New Orleans: Church and Negro
Gottlieb, Saul
One of the anachronisms of life in this city is the device used to enforce segregation on the buses: a small wooden sign marked "For Colored Only" with two pegs that fit in slots on the...
...The state attorney general has filed suit to outlaw the group under an old anti-Klan law requiring all organizations to file annual membership lists...
...Meanwhile, the New Orleans Citizens Council is going out after 50,000 members and is holding mass meetings, and a special committee of Catholic laymen has been formed to combat the Church's integration plans...
...They have developed a program of interracial adult education in some of their rural locals, as a result of long strikes against the sugar companies in which they won anti-discrimination clauses in their contracts...
...Individual rabbis have taken action that has stirred up their congregations...
...Audiences have been about equally divided between whites and Negroes...
...While they have not been able to budge the official stand of the board, they feel they are setting the climate for the day when the board will have to start integrating its schools...
...Perhaps they need those two or three years...
...But on the whole the meetings have been orderly and productive, with much intelligent discussion during question periods...
...I discussed this with A. P. Tureaud, legal counsel for Louisiana NAACP, who said the NAACP is ready to test the constitutionality of such local jim-crow laws, but that the police never give them a chance...
...That was why the students were charged with "disturbing the peace...
...This makes the present task so much more urgent—the task of education among Negroes as well as whites...
...Other pro-integration forces are also active in the city...
...White people frequently ask Negroes to move back so the whites can sit...
...The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith does, however, supply educational material on "brotherhood" to many communities in the south "on request," and some of this material concerns racial problems...
...The driver remonstrated with them, pointing out they were breaking the City Segregation Law, Since Mr...
...Whites are not encouraged to join—"we can't screen out white Communists," Tureaud explains...
...One of the anachronisms of life in this city is the device used to enforce segregation on the buses: a small wooden sign marked "For Colored Only" with two pegs that fit in slots on the backs of seats...
...I say "apparently" because there is such conflicting opinion as to the real nature of the laity's opposition...
...They need more space for the increasing attendance, but the school board refuses them any other school because all others are in "residential" areas...
...After stopping to pick up a white passenger (full buses ordinarily do not take on additional passengers), the driver called his supervisor, who called the police, who called the wagon...
...These meetings have been well-attended, but of course do not get anything like the crowds that Citizens Committee rallies get...
...NEw ORLEANS which is posted in each bus...
...Contributions to assist in the magnificent struggle of Montgomery "protesters" are being received at: The Montgomery Improvement Association, c/o Rev...
...But some members of the locals are also members of the White Citizens Councils...
...EFFORTS to coordinate the activities of all pro-integration groups in the city were spurred recently by the Louisiana Council on Human Relations, which called a meeting of representatives of the various organizations...
...The Catholic Committee of the South has held a number of non-segregated forums, bringing in speakers to discuss such matters as "health hazards," intellectual capabilities of Negroes, and the moral problems white supremacists claim will result from integration...
...This sign is called a "screen," deriving from the old days when chicken-wire screens separated the races on the trolleys...
...The Church is doing a great deal of the much-needed work of educating people not only to accept integration but also in techniques of bringing it about with least friction...
...Negroes rarely ask the whites to move forward...
...It is relying almost exclusively on legal pressures...
...Martin Luther King, 725 Dorsey St., Montgomery, Ala...
...The Orleans Parish school board is appealing the ruling of the Federal District Court that it "complete desegregation within a year or more...
...Louis where a successful program of integration is going forward...
...Packinghouse is one of three or four integrated unions in town, and the only one that sent delegates to the Civil Rights Assembly in Washington in March...
...Its monthly meetings are poorly attended...
...Some whites in the audience got up when Negroes sat next to them...
...Tureaud, himself a Catholic, believes most Catholics will go along with the integration of the parochial schools, which have almost as many students as the public schools, though fewer Negroes...
...Nowadays the screen is moved back and forth by Negroes and whites, depending on available seats, but no matter how crowded the Negro section of the bus there are always twelve seats reserved for whites, since the screen cannot be moved past the first transverse row of seats...
...It is significant that no one has yet been excommunicated in New Orleans, and that Archbishop Rummel has reneged on his original decision to start integrating the parochial schools this year...
...Catholics they talk to are not very worried about the threats of excommunication...
...Of course, the NAACP has a lot on its hands this year...
...It is doubtful that there will be any serious trouble about it here, but there will be much resistance even after it becomes a fact...
...Nevertheless there seems to be a need for some kind of mass movement among Negroes and whites favoring integration...
...Early this year 72 Negro college students crowded onto an empty bus after an exciting basketball game, occupying all the seats and standing room and ignoring the screen, which one student may have thrown out the bus window...
...The Citizens Forum on Integration has held three meetings at a downtown public high school auditorium which seats 500...
...At the trial the next day the charges were dropped after the driver and white passenger refused to sign affidavits...
...Neither has the local B'nai B'rith organization, though it has passed resolutions approving the original Supreme Court decision...
...Integration will be a fact in New Orleans schools within two or three years at the latest...
...Besides the Catholic Committee and the Citizens Forum, the Rabbinical Council, the Federation of Churches, the National Council of Jewish Women and the United Packinghouse Workers sent delegates...
...Although the Montgomery bus boycott was on at this time, no similar movement developed in New Orleans...
...At the police station the students were all charged with "disturbing the peace...
...Tureaud predicts an integrated school system here by the fall of 1957, "unless the state legislature gives them opportunities for more delays that will have to go to the Supreme Court...
...I20...
...LIBERAL CATHOLIC friends of mine, however, feel there will be some trouble before the parochial schools are finally integrated...
...The unions could be a strong force for public education towards integration, of course, but so far they have not even passed a resolution opposing the school board's stand...
...The breach between the priesthood and the laity in this strongly Catholic community is apparently becoming unbridgeable...
...Reddick's article was written, the Reverend King has been convicted, and the verdict is being appealed...
...As for organizing a boycott, Tureaud feels it would be "impractical" in New Orleans, because Negroes and whites live in such close proximity, because there is no one Negro residential section, and because distances are too great...
...It is a very big task, and the groups now engaged in it have made only the first halting steps toward accomplishing it...
...The presence of the Packinghouse Workers at the gathering was the only indication of labor action on the issue so far...
...Between meetings, members of the Forum committee meet with the school board...
...Some stood in the back, and a few Ieft in disgust before the meeting was over...
...the students answered with cat-calls...
...The speakers it has invited have been prominent educators from Baltimore, Washington and St...
...Some B'nai B'rith members are also members of Citizens Councils in Mississippi...
...The local NAACP is not quite supplying that need...
...The director of the ADL here told me his board feels no further action on the problem should be taken at this time by ADL...
...It's going to be a long, slow struggle in New Orleans, but not as long or as slow as William Faulkner and other "southern liberals" think it should be...
Vol. 3 • April 1956 • No. 2
