A Different Day Page 21
For a while it seemed that some real progress was being made, but at a meeting in February between the judge and lawyers for both sides in the Iberville Parish case the defendants tried once again to have the merit system included in the proposed agreement. Tureaud rejected the idea, and when the teachers’ final offer was in turn rejected by the school board, the matter was returned to the courts. A decision in favor of the school board seemed unlikely, so parish officials turned to intimidation of the plaintiffs in an attempt to prevent equalization. Toward the end of July, eleven junior teachers involved in the lawsuit received notice that their services were no longer needed. At the same time, the school board began proceedings to remove Wiley McMillon from his position as principal of White Castle School by charging him with incompetence, dishonesty, and willful neglect of duty. McMillon was later suspended after appearing before a hearing of the board.39
African Americans in Iberville Parish were outraged. Instead of being cowed by the reprisals, they responded by sending a petition to the school board demanding not just equal salaries for their teachers, but the equalization of all educational facilities for black children in the parish: the same quality of buildings that were provided for white children, the same kinds of courses in both elementary and high schools that were provided for white children, a school term of nine months as provided for white children, the same teacher-student ratios that existed in white schools, and bus transportation for black children as provided for white children. “This is the answer of the Negroes of that community to the reprisals taken by Terrebonne, the superintendent,” wrote Tureaud in a letter to one of his colleagues.40
Black people from all over the parish attended a mass meeting held in September, where they listened to a speech by NAACP special counsel Thurgood Marshall. Arriving in cars, trucks, and wagons, they packed a local church and spilled out of its confines, leaving several hundred people standing outside listening at the windows. “The[y] all agreed to support the fight to have the teachers reinstated and are backing an action to be filed to compel the school board to equalize all facilities for education,” Marshall reported later. “If the superintendent wants to fight we will give him one. Despite the fact that he fired teachers and threatened others all the older teachers still in his employ were present at our meeting last night . . . how is that?”41
Local and national civil rights organizations worked to find other employment for those who had lost their jobs while negotiating with the school board's lawyers to have the teachers reinstated. But progress was slow, and Tureaud was unable to provide much reassurance that justice would ultimately prevail. In April 1946 he told one of the fired teachers that the NAACP was doing its best but advised her not to be too hopeful and to take a job in another parish if she was offered one. In August, the judge in the McMillon case, Adrian Caillouet, suggested that Tureaud might have to find another plaintiff, since McMillon had been suspended from his position. Tureaud worried that replacing McMillon could present problems, because by this stage the Iberville teachers seemed thoroughly demoralized by the amount of time it was taking to get anything done. He doubted that any of them could be persuaded to file another lawsuit.42
When Caillouet died in January 1947, responsibility for the Iberville case passed to Judge Borah. At Tureaud's request, the judge agreed to make a decision based on the existing evidence and without hearing further testimony, since it was obvious that the arguments of both sides had been exhausted and that they would never reach an agreement. In November, Borah ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, declaring that the school board's practice of paying black teachers less than their white colleagues was unconstitutional. Louisiana officials eventually tired of the continuous stream of lawsuits that the NAACP seemed prepared to file, and in August 1948 the state board of education ordered all parishes to equalize teachers’ salaries.43
After winning the salary equalization fight, the NAACP and local citizens’ committees turned their full attention to the struggle for equal school facilities. Tureaud expressed optimism that they might encounter fewer difficulties here than in the salary cases “for the reason that we would not have the same problem as we experienced in trying to get teachers to file suits against their school board. All that is required in cases of this kind is some interested parents and this should not be any trouble at all because they do not have to fear the loss of their job.” Subsequent events proved Tureaud tragically wrong, but in June 1948 thirty-six parents and guardians volunteered to sign their names to a lawsuit demanding equalization of school facilities in Iberville Parish. In March 1949 Judge Borah again ruled in the NAACP's favor, ordering the school board to provide the same quality of education to black children as was available to white children in the parish.44
The signs were encouraging, but achieving real equality was never as simple as winning legal cases or obtaining federal court orders to force an end to discrimination. White supremacists fought to maintain racial hierarchies at every step. Following Borah's decision in the Iberville case, the school board appointed a committee of local black people to advise it on how best to implement the judge's order. None of the original instigators of the lawsuit were asked to help, and W. W. Harleaux told Tureaud, “You can rest assured that if there is such a committee it is made up of hand pick good ‘N.’ They don't represent us.” The school board's failure to adequately address inequality forced the NAACP to take further legal action in the 1950s.45
Officials in other parishes followed the example set by the Iberville board, harassing people who signed their names to NAACP lawsuits and using delaying tactics to postpone legal decisions for as long as possible. After agreeing to act as a plaintiff in a school equalization case in St. Landry Parish, Louis Thierry was arrested and charged with gambling when police raided his house and found him playing cards with some friends in July 1949. While imprisoned, he was beaten by his cellmates, who were acting under orders from the jailers. Shortly afterward, a prominent white lawyer arrived to offer his assistance. He advised Thierry to sign some documents indicating that he wished to withdraw his name from the lawsuit. Thierry at first refused and was returned to his cell with the warning that any harm that came to him was his own fault. Afraid for his life, Thierry finally signed the documents. The lawyer then drove him home, cautioning him not to tell anyone what had happened at the jail. By the end of the following month several more plaintiffs had been frightened into removing their names from the lawsuit. When the case eventually made it into court, the school board slowed its progress using the same tired arguments for dismissal that had proven useless in other school equalization suits.46
Black activists persevered, and ultimately their efforts yielded some significant gains. School boards in parishes where cases had been won by the NAACP grudgingly began to spend more on black education. Others attempted to avoid lawsuits and federal intervention by voluntarily improving facilities. In July 1952 NAACP field secretary Daniel Byrd reported that since the filing of a petition protesting the state of black education in St. Helena Parish, officials had decided to renovate a training school for African Americans and for the first time in the parish's history they contracted with a company to do the work. Previously, black people themselves had donated material and labor while school board members pocketed the funds allocated for such projects. In Ferriday, Robert Lewis's classes were relocated from a one-room building with no running water to a new high school constructed for black students in the 1950s. For the first time, he and his classmates experienced what it was like to attend a fully equipped school, complete with a gymnasium and cafeteria. Statewide, African Americans gained fourteen new trade schools and over one hundred new public schools, while spending on black colleges was multiplied by ten. Between 1948 and 1956 local governments in Louisiana floated bond issues amounting to $300 million, with much of the money going toward improving black schools. In 1955 state legislators approved $220 million in expenditures over the next five years for a school building program designe
d to equalize facilities in all parishes.47 Although black schools never reached the same standards as white schools, the quality of education provided to African Americans was greatly enhanced during this period.
In addition to their attacks on educational inequalities, civil rights activists in Louisiana launched a powerful offensive against discrimination in voter registration. In May 1944 African Americans from throughout the state met in New Orleans to organize a branch of the National Progressive Voters’ League (PVL). Encouraged by the Supreme Court's decision abolishing the white primary, they planned a statewide educational campaign to urge black people to register to vote. A. P. Tureaud told those present that Smith v. Allwright was “the Negro's Second Emancipation” and that the time had come to “effect this emancipation or return to slavery.” African Americans were to visit their local registrars’ offices and to file complaints with the NAACP if they were turned away. Attorneys could then bring lawsuits against officials who denied black applicants the right to register. The PVL viewed the mobilization of black voters as a crucial element in nationwide efforts to increase support for progressive causes. A speaker for the group urged African Americans to take their “rightful place by the side of liberal political groups irrespective of race or class” and to combine their political power with that of organized labor, sharecroppers’ unions, taxpayers’ associations, and other reformers.48
With the poll tax and white primary system no longer in effect, the main obstacles to black registration were the literacy test, a requirement that applicants show some understanding of the state constitution, and the complexities of the registration form itself. Officials were meticulous in checking the application forms of African Americans and often failed people on the basis of a misspelled word or failure to dot an i or cross a t. Martin Williams recalled that instead of requiring black people to interpret a section of the constitution, the registrar in Madison Parish asked them unanswerable questions like “How many bubbles are there in a bar of soap?” Prospective applicants could study for days or weeks before the test, but still they failed. As Williams explained, the aim was to make black people so frustrated or discouraged that they would stop trying to register.49
The NAACP and PVL worked through churches, fraternal orders, and labor unions to organize classes aimed at guiding black applicants through the registration process.50 The instructional sessions were well attended in many parishes, and in one instance not even severe flooding prevented African Americans from traveling to a remote meeting place and going ahead with a scheduled class. Daniel Byrd reported: “On Sunday, June 16, 1946 in Hymel, Louisiana the Instructors from New Orleans put on hip boots and waded through water and mud in order to reach the place set aside for registration classes. More than 50 men and women pulled off their shoes, socks and stockings, the men rolled up their pants, the women pulled their dresses tightly around them and waded in water twelve inches deep in order to learn how to fill [out] the registration form.” Similarly, when one observer visited a meeting of the NAACP branch in Iberville Parish, he found the local black people enthusiastic about voter registration and “determined to participate in their government.”51
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s NAACP branches and other civil rights groups sent their members to attempt to register, with varying degrees of success. Black applicants registered with relatively little trouble in Orleans, East Baton Rouge, Ouachita, Iberville, and Ascension Parishes, and in some cases friendly white people assisted them in completing the forms. In St. John the Baptist Parish, the registrar developed the habit of becoming “conveniently sick” during the week and keeping his office closed; on weekends he could be seen out walking his dog. The Louisiana Weekly reported that local black people “put spotters on the registration office and whenever the registrar would show up the spotter would pass the word and shortly the office was continuously crowded. Apparently the registrar found that his illness spells did not work so now the office remains open, making registration possible.”52
Officials in other parishes proved more recalcitrant. Members of the Madison Parish voters’ league received no response to a petition they sent to the mayor of Tallulah demanding an end to discrimination in voter registration in 1947. Registrar Mary Ward later told an NAACP lawyer that in rejecting black applicants she had acted under the orders of the sheriff and district attorney; she also stated that an agreement existed between officials in Madison, Tensas, and East Carroll Parishes that they would never allow African Americans to vote. In St. Helena Parish, NAACP members who attempted to register were confronted by a white man wielding a gun. “Get out all of you ‘n—s’ before all of you get killed,” he told them. “Nobody is going to let you vote. If you don't run, there'll be plenty more to shoot you down.” Three black men who attempted to register in St. Landry Parish in June 1949 were violently attacked and chased from the registrar's office. They filed a complaint with the Department of Justice and FBI agents were supposedly sent to investigate, but early in 1950 the men reported that no one from the federal government had contacted them about the incident. Later that year Alvin Jones of the Orleans Parish PVL visited Opelousas and persuaded a group of African Americans to go with him to the courthouse to inquire about registering. Sheriff Clayton Guilbeau called the group into his office, where he and his deputies severely beat them. Jones died a few months later from injuries inflicted by the police officers.53
The uneven progress of voter registration reflected the absolute and arbitrary power that white elites exercised over local government. Black applicants’ success or failure depended sometimes on the registrar, sometimes on more powerful parish officials who could dismiss registrars if they seemed too lenient, and almost never on the ability of individual African Americans to meet the voter registration requirements. In one case, nineteen people who went to register in Pointe Coupee Parish in November 1951 did not even have the opportunity to fail. The registrar told them that he had received no orders to register black people and suggested they talk to the district attorney about it instead. Reflecting the other side of the coin, when D. J. Doucet regained the sheriff's office in St. Landry Parish from Clayton Guilbeau, African Americans were suddenly able to register by the thousands. Realizing that NAACP lawsuits and federal intervention would ultimately enable black people to register in large numbers, Doucet ended police brutality in the parish and actively courted the black vote to keep himself in power for the next sixteen years.54
Local officials’ attitudes toward black voter registration were shaped in part by the factional nature of state politics during this period. Huey Long's governorship had split Louisiana's Democratic Party into two fiercely opposing sides, forcing candidates to compete more intensely for votes. African Americans benefited from the social welfare measures introduced in the 1930s, and black voters generally supported Long and his successors. Members of the Long faction therefore had much to gain by protecting black people's voting rights, and for this reason officials in some parishes actually encouraged African Americans to register. Between 1948 and 1952 black Louisianans’ postwar voter registration campaigns and the presence of Huey Long's brother Earl in the governor's office increased the number of black registered voters in Louisiana from 28,177 to 107,844. In parishes that were dominated by conservative, anti-Long politicians, however, strong opposition remained. As late as 1962, East Carroll, Madison, Tensas, and West Feliciana Parishes still had no black people registered.55
The NAACP's offensives against discrimination in education and voter registration were the most publicized aspects of the freedom struggle in this period. At the same time, many black Louisianans continued to fight for economic justice by becoming involved in the labor movement. Civil rights groups and labor unions often cooperated closely to advance progressive causes in the postwar period. Recognizing the importance of interracial solidarity to workers’ struggles, the CIO had since the 1930s pursued a policy of nondiscrimination and encouraged black people's participation in unions. The nation
's major civil rights organizations strongly supported these efforts. The National Negro Congress, the Urban League, and the NAACP all contributed to the CIO's general strike fund and encouraged union membership among black Americans. In return, the CIO supported African Americans’ struggles for citizenship, including voting rights and equal employment opportunities.56
African Americans played prominent roles in the CIO's efforts to organize southern workers in the 1940s, often emerging as some of the most courageous and dedicated union leaders. After touring Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana in 1945, CIO public relations officer Lucy Randolph Mason stated that one of the most encouraging aspects of her visit was seeing “the way Negroes have turned to the CIO unions and the great gains they have made thereby.”57 The CIO's southern staff found black workers much easier to organize than their white counterparts. One man recalled, “Oh, yeah! Blacks was right with ya! They were smarter than the whites, where the union was concerned. They had more to gain. And they knew that!”58 As Barbara Griffith has noted, working-class African Americans were already “highly politicized,” and they willingly seized the opportunities presented by the CIO. Many black members of CIO unions also belonged to the NAACP, suggesting that civil rights and economic rights were intricately connected in their minds.59
Louisiana's predominantly black lumber industry became the target of intensive organizing efforts by the CIO-affiliated International Woodworkers of America (IWA) in the early 1940s. Although many workers supported unionization, organizers encountered strong opposition from company owners and local officials. After spending three weeks in Tallulah working with employees at the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company, Morton Hobbs Davis was run out of town at gunpoint by three men who claimed to speak for the entire community when they told him: “We are not going to have the C.I.O. here. Understand? You come in here trying to stir up these niggers, and we're not going to have you organizing those damn niggers.” Another IWA representative who spoke with white officials about the possibility of organizing a union local in the town was “frankly told . . . that they did not want any C.I.O. organization in the city and did not intend to have one.”60 Attempts to build unions at lumber mills located in Iberville, St. Landry, and West Feliciana Parishes provoked similar responses. A summary report of the IWA's activities in rural Louisiana from 1946 to 1948 observed that in most cases the workers had filed petitions requesting that elections be held to decide on union representation, but these were later withdrawn because of threats and intimidation by local citizens. “It seems the different towns that these plants are located in immediately formed vigilante committees or so-called citizens committees and immediately began to put pressure on the employees and threatened and in some cases did beat up some of our boys,” the author wrote. “Quite a number of employees were fired during this drive and were never able to be reinstated.”61