholic schools in New Orleans? The article seems to imply that the Archbishop was too ill in 1962 to be very active in the integration struggles at that time. Was Perez excommunicated by Bishop Cody, later Cardinal Cody of Chicago, or was that the act of a different bishop in New Orleans?

 

[Tsuwano]

There was Jim Crow in the Southwest. In celebrated incidents, Paul Robeson and Bill Robinson could only appear before segregated audiences. Robeson declined.

I remember reading somewhere that Lordsburg, New Mexico was a favorite town for Black families traveling to the West Coast from the South because it was one of very few stops where Blacks could actually find hotels that would allow them to stay overnight. I’m afraid that Jim Crow was never limited solely to the southern parts of the United States.

 

[Beau_Ouiville]

I’m afraid that Jim Crow was never limited solely to the southern parts of the United States.

Many, many people fail to credit that. Actually, the kindergarten in my NY neighborhood, which I was slated to attend, closed its doors two years before I could enrol because of the ban on segregated schools established in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in the fifties.