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  Civil rights leaders recognized the potential contribution that these programs could make to the freedom struggle and worked to ensure that black veterans knew of their rights under the act. African Americans often encountered the same kind of discrimination that local administrators of New Deal agencies had practiced in the 1930s.17 To combat efforts by white officials to deny benefits to black veterans, the Louisiana Weekly suggested, “Our churches, schools, labor unions, civic organizations and press should keep abreast with veterans’ information and provide means of getting it to the veteran.” In March 1946 activists organized a two-day conference at Dillard University to focus on black veterans’ problems. Speakers encouraged those in attendance to take advantage of the GI Bill, and a Citizens’ Committee on Services to Veterans was created to provide follow-up advice and assistance to Louisiana's returning soldiers. The NAACP established a special Veterans Affairs division to make sure the leaders of local branches knew about the GI Bill and could tell members how to apply for aid. The Southern Regional Council, an organization of white and black liberals formed in 1944, also helped to disseminate information. In September 1946 the council had between eight and ten African American veterans traveling through the South, visiting the administrators of veterans’ services in small towns and rural areas to ensure that black people received their fair share of benefits. According to the Louisiana Weekly, these efforts resulted in “a good many of the service officials opening up real opportunities to the increased applications submitted by Negro veterans.”18

  Those opportunities had profound consequences for black people who gained access to them. The experiences of Nelson Cyprian mirrored those of many others whose lives were changed by the GI Bill. Born in Tangipahoa Parish in 1912, Cyprian completed five grades of school and then had to give up his education so he could work and help support his family. He held various low-paying jobs ranging from farmhand to utility man before joining the army in 1942. After being discharged, he worked as a truck driver and warehouseman for a few years and in 1949 began attending night classes at a local high school. He earned his high school equivalency diploma in April 1951 and in June entered Southern University, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree three years later. Cyprian was then employed as an adult education teacher at his former high school. “My present income is more than twice the income before completing high school and college,” he wrote in a letter to the state superintendent of education. “I can now provide a more wholesome life for my wife and children for the rest of my life.”19

  Harrison Brown's journey from a sharecropping home in Tensas Parish to ownership of a successful business in Tallulah also owed much to the GI Bill. Like Cyprian, Brown had only an elementary school education when he entered the army in 1942. He was trained for a clerical position and sent to Iran, an experience that enhanced both his knowledge about the world and his material wealth. Military service enabled him “to meet a lot of different people, and talk, and learn,” he recalled. More importantly, the money he earned was deposited safely in an army bank account instead of being given over to a landlord. “It enabled me to see what it meant to be independent,” he said. “And use my little earnings to my advantage.” After leaving the army, Brown spent a year studying at Tyler Texas Barber College in Jackson, Mississippi, worked for another man for a while, and eventually established his own barber shop in Tallulah. Brown remembered how the opportunities provided by his veterans’ benefits set him apart from the older barber who had employed him. After many years of working, the other man owned nothing, whereas Brown was just beginning his career and already he could afford to buy a house. The army and the GI Bill, he said, “enabled you to put your money where it would help you.”20

  Other federal programs also continued to have a positive impact on the lives of some African Americans. In 1949 a Department of Agriculture bulletin reported on the success of a family of tenant farmers in Washington Parish whose local extension agent had encouraged them to shift from cotton to dairy farming, and who now owned sixty acres of land, a new home, and twenty-four cows that brought in a gross income of five thousand dollars per year.21 Extension work with three generations of farmers in the Elloise family of Pointe Coupee Parish yielded similar results. Income from the family farm provided Leroy Elloise with a good living in the 1950s, and it enabled his brother and two of his sisters to pursue careers in education while a third sister trained as a registered nurse. William Minor and his wife were tenant farmers in West Feliciana Parish in the 1930s and so poor, they said, that “when we were married in 1937 the preacher didn't charge us; and besides, took up a $6 collection for us.” With the help of black extension agent Aldero Stevenson, the Minors increased their cotton and sweet potato yields and earned enough income to buy their own farm. By 1960 they owned 157 acres of land and were planning to purchase more.22

  Martin Williams's economic progress was also linked to assistance provided by the federal government. After learning the drycleaning trade at a CCC camp in the 1930s, Williams moved to Tallulah and established his own business. In 1950 he took out a low-interest loan from the Federal Land Bank and used it to buy his first piece of land. With the help of a friend who worked for the Agricultural Soil Conservation Service (ASCS) (successor to the AAA), Williams improved the land and leased it to some of his employees. The income he earned from drycleaning and renting his farm enabled Williams to keep buying, improving, and selling land very profitably throughout the second half of the twentieth century.23

  The significance of these stories is not just that they depict an enlarging middle class within the African American population. They also reveal a change in its nature. Unlike many members of the black elite in the early twentieth century, these people achieved economic success without the assistance of local planters and politicians. Although some of the older community leaders did become involved in the postwar freedom movement, most still preferred not to jeopardize their jobs or patronage. Neither could the dwindling number of black Louisianans who continued to live and work within the repressive confines of the plantations become involved in civil rights activity without risking eviction or other reprisals. However, very often it was former sharecropping and tenant families who led the struggle in Louisiana's rural communities. The life histories of individual activists like Harrison Brown and Martin Williams reflect transformative influences that were at work on a large scale. By 1950 black people were employed in a much more diverse range of occupations than they had held in the early twentieth century. Losses in agricultural and domestic employment were matched by almost identical gains in industrial employment, clerical and service jobs, and unskilled labor. (See Table 7.1.) Another important development was the decline in the number of women and children who had to work to help support their families. In 1910, 67 percent of African Americans over ten years old were in the labor force. Four decades later that figure had dropped to 41 percent.24 Whether former plantation workers became farm owners, business owners, factory operatives, students, home-makers, or unemployed, their lives were no longer as tightly controlled by white people. In this development lay the seeds of a mass movement to demand social change.

  The basis for unified, organized activity had long existed in African Americans’ churches, fraternal orders, and societies. In the decades following World War II, these institutions were instrumental in providing financial support, publicity, volunteers, and meeting halls for civil rights groups throughout the state. East Carroll Parish activist John Henry Scott belonged to several fraternal orders and was encouraged to join the NAACP by the pastor of his church. Black lawyer A. P. Tureaud of New Orleans held administrative positions in both the Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver and the NAACP and used his contacts in the two organizations to encourage protest activity in some rural parishes. The Knights and other fraternal orders cooperated closely with the NAACP in its efforts to eliminate discrimination in education, voting, and employment. In Madison Parish, members of the Improved Benevolent Order of
Elks of the World took the lead in establishing a local voters’ league and an NAACP branch in the 1940s. Headed by Zelma Wyche, a war veteran and barber, the group included Martin Williams, Harrison Brown, and several others who had served in World War II and now owned businesses. Moses Williams joined both the Elks and the voters’ league when he moved to Tallulah to take a job in a tire repair shop in 1952. After his employer fired him because of his civil rights activism, he built his own tire shop from scrap materials and went into business for himself.25

  Higher incomes and payment in cash instead of scrip or “furnish” meant that many more people than previously could spare the few dollars a year that it cost to join civil rights organizations. But participation was not limited to those who were well off. Local activist Earnestine Brown remembered that all kinds of people became involved in the Madison Parish voters’ league, including many who were poor and uneducated. Members might have lacked formal schooling, she said, but they “had some intelligence, you

  Table 7.1 African American Employment in Louisiana, 1940–1960

  1940 1950 1960

  Occupation Number % Number % Number %

  Farmers and farm managers 59,980 20 34,860 13 9,427 3

  Farm laborers 42,498 15 24,875 9 17,069 6

  Farm laborers (unpaid family members) 24,933 9 11,158 4 1,519 1

  Domestic service workers 59,619 20 40,783 15 55,455 19

  Service workers (outside private homes) 21,345 7 33,869 12 45,654 16

  Nonfarm laborers 41,405 14 50,925 19 47,413 17

  Clerical and sales workers 3,379 1 6,436 2 9,546 3

  Operatives and kindred workers 23,453 8 39,639 15 51,164 18

  Craft workers and supervisors 7,687 3 13,386 5 16,098 6

  Professional and semi-professional workers 6,010 2 8,647 3 13,444 5

  Nonfarm proprietors, managers, and officials 2,137 1 4,260 2 3,935 1

  Occupation not reported 1,084 (-)a 3,782 1 13,700 5

  Total 293,530 100 272,620 100 284,424 100

  SOURCE: Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Population, Volume 3: The Labor Force, Part 3: Iowa–Montana (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1943), 235–36, 239, A Report of the Seventeenth Decennial Census of the United States, Census of Population: 1950, Volume 2: Characteristics of the Population, Part 18: Louisiana (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1952), 204–6, and Eighteenth Decennial Census of the United States, Census of Population: 1960, Volume 1: Characteristics of the Population, Part 20: Louisiana (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1963), 378–80.

  a(-) indicates less than 0.5 percent.

  know—they might not have been making a lot of money, but they had sense enough to be a member of an organization.”26

  The composition of local NAACP branches also reflected the participation of working-class and rural poor African Americans in the movement. Laborers made up the majority of those who belonged to an NAACP branch in the Iberville Parish town of Carville in 1946. Out of sixty-two people who established a branch in Pointe Coupee Parish in the 1950s, sixty gave their occupation as either “labor” or “house-wife.” Other NAACP members in Louisiana worked as farmers, carpenters, mechanics, clerks, mill hands, service station attendants, bus drivers, and domestics. Such people were the driving force behind the organization at the local level. At a leadership training conference for Louisiana and Texas members that was held in 1945, one man stated, “I find that it is people who are not doctors, ministers, teachers and the other so-called ‘big shots’ are the ones who do the job. It's the masses who really work.”27

  At least a few NAACP members had been involved in the LFU in the 1930s, and those links might have been stronger were it not for the migrations and other disruptions that accompanied World War II.28 Resolutions adopted at the state conference of branches in October 1947 reiterated and expanded on many of the demands made by the LFU a decade earlier. They included equal educational and employment opportunities for black people, federal protection of their civil rights, the extension of minimum wage and social security legislation to agricultural workers, rent controls to enable poor people to afford decent housing, and repeal of the antilabor Taft-Hartley Act.29

  As in the past, one of the most important goals of Louisiana activists was gaining better educational facilities for black children. Throughout the 1940s local NAACP branches and citizens’ groups supported the LCTA's efforts to force parish officials to pay African American teachers the same salaries as white teachers when their qualifications were comparable. The NAACP had been working on this issue since 1936, when its lawyers filed and won their first salary equalization case in Montgomery County, Maryland. It was a difficult task, hindered by the necessity of tackling each local school board individually, intimidation of plaintiffs and lawyers, and teachers’ fears of losing their jobs if they became involved in lawsuits. Despite these obstacles, by 1941 the NAACP had succeeded in equalizing salaries throughout the state of Maryland and in several counties in Virginia and Kentucky. At the request of local teachers’ associations in Georgia, Alabama, Texas, South Carolina, and Louisiana, the organization extended the campaign to the Deep South.30

  The black educators who led the struggle for equal pay in Louisiana were perhaps emboldened by a 1936 teacher tenure law that ensured their job security after a three-year probationary period.31 In addition, other employment opportunities that were available in the 1940s may have lessened teachers’ fears of being fired.32 Strong support from community members who provided financial aid and the backing of a national organization like the NAACP also helped to strengthen the teachers’ resolve.33 For a brief period during this decade, some black teachers displayed considerable determination and courage in demanding an end to discrimination. Their efforts were eventually rewarded, but only after a long fight that brought much suffering and took many casualties. Not surprisingly, given the costs of the salary equalization campaign, in later decades black teachers were much more reluctant to become involved in civil rights work.

  The NAACP won its first Louisiana case against the Orleans Parish school board in June 1942, and a few months later a group of parents and teachers in Iberville Parish enlisted A. P. Tureaud's help in gaining equal pay for black educators there. In February 1943 their leading organizer, W. W. Harleaux, informed Tureaud that the teachers were meeting that month and that they hoped to be ready to bring a lawsuit against the school board soon. Tureaud did not have to wait long. In April, after receiving no response from parish officials to a petition that the group had presented earlier in the year, the chairman of the citizens’ committee wrote to Tureaud saying, “I think the School Board has had ample time for reply to the petition concerning the case. Please take necessary steps to prosecute our foe as soon as possible. WE WANT ACTION!”34

  Soon after the Iberville activists decided to take legal action against the parish, there were some discouraging developments on the salary equalization front. A lawsuit filed against the Jefferson Parish school board resulted in the dismissal of its plaintiff for “willful neglect of duty,” and in June 1943 the state board of education adopted a resolution authorizing school boards to establish salary schedules that considered the “merit” and “responsibility” of individual teachers, providing a loophole for continued discrimination even if the courts ruled in favor of equalization. Despite these setbacks, White Castle school principal Wiley B. McMillon agreed to act as lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Iberville Parish school board in March 1944.35

  The school board's first response was to try to have the case dismissed. Early in April its lawyers filed a brief claiming, among other things, that McMillon's motives were “ ‘political’ rather than ‘personal,’” and that he had no more right to sue on behalf of all the teachers in the parish than he had to represent all the “Eskimos of the Arctic, or the Negroes of Africa.” Federal district court judge Wayne G. Borah rejected the motion. When the school board failed to file a response to the judge's decision within the ten-day time limit, McMillon's attorn
eys claimed victory by default.36 The school board indicated its intention to circumvent equalization in July 1944, when it announced new salary guidelines allowing for the assessment of teachers according to education, experience, merit, and responsibility. Under the merit system, administrators could consider factors such as “temperament,” “character and dependability,” “habits, and so on” in deciding the amount of remuneration. When the new schedule was implemented, not one of the forty-four black teachers in the parish was rated higher than a C, and only four achieved that level. Thirty received a rating of D, and the remaining ten were rated E. Conversely, all of the white teachers except one received an A or a B.37

  Black teachers rejected the merit system, and negotiations began between the NAACP attorneys and the school board's lawyers to work out a settlement of the case that would satisfy both parties. White officials refused to abandon the merit system, however, and the teachers refused to accept it, leading to an impasse. In January 1945 African American leaders met with parish and state education officials in a series of conferences to discuss the equalization issue. Black representatives made clear their opposition to any system that allowed subjective judgments of “character” or “temperament” to affect teachers’ salaries. Iberville Parish school superintendent Linus Terrebonne was unwilling to compromise, but his colleagues, fearing further lawsuits, were more amenable. On 23 January both sides agreed on a five-year plan to improve the quality of education for all children in Louisiana. The resolutions adopted included the equalization of salaries for all teachers for equal services rendered, the provision of adequate buildings and facilities, and a nine-month school term for every child. A. P. Tureaud agreed not to file any more salary equalization suits until the state legislature had had time to consider the group's proposals and to act on them. The resolutions were also to be submitted to the court in the McMillon case as the basis of an agreement for a consent decree.38