Separate but equal

This page tracks the history of integration at the University of Louisiana, but first takes you through some US History.<hr>

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<font color=#000000> <b><center>1892 Plessy v. Ferguson</b></center><p align=justify>
Abraham Lincoln's success in the Civil War and the end of slavery sparked a new era for the Black race in America. The "Black Codes" passed following the Civil War, gave Blacks equal rights in the United States. But even though they were guaranteed their freedom from slavery, the law segregated them from Whites. This segregation of Blacks and Whites sparked many questions of the rights guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment. These question would later become a significant factor in a lawsuit 28 years after the amendment was adopted in the case of Plessy V. Ferguson.

In 1890, Louisiana passed a statue providing "that all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this state shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations. . . " The penalty for sitting in the wrong compartment was either a fine of $25 or 20 days in jail. Homer Plessy, a 30-year old shoemaker, was jailed for sitting in the "White's" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy was a mix of seven-eighths white and one-eighths black. The Louisiana law still considered him black and, therefore, required him to sit in the "colored" car.

Plessy went to court and argued that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The judge, a Massachusetts lawyer, was John Howard Ferguson. He had previously declared the Separate Car Act "unconstitutional on trains that traveled through several states." However, in regards to the Plessy trial, he stated that Louisiana could regulate railroad companies that only operated within its state. Ferguson found Plessy guilty of refusing to leave the white car.

Plessy decided to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, but that court upheld Ferguson's opinion. Plessy then decided to take his case to the United States Supreme Court. In 1896, The Supreme Court of the United States found Homer Plessy guilty once again. Justice Henry Brown, the speaker for the eight-person majority, wrote: "That [the Separate Car Act] does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery...is too clear for argument...A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races -- a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color -- has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races...The object of the [Fourteenth Amendment] was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either."

The one lone dissenter, who argued in favor of Plessy's case, and seemed to be the only one with a real understanding of equality, was Justice John Harlan. He wrote his own speech regarding the case and its decision.

"Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law...In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case...The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution."

Justice Harlan's words proved to be prophetic. It was not until the case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 that "separate but equal" would no longer be the law of the land.

original link broken campus.northpark.edu

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<b><center>1954 Brown v. Board of Education</center></b> <p align=justify>Following the decision of the Supreme Court regarding the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896, many black Americans decided to push for the equality they so rightfully deserved. One of the most significant cases regarding segregation was the case of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1952, the Supreme Court was approached by four states and the District of Columbia, challenging the constitutionality of the segregation of races in the public schools. They wanted desegregation in the public school system, because the current segregation was not equal and it violated their freedoms as citizens of the United States of America.

Linda Brown was a black girl attending fifth grade at the public schools in Topeka, Kansas. She was denied admission into a white elementary school. The NAACP took up her case, along with similar ones in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. All five cases were argued together in December, 1952 by Thurgood Marshall, a black lawyer who headed the NAACP. The entire nation was on its tiptoes waiting for the courts decision.

However, the decision did not come that quickly. For two more years the case was argued and reargued. They were trying to find out the true and correct interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the impact of that Amendment on racial segregation in the public schools. They also considered that if they did decide in favor of desegregation, and that segregation did in fact violate the laws in the Fourteenth Amendment, what method should be introduced to bring about an end to segregation? The court's decision was finally handed down on May 17, 1954.

It is doubtful if the Supreme Court has ever in all its history made a decision of greater social and ideological significance than this one. This event was the turning point in the desegregation of public schools, and the beginning to an equality among all races.

original link went offline

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<b>Aid for Black Farmers</b>
USDA and Cooperative Extension Service
Education on machinery, fertilizers, pesticides, and farming methods.

Seaman Knapp--Special Agent for Promotion of Agriculture in the South, 1902.
Demonstration farm in Texas.

<b>Aid for Black Farmers</b>
Jesup agricultural wagon
Backed by N.Y. banker Morris Jesup.
Wagon toured countryside with information for black farmers.
Primarily benefitted middle-class blacks.

<b>Black agricultural agents </b>
Thomas Campbell, Macon Co., Alabama.
John B. Pierce, Norfolk Co. Virginia.
Eugene A. Williams, Georgia.

http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/departme.../outlines/7_2/

<center><table border=6><td><img src="https://forumeus.com/images/people/smith-christiana-1956-graduate-b(400).jpg"></td></table><table border=6><td><img src="https://forumeus.com/images/people/smith-christiana-1956-graduate-c(294).jpg"></td></table>

<p align=justify>LOUISIANA La. — The fourth of 10 children, Christiana Gordon Smith was born in Carencro on June 25, 1916, to Hayes and Andrea LeBlanc Gordon. Forty years later, she became the first African-American to graduate from what is now the University of Louisiana.

Smith died Friday (07-11-03) at Methodist Hospital in Houston, where she had lived in recent years to be close to her son.

Smith enrolled at what was then called Southwestern Louisiana Institute after a group of four black students seeking enrollment won a lawsuit in 1954. By that fall, 80 black students were enrolled at SLI.

She once said she would go to register for classes with a group of 15 other black students just in case there was trouble.

Her sister, Rita Stemley of Lafayette, said that at Smith’s graduation from SLI, a white student refused to walk down the aisle beside her. And she recalled Smith’s early tenacity to get her education.

“She was a very determined woman,” Stemley said. “Because we grew up in the country, my older brothers and sisters rode on horseback for about seven miles to get to Arnaudville where Rev. Butler had a little private school.

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Beverly Corbell
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“Then Bishop (Jules B.) Jeanmard, the first bishop of Lafayette, asked Mother Katharine (Drexel) to come and build a school for blacks,” she said. “School buses passed us every day, but at that time, we were not allowed to go to public schools.”

Stemley said her sister was able to attend St. Paul’s Catholic High by working for a family she lived with in Lafayette. When her job ran out, Smith moved in with relatives in Opelousas and eventually graduated from Holy Ghost High.

After high school, Smith began teaching and, over the years, took courses at both Southern University and Xavier University. When she got to Louisiana, she only lacked a couple of years’ study before graduating in the spring of 1956, her sister said.

Smith used her education degree to teach in Louisiana public and private schools for 40 years until she moved to Houston.

The African-American chapter of the UL Alumni Chapter is named for Smith. A portrait of her holding her diploma is in the Edith Garland Dupré Library on campus.

Stemley, 10 years younger, said her sister was her teacher in the seventh grade.

“Chris made teaching fun,” Stemley said. “I think she was born to be a teacher. When we were children, we would dramatize everything. Chris would sit down and write a little skit and then we would perform a play.”

Smith is survived by a son, Frederick Haskins of Houston, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Services for Smith will be held Saturday at St. Paul’s Catholic Church. Syrie Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements. (The Associated Press contributed to this story.)
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<blockquote><p align=justify>The artistic rendition of Christiana Smith <i>(shown above)</i> can be found on prominent display at the University of Louisiana's Edith Dupre Library. It is based on this picture.</blockquote><p><center><table border=6><td><img src="https://forumeus.com/images/people/smith-christiana-1956-graduate-a(400).jpg"></td></table><p>

<p align=justify>LOUISIANA La. — Fifty years ago this month, four blacks filed a federal lawsuit to gain admission into the local university.

For many blacks in Acadiana, what was then Southwestern Louisiana Institute was their only hope of obtaining a college education, said Joe Dennis, a Lafayette native and black community activist.

“When I was coming up, I was not able to go to USL,” Dennis said. “If I couldn’t afford to go to Baton Rouge to Southern University, I couldn’t get a college education.”

Clara Dell Constantine, Martha Jane Conway, Charles Vincent Singleton and Shirley Taylor filed a lawsuit on Jan. 8, 1954 to end a policy of racial segregation at SLI. They said the policy was unconstitutional and it would be a hardship for Lafayette residents to have to travel to the nearest black university, Southern, near Baton Rouge.

It was that lawsuit, against an institution now called UL Lafayette, that resulted in a fully integrated campus, one that will celebrate the federal Martin Luther King holiday a week from today.

After the group filed its lawsuit, SLI was ordered later that year to admit blacks, and John Henry Taylor of Arnaudville registered July 22, 1954, without incident. By the 1954-55 school session, 75 black students enrolled at SLI, again with no reported problems.

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Claire Taylor
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<i>photo taken at Edith Garland Dupré Library</i><!--

The university never looked back, unlike Lafayette Parish Schools, which still struggles today to end desegregation in its public school system. School officials hope this year will mark the end of the nearly 40-year-old lawsuit.

Glynn Abel, who was SLI’s dean of men at the time, said that the institute was the first university in the South to integrate. It was done without the threats and violence that other southern institutions of higher learning faced when they integrated.

“The students were lined up outside Martin Hall to go to the registrar’s office to register,” Abel said. “Life magazine was trying to take pictures; I told them to get off campus.”

The magazine threatened a lawsuit but left. The Daily Advertiser complied with requests to downplay the admission of blacks, Abel said.

“I didn’t want to upset the community,” Abel said, adding that he feared not everyone in the city was accepting of the change.

Later, when the University of Mississippi integrated by admitting a single black student in 1963, Abel said, “They had to have a policeman following the student every day to every class. It was a national scandal.”

Abel said that he met weekly with a small group of black and white students to discuss problems they encountered in the early days of integration. He recalls a student complaining about a teacher who required black students to sit in the back of the classroom. The problem was corrected within days, he said.

Black students did not reside on campus the first semester, and they used the Catholic student center as their hang-out Abel said. But after the first year, they began blending in with white students more frequently, he said.

“I give my students credit for helping make this thing work without any real problems,” he said. “We were lucky.”

Gloria Trahan Linton, who graduated from USL in 1964 after marrying and having three children, said that she encountered some unfairness and negative attitudes from white professors. Linton recalled a woodworking class where she completed all assignments and did extra credit work. She got a B while some white students who did not complete the basic assignments got As.

“But the more I got that, the more determined I became to complete my degree and overcome this thing,” she said. “It was integrated, but the attitude was not the best.”

Dennis said that race relations in the community are better, but blacks still are not equal.

“There’s still a lot of racism,” Dennis said. “Not as much as we had in the past, but it’s still there.”
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This was definitely a good thing, and something that UL can hang it's hat on. Looking around the campus it is one of the most diverse of all the major state universities in the south. While it wasn't a seemless transition, for its time the integration went smoothly and this is also impressive.

Some years back, I researched this issue. We apparently were the first school in the country to desegregate after the ruling.

<p align=justify>In the past half century, changes on the campus of University of Louisiana haven’t only been in what to call it.

Fifty years ago, the campus was known as Southwestern Louisiana Institute and it was for whites only. In the fall of 1954 — against a backdrop of an emerging civil-rights movement — 80 black students registered on this campus.

Fifty years later, the university continues to push toward diversity.

Today, about 26 percent of students are minorities compared with 23 percent at the state’s largest university, LSU. But the school doesn’t lead state-supported schools in diversity. About 44 percent of the students who attend the University of New Orleans are nonwhite, while that number is 30 percent at Louisiana Tech.

Each year, the university strives to boost those numbers through minority scholarships, said UL Lafayette President Ray Authement.

The university has averaged between 17 percent and 20 percent over the years when it comes to recruiting black students, Authement said.

From a perch on Rex Street, which cuts through the center of campus, the faces that represent that diversity tread from class to class.

“Everyone mingles with everyone,” said Nichole Chambers, 21 and a business administration major. “It just comes natural to smile and say ‘hello,’ and people say ‘hello’ back. They say the South is like that.”

But self-segregation still is apparent on campus, said Michael Martin, an alumnus and UL Lafayette history professor who organized this week’s symposium marking the university’s integration.

“It’s not what I’d call integrated in that there are pockets of white students and black students,” Martin said. “There’s a difference in terms of socializing in terms of gathering together and in terms of simply, I’d say friendships or something along those lines. We have come a long way in the last 50 years.”

Thirty years ago, less than 1 percent of the university’s faculty were black. No other minorities were employed on faculty. Last year, about 16 percent of the faculty was nonwhite, up 3 percent from eight years ago.

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In 1971, the university hired Aline Garrett, its first black faculty member with a doctoral degree. Garrett retired at the end of the spring semester as head of the Psychology Department.

“I was there 33 years,” Garrett said. “I know we don’t have 33 black faculty members, and that’s a problem. But considering I was an undergraduate at UL in 1966 and at that time there was no black faculty, I see a great difference. But I see that we have a very long way to go.”

Eleven years ago, the university formed the office of minority affairs to address retention and recruitment of minority employees and students.

Authement said the creation of visiting professorships for minorities has helped recruit new faculty to the campus.

“In some areas, there may be no black faculty,” said Kathleen Sparrow, the first head of minority affairs. “The effort is there across the board. The administration encourages departments to seek minority applicants.”

Sparrow is now head of the Sociology Department. Her successor has not been named.

But diversity isn’t only defined by percentages, said Dewayne Bowie, UL Lafayette registrar and president of the Black Faculty and Staff Caucus. The caucus was formed in 1983 to address recruitment issues of black employees.

“Diversity doesn’t just mean black and white,” Bowie said. “Diversity is geographical, socio-economic status, different cultures, different races. If you look on our campus, you will see the most diverse group of people than you will see in any establishment in town.”
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