Helma Constantine the key ingredient behind UL integration

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  LAFAYETTE — On Tuesday, Helma Constantine, 94, will witness history when President-elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office.

And she can’t wait.

“This is history — period,” she said.

If you go back half a century and then some, Constantine was history herself — that is, locally.

On behalf of her daughter and three others, she brought forth the lawsuit that forced the University of Louisiana to integrate.

“My daughter was the first black to register,” she said.

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By RUTH FOOTE
Special to The Advocate

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  LAFAYETTE — More change is coming.

That’s the message Helma Constantine, soon to be 95, had for a crowd gathered to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. at Lafayette’s annual King celebration held Monday.

Though frail in frame, her voice held the same determination that must have led her more than 50 years ago to seek change in her own community. Change that would enable her daughter, Clara Dell, and 77 other black students to enroll at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then known as Southwestern Louisiana Institute, in 1954.

Her lawsuit, Constantine v. SLI, filed on behalf of her daughter and three other students, is part of desegregation history and one of the first successes in the NAACP’s effort to desegregate Southern schools.

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By MARSHA SILLS
Advocate Acadiana bureau