They spent the school year with the campus to themselves after every
white student was withdrawn.

Formerly segregated Louisiana school transformed into civil rights
center

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Dwayne Fatherree   Read the full piece here

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Friend,  

The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education

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decision in 1954 may have paved the way for the desegregation of
schools in the United States, but in the Jim Crow South it was no more
than a gravel path at best.

It wasn't until six years later, on Nov. 14, 1960, that three
little girls dared to challenge the segregation of public schools in
New Orleans. On that day, Leona Tate, Gail Etienne and Tessie Prevost
presented themselves at McDonogh 19 Elementary School in the
city's 9th Ward after a federal judge ordered the nation's
first public school integration plan in Orleans Parish.

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"I was excited because I was coming to a new school," Tate
said, recalling that day. "I was a little upset because just
seeing that crowd out there, seeing the police on horseback holding
the crowd back, I thought a Mardi Gras parade was coming. I knew a
parade usually passed there and didn't know why I had to go to
school when everyone else was at the parade."

That throng, though, did not have merriment on its collective mind.
Although Tate said that she did not feel any hostility then, the
6-year-old Tate was struck by how loud it was on St. Claude Avenue
that morning. She rode to school in the back of a United States
Marshals Service sedan on the same day that Ruby Bridges

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entered the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New
Orleans, where she, too, defied a white mob.

"I didn't pick up on the anger," Tate said of her ordeal
at McDonogh 19, climbing the 18 steps at the front door to taunts and
jeering chants from the crowd. "I'm kind of thinking I saw
it and then I didn't see it. My mom had already told me to sit
in the back of the seat of the car and don't put my face in the
window."

As the trio finished their registration at the school, the exodus of
white students began. Collectively known as the "McDonogh
Three," the girls spent the school year with the campus to
themselves after every white student was withdrawn. After 18 months,
the Orleans Parish School Board sent 25 students to join the three
girls at McDonogh 19. Only two of those students were white.

Read More

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In solidarity,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center

The SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond,
working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy,
strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of
all people.

Friend, will you make a gift to help the SPLC fight for
justice and equity in courts and combat white supremacy? 

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