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Desegregated public schools in New Orleans

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Public schools in New Orleans, Louisiana, were desegregated to a significant degree between 1870 and 1877, the last years of the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War in the United Stated. [1] Desegregation of this scale was not seen again in the Southern U.S. until after the 1954 federal court ruling Brown v. Board of Education declared segregated facilities to be unconstitutional. [2]

The 1867 Louisiana constitution, with its provision that segregation was no longer to be permitted in public facilities, marked the beginning of three years of legal wrangling and evasion by whites resistant to the idea of integrated schools. [3] A court decision in December of 1870 was acknowledged by both sides of the issue to be decisive, and integration of New Orleans' public schools began in earnest in 1870. [4]

Although initially there was much vocal white opposition to integrated schools, and the mass media predicted the collapse of the public school system in New Orleans, ultimately, enrollment numbers and performance of both black and white students improved in desegregated schools during the brief period when these institutions were allowed to flourish. [5] At the height of the trend, approximately one-third of public schools in New Orleans were desegregated to a significant degree, and these schools were the top-performing schools in their districts. [6]

In mid-1874, a congressional civil rights bill removed the clause pertaining to desegregated schools, thus weakening the position of New Orleans segregated public school system, which depended in part on the might of the federal government to enforce Black civil rights, but desegregated schools in New Orleans would not fall until after the end of Reconstruction. [7]

Desegregated schools in New Orleans ended in the same period as the end of Reconstruction. After reconstruction had ended, the Louisiana constitution was rewritten in 1879 to allow for segregated public institutions, and it was changed again in 1898, to disallow desegregated public facilities of any kind [8]<references>

  1. ^ Louis R. Harlan, “Desegregation in New Orleans Public Schools During Reconstruction,” The American Historical Review 67 (Apr., 1962): 666.
  2. ^ Ibid., 663
  3. ^ Dale A. Somers, "Black and White in New Orleans: A Study in Urban Race Relations, 1865-1900," The Journal of Southern History 40(Feb., 1974): 23-24
  4. ^ Howard A. White, The Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970), 193.
  5. ^ Louis R. Harlan, “Desegregation in New Orleans Public Schools During Reconstruction,” The American Historical Review 67 (Apr., 1962): 667-669.
  6. ^ Ibid., 670
  7. ^ John W. Blassingame, Black New Orleans 1860-1880 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973), 116.
  8. ^ Dale A. Somers, "Black and White in New Orleans: A Study in Urban Race Relations, 1865-1900," The Journal of Southern History 40(Feb., 1974)<
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