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William Frantz Public School (A Story of

Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and


Recovery in New Orleans) Connie L.
Schaffer
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WILLIAM FRANTZ
PUBLIC SCHOOL
A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency,
and Recovery in New Orleans
Connie L. Schaffer, Meg White,
and Martha Graham Viator
9781433181238 - - Not for resale. © Peter Lang Verlag
Why should you care about what happened to William Frantz Public School?
Yes, Ruby Bridges entered the iconic doors of William Frantz in 1960, but the
building’s unique role in New Orleans school desegregation is only one part
of the important history of this school. Many additional and equally important
stories have unfolded within its walls and the neighborhoods surrounding it.
These stories matter.

It matters that society has historically marginalized Black students and contin-
ues to do so. It matters that attempts to dismantle systemic racism in schools
and other institutions still face strong resistance, and these issues continue to
deeply divide the United States. It matters that the building remains standing
as an indomitable symbol of the resiliency of public education despite decades
of waning support, misguided accountability, and a city devasted by Hurricane
Katrina. It matters that opportunism, under the guise of recovery, reshaped
public education in New Orleans.

William Frantz Public School: A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and


Recovery in New Orleans provides more than an examination of education in
one school and one city. It recounts a story that matters to anyone who cares
about public education.

Connie L. Schaffer graduated summa cum laude with a BS from Kansas State University. She
earned her MS and EdD from the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO). She taught middle and
high school and is now a faculty member in the UNO College of Education.

Meg White has been an educator for over 30 years. She earned a BA from Marymount University,
an MA from San Jose State University and an EdD from Northcentral University. Currently she is
an Associate Professor of Education at Stockton University.

Martha Graham Viator earned a BA in history from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and
an MA and PhD in history from Auburn University. Recently retired from Rowan University, she
taught in the College of Education after teaching high school history in public schools.

9781433181238 - - Not for resale. © Peter Lang Verlag


www.peterlang.com
advance praise for
William Frantz Public School: A Story of Race,
Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans

“William Frantz Public School narrates the struggles for civil rights that Ruby Bridges and
this one school in New Orleans endured. But the authors’ account is also America’s story,
its engagement with slavery prior to the Civil War, and the fight to ensure that systemic
racism does not upend the progress the nation has made. The ‘before’ and ‘after’ Hurricane
Katrina narrative of the evolution of neighborhood schools and the devolution in 2006
toward an all-charter school district is compelling. This meticulously researched book is a
sober reminder that Martin Luther King’s metaphoric ‘arc’ leaning toward justice does not
bend neatly.”
—Luis Mirón, President, Advisory Board Education Research Alliance,
Tulane University, New Orleans, LA

“Intense, captivating, and horrible in its reality, William Frantz Public School is a story
overdue for the telling—a must read for those seeking to understand New Orleans’ history
and the lingering impact of White racial superiority upon the Black community and city
infrastructure.”
—Mercedes K. Schneider, Ph.D., Southern Louisiana
native and author, School Choice: The End of Public Education?

“In this comprehensive study of a neighborhood school in New Orleans, authors Schaffer,
White, and Viator take the reader from the Jim Crow South to the 21st century while
reflecting on profound social and economic changes that affected the city over an 80-year
span. The book details how William Frantz Public School, built upon a segregated
foundation, grabbed the nation’s attention as a battleground of school desegregation. Ruby
Bridges’ story became a familiar chapter in the Civil Rights Movement; however, the school
and the community it served suffered greatly from lack of support, and William Frantz
Public School again became a symbol of inequality of the American education system.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, changes in the city’s education system brought new
challenges to the school.

9781433181238 - - Not for resale. © Peter Lang Verlag


The authors’ incredible in-depth research weaves the stories of William Frantz Public
School into an easy-to-understand narrative that builds upon scholarship surrounding
education, segregation and desegregation, the Civil Rights Movement in New Orleans, and
Hurricane Katrina. William Frantz Public School is a fascinating story of what one school
would have to say about race, class, and education in America.”
—Phillip Cunningham, Head of Research Services,
Amistad Research Center, New Orleans, LA

9781433181238 - - Not for resale. © Peter Lang Verlag


William Frantz Public School

9781433181238 - - Not for resale. © Peter Lang Verlag


Alan R. Sadovnik and Susan F. Semel
General Editors

Vol. 65

The History of Schools and Schooling series is part


of the Peter Lang Education list.
Every volume is peer reviewed and meets
the highest quality standards for content and production.

PETER LANG
New York • Bern • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

9781433181238 - - Not for resale. © Peter Lang Verlag


Connie L. Schaffer, Meg White,
and Martha Graham Viator

William Frantz Public School

A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency,


and Recovery in New Orleans

Contributions by Cori Meredith Brown

PETER LANG
New York • Bern • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

9781433181238 - - Not for resale. © Peter Lang Verlag


Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schaffer, Connie L., author. | White, Meg, author. |


Viator, Martha Graham, author.
Title: William Frantz Public School: a story of race, resistance,
resiliency, and recovery in New Orleans / Connie Schaffer, Meg White,
Martha Graham Viator.
Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2020.
Series: History of schools and schooling; v. 65 | ISSN 1089-0678
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020027718 (print) | LCCN 2020027719 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-4331-5868-1 (hardback) | ISBN 978-1-4331-8300-3 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-4331-8123-8 (ebook pdf ) | ISBN 978-1-4331-8124-5 (epub)
ISBN 978-1-4331-8125-2 (mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: William Frantz Elementary School (New Orleans, La.) |
African American children—Education—Louisiana—New Orleans—History. |
Segregation in education—Louisiana—New Orleans—History. | Public schools—
Louisiana—New Orleans—History. | New Orleans (La.)—Race relations.
Classification: LCC LA297.N4 S35 2020 (print) | LCC LA297.N4 (ebook) |
DDC 371.0109763/35—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027718
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027719
DOI 10.3726/b17149

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.


Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

Cover photo: The name “William Frantz Public School” remains over the building’s main
entrance, preserved by the school’s designation on the National Register of Historic Places.
(Photograph taken by Mandy Liu, November 2019.)

© 2020 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York


29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006
www.peterlang.com

All rights reserved.


Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.

9781433181238 - - Not for resale. © Peter Lang Verlag


When you give up on one public school, one school district, one city…
it becomes easier to give up on the next and the next and the next.

9781433181238 - - Not for resale. © Peter Lang Verlag


9781433181238 - - Not for resale. © Peter Lang Verlag
Contents

List of Tables and Images ix


Preface xi
Acknowledgments xvii
List of Abbreviations xix

Part I
1. A Fortress at 3811 North Galvez 3
2. The Exodus 47
3. Do You Hear Me? 109
4. A Building in Crisis 149

Turning Point

Part II
5. And Then It Was After 203
6. Fading from the Public 239

Index 291

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List of Tables and Images

Table
4.1. William Frantz Public School: LEAP Test Scores, School
Performance Scores, Performance Category Labels, and
Growth Labels, 1999–2005 158
Images
1.1. 73 Official City Neighborhoods 8
1.2. Ruby Bridges, accompanied by U.S. Federal Marshals 13
1.3. Women protesting school desegregation 14
2.1. Mothers and their children 50
2.2. Ruby Bridges’ drawing of William Frantz Public School 62
5.1. School buses in the aftermath of Katrina 210
5.2. Hurricane Katrina damage to William Frantz Public School 225
6.1. Akili Academy 267
6.2. A tattered flag hangs at the entrance of William Frantz 268

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Preface

William Frantz Public School: A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery
tells a complex story. We started out writing this book because we wanted to tell
readers what happened to William Frantz Public School in the decades following
its desegregation in 1960. As we learned more about the school, we found common
threads that drew disparate events together and created a multi-faceted story. The
story could not be told without centering the narrative on race and the never-end-
ing resistance to any effort that might end years of de jure and de facto segregation.
The resiliency of those the system oppressed—the poor students, Black students,
and at times demoralized educators of William Frantz Public School—is equally
important as is the so-called recovery of public education in the post-Katrina era.
You may not know the name of the school, but you are likely to recognize
photographs of the building that were taken in 1960. Those pictures show a Black
6-year-old girl and four U.S. Federal Marshals walking into the school. The first-
grade student entering the school was Ruby Bridges, and while she is a prominent
figure in this story, Bridges is not the central character. This book is about events
spanning the history of William Frantz Public School. If the walls of this elemen-
tary school could talk, they would retell the well-known story of its desegregation
in 1960. They would also recount lesser-known, yet important stories, that provide
further examination of public education in New Orleans and its intersections with
race, resistance, resiliency, and recovery.

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xii | william fr antz public school

This book is a place-based narrative, an in-depth examination of stories spe-


cific to William Frantz Public School, located in the Upper Ninth Ward in New
Orleans, Louisiana. These stories are interwoven into the broader saga of public
education in New Orleans. By understanding the context of public education in
the city, you will more fully understand events happening at William Frantz Public
School. To some extent, the school and the Orleans Parish school district repre-
sent a microcosm of public education in the United States. However, the unique
context of New Orleans cannot be discounted. It is located in the Deep South; it
has a large Catholic population. In the late 20th century, many people considered
its public schools to be the epitome of all that was broken in the U.S. education
system. Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005, and the aftermath created a
public education model based almost exclusively on charter schools.
In attempting to tell the story of William Frantz Public School, some stories
were intentionally omitted from this book. For example, the account of Leona
Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne, Black first-grade students who entered
formerly all-White McDonogh 19 Elementary School on the same day Bridges
entered William Frantz Public School, is not included in this book. The decision
to exclude this and other stories does not diminish their importance, but rather
reflects an intent to keep this book focused on a single school.
Beyond the choices of what stories to include, other choices influenced what
is contained within this book. Words, labels, and definitions matter. It is critical to
explain the decisions behind several racially charged word choices that you may
question as you read. Racial labels represent social constructs. The United States
is far from a post-racial society, and the terms White and Black reflect the ongoing
power differential between the two groups in our society. One group is granted
privilege and afforded power. The other continues to struggle just to be considered
equal, let alone have the past atrocities committed against them recognized. As
such, the terms White and Black were chosen to describe racial groups defined by
the color of their skin more so than the continent of their ancestry. The choice also
serves as a reminder of the racialized disparities between two groups of people
living within New Orleans and the United States. Likewise, the term desegregation
is used rather than integration. Although the terms are often used interchangeably,
particularly in accounts of public school desegregation in the 1960s, the terms are
not synonymous. Desegregating schools refers to ending the physical separation
of students based on race. Integration implies that students, regardless of race, not
only share the same physical space of a school but also share the power within the
school, school system, and the larger institution of public education. Because pub-
lic school integration is not yet fully realized, in either New Orleans or the United
States, the term, integration, only appears in the text when it is part of a direct

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p r efac e | xiii

quote. All other references to bringing together White and Black students within
public school buildings are described as desegregation.
Finally, offensive words and phrases that were spoken at the time to deni-
grate people and describe grotesque actions were given careful contemplation but
ultimately incorporated into this story. Reading disgusting racial slurs and other
vulgarities may shock some of you. Unfortunately, for others these are all-too-fa-
miliar. The pain these cause is not discounted, but the inclusion of these words is
important. To omit or ignore them minimizes the level of vitriol and the extent to
which ignorance, fear, and White supremacy drove people to use them—to shout
them in the presence of children, to record them in personal correspondence, to
state them in public records. If these were shared so openly, you can only imagine
what was spoken privately.
Archival research provided the majority of the information contained in this
book and was substantiated with the work of other scholars and personal commu-
nications between the authors and people in New Orleans. Research conducted in
the Times-Picayune archives, the Orleans Parish School Board Records (Louisiana
Special Collections, Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans), numer-
ous collections at the Amistad Research Center, New Orleans, LA, and the City
Archives (New Orleans Public Library) uncovered much of what is included in the
chapters of this book. Admittedly, newspaper accounts and archive collections are
limited. Journalists can never completely divorce themselves from their personal
perspectives or the ideological underpinnings of their editors. Numerous accounts
were taken from the Times-Picayune, which provided daily and more extensive
coverage than other local newspapers. When possible, other press sources were
also used. Archival collections have limitations as well. Archives include only those
items the originating curator chose to keep and are further influenced by the orga-
nization and prioritization of the collection’s archivist. This is particularly true for
the massive Orleans Parish School Board Records. Much of this collection remains
uncatalogued. It is impossible to know what additional information might be con-
tained in the stacks of documents and cardboard boxes sitting on row after row
of shelves. And of course, Hurricane Katrina destroyed many records within New
Orleans, and the information in countless documents is forever lost. According
to officials from the New Orleans Public Schools and Akili Academy (the cur-
rent occupant of the building), all records contained within William Frantz Public
School were ruined and had to be discarded.
The story of William Frantz Public School unfolds through chronological
chapters, but within these chapters information is organized conceptually more so
than in a strict chronology. Chapter 1, A Fortress at 3811 North Galvez, introduces
you to William Frantz Public School, the neighborhoods that surround it, and the

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xiv | william fr antz public school

historic legacy of school racial segregation in New Orleans. The chapter covers the
period from 1938 through November 14, 1960, the first day Ruby Bridges attended
William Frantz Public School. Picking up after that historic day, Chapter 2, The
Exodus, recounts the initial resistance to the school’s desegregation as well as the
continued resistance to desegregating public schools evidenced during the deseg-
regation of the city’s Catholic schools and the mass exodus of White residents
from Orleans Parish during the 1970s. Both chapters draw from the accounts of
Ruby Bridges and others directly involved in the desegregation of William Frantz
Public School. Much information was also provided by a 1961 report written by
the Louisiana Advisory Committee on Civil Rights sent to the U.S. Commission
to Civil Rights, the research of Liva Baker and Robert Crain, and interviews con-
ducted by Alan Wieder. It should be noted, Wieder published his analysis of these
interviews decades later, and he only interviewed White people. Despite the fact
that these personal accounts might have been influenced by the passage of time
and were inherently influenced by the perspectives of Whites, they provided a
rich description of events at William Frantz Public School during the 1960–1961
school year by the people who directly experienced them.
During the 1980s, the Orleans Parish school district faced enormous chal-
lenges, growing dissatisfaction of the public, and increasing accountability
demands. Many students, parents, teachers, administrators, and school officials
demonstrated great resiliency in confronting the litany of challenges. Chapter 3,
Do You Hear Me?, covers this period along with the 1990s, a decade in which mov-
ies and children’s books introduced the story of William Frantz Public School to a
new generation. Chapter 4 concentrates on the first five years of the 21st century.
During this time, the school’s test scores drew significant attention, and the district
was fraught with corruption, mismanagement, and plummeting public opinion.
However, A Building in Crisis, also describes how the school’s past was preserved,
and ultimately its future was protected, by being placed on the National Register
of Historic Places. Content included in Chapters 4 and 5 relies on information
from the Times-Picayune and the Louisiana Department of Education as well as
numerous other sources.
Chapter 5 covers a single school year, 2005–2006. Most of the chapter, And
Then It Was After, focuses on the post-Katrina resiliency of the people of New
Orleans as well as the response of the city, state, and nation and the opportun-
ism of school reformers. The recovery of the city’s schools drew national attention
and resources. Even the name of the public school governing body, the Recovery
School District, conveyed a response to devastation caused by Katrina. However,
many people outside of Louisiana failed to realize the Recovery School District
came into existence before Hurricane Katrina and took over the governance of

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p r efac e | xv

most public schools in New Orleans during this year. Chapter 6, Fading From the
Public, describes the new reality for William Frantz Public School and the Orleans
Parish school district that evolved in the years after Katrina. The period included a
confusing maze of charter schools and traditional public schools that transitioned
to and from the authority of the Recovery School District. The story concludes
in 2018 when the Recovery School District relinquished governance of the city’s
public schools to the Orleans Parish School Board. In addition to press accounts,
FEMA documents, personal interviews, and reports from the Cowen Institute for
Public Education Initiatives provided a great deal of valuable information for the
two final chapters.
Why should the story of William Frantz Public School matter to you? You
may read this with an interest in public education, history, or both. Perhaps you
are a native of New Orleans or otherwise connected to the city. Maybe you are a
teacher or somehow associated with the teaching profession. Regardless, this story
matters. It matters that society has historically marginalized Black students and
continues to do so. It matters that the discrimination and systemic racism in public
education is indicative of that which occurs in other social institutions. It matters
that racism deeply divides the United States. Our society can and must do better.
Difficult issues related to race, poverty, corruption, and a natural disaster cul-
minated in New Orleans at the turn of the century. For some, this provided an
opportunity to abandon traditional public education and replace it with a system
comprised of charter schools led by private boards of directors. Hailed as innova-
tive and overdue reform, this new system fundamentally changed public education
in New Orleans. Consider what happened in New Orleans and carefully contem-
plate the ramifications. Why should it matter to you what happened to William
Frantz Public School? When you give up on one public school, one school district,
one city—it becomes easier to give up on the next and the next and the next.

9781433181238 - - Not for resale. © Peter Lang Verlag


9781433181238 - - Not for resale. © Peter Lang Verlag
Acknowledgments

This book represents the culmination of several years of work and dedication. All
of our efforts were motivated by a tremendous determination to tell this story to
the best of our ability. We recognized our limitations, White women who are not
native to New Orleans. In fact, we considered not writing the book because of this.
However, William Frantz Public School kept coming back to us, and ultimately,
we decided to record the rich story it represents.
We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge all who offered their
resources, time, talent, and funding to us. Rowan University, Stockton University,
and the University of Nebraska at Omaha provided financial support through
travel grants and research support. We are grateful for these contributions that
allowed us to immerse ourselves into the research and writing of this book.
We spent weeks engaged in research in New Orleans. During this time, we
were fortunate to have met many people who supported our work. Many thanks to
Phillip Cunningham and his colleagues at the Amistad Research Center, Connie
Phelps and her staff in the Special Collections at the University of New Orleans,
Earl K. Long Library, and Christina Bryant at the New Orleans Public Library
for providing access to numerous collections including archived documents, news-
papers, microfilm, audio tapes, photographs, and public records. Not only did they
provide the items we asked for, they also made helpful suggestions to expand our
research. Without their assistance and expertise this book would be much less

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xviii | william fr antz public school

comprehensive. Thank you to Dr. Kenneth Ducote, former Chair of the Ruby
Bridges Foundation and current Executive Director of the Greater New Orleans
Collaborative of Charter Schools. Dr. Ducote offered his time, institutional knowl-
edge of the Orleans Parish school district, and a number of documents that are
not available to the public. Thank you, as well, to Vincent Rossmeier at the Cowen
Institute for Public Education Initiatives for sharing the resources of the Institute
as well as his perspective of the charter school movement.
We extend our gratitude to Mandy Liu for her amazing photographs and
Kelly Fritzsche for her equally amazing attention to the details of our references.
Ian Graham read very rough drafts and deserves special thanks for providing us
constructive and very helpful feedback. Hal Durden, words do not describe how
much we valued your taxi service and personalized tours of the city. More impor-
tantly the excellent dinner conversations that provided respite from long days of
research and the friendship we now have is priceless.
Finally, thank you to the people of New Orleans. You possess a great resil-
iency that was evident in speaking with you about your city and the New Orleans
Public Schools. Many of you—Uber drivers, restaurant servers, hotel reception-
ists, and friends of friends—spoke openly and candidly about public schools, what
happened to your families in the 1960s, or the events before and after Hurricane
Katrina. Almost all of you recounted an individual story to us and, you encouraged
us to tell the story of William Frantz Public School. We admire your unwaver-
ing determination to protect your children and your schools. Through it all, you
showed your undying loyalty to a city you love.

9781433181238 - - Not for resale. © Peter Lang Verlag


Abbreviations

ACT American College Testing


CNN Cable News Network
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency
KIPP Knowledge is Power Program
LEAP Louisiana Educational Assessment Program
NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
PTA Parent-Teachers Association
SOS Save Our Schools
WFPS William Frantz Public School

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PART I

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9781433181238 - - Not for resale. © Peter Lang Verlag
chapter one

A Fortress at 3811
North Galvez

William Frantz Public School: a “protection for democracy” and a “fortification


against encroachment of those terrible ‘isms.’” Speakers proclaimed these exact
words at the school’s dedication ceremony in September 1938, and the Orleans
Parish School Board president predicted the school would be a kingdom of learn-
ing in which children would be taught right from wrong. To describe these words as
foretelling is an understatement. What happened to William Frantz Public School
over the next 80 years challenged the idyllic notions of the speakers.1 Given the
national political climate of the time, the “isms” the speaker was likely referencing
were communism, socialism, and fascism. Little did anyone know it would be rac-
ism and opportunism that would be the threatening “isms.” Racism embedded in
the fabric of the neighborhood, Orleans Parish school district, New Orleans, and
the State of Louisiana threatened the school in 1960, and 45 years later oppor-
tunism extended the threat and made an onslaught against the traditions of public
education. Nor could they foresee William Frantz Public School as the stage on
which citizens of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the United States would fiercely
debate how to best protect democracy, what would be considered right and wrong,
and how to sustain public education.
As with so many stories in the U.S. South, slavery played an inescapable role
in the prologue of William Frantz Public School (WFPS). At the outset of public
education in New Orleans, the city’s children attended schools considered by many

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4 | william fr antz public school

to be the envy of the antebellum South. As might be expected, these schools exclu-
sively educated White children. With the abolition of slavery and Reconstruction
era policy following the Civil War, public education changed. Louisiana’s 1868
constitution prohibited White-only schools, and during the Reconstruction era,
New Orleans desegregated its public schools. The progressive policy distinguished
New Orleans from other southern cities where public schools remained segregated.
By the early 1870s, approximately one-third of the schools in New Orleans
enrolled both Black and White students.2 Many schools employed both Black
and White teachers. Even the school board consisted of Black and White mem-
bers.3 Although these desegregated schools enjoyed a strong reputation, they also
elicited strong reactions from White parents who could not fathom sending their
children to schools where they would learn and play with children of former slaves.
Tethered by pride, fear, ignorance, or hatred, many Whites longed for their pre-
vious normalcy of demarcations between those privileged because of their White
skin and those oppressed because of their Black skin. Centuries of enslaving Blacks
was impossible to erase from their individual consciousnesses or eradicate from the
systems that perpetuated it.4
Like much of the post-war reconstruction effort, New Orleans’ desegregated
schools could not withstand the era’s economic downturn and simultaneous polit-
ical maneuvers and influence of a resurging White power structure.5 By the 1880s,
New Orleans’ desegregated schools were in jeopardy. Orleans Parish School Board
members publicly proclaimed concern about the deterioration of the city’s schools
and associated this perceived decline with the mixing of Black and White stu-
dents. Over the next decades, the anti-desegregation sentiment mutated into a
deep-seated, racist ideology and the acceptance of White supremacy. This ideology
led to systemic oppression of Black citizens as well as racial segregation in virtually
all aspects of life in New Orleans. Public education was no exception. At the turn
of the century, leaders in New Orleans spoke out against compulsory education
laws fearing this would increase the number of Black voters. By the 1920s, Orleans
Parish School Board members and district administrators openly and vehemently
voiced their belief that White supremacy should guide public policy and stated
their willingness to employ any means, including the use of force, to maintain
inequality between the two races. It was in this context that WFPS came into
existence.6
And so the story begins. In 1937, nearly 100 years after the formation of
public education in New Orleans and within the backdrop of the segregated pub-
lic school system, the Orleans Parish school district authorized construction of
WFPS, an elementary school situated at 3811 North Galvez between Pauline and
Alvar Streets in the Upper Ninth Ward. It was one of the few schools constructed

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during the Great Depression.7 The district purchased the property in 1926, for
$14,000, and the new building replaced the existing temporary wooden structure
and accommodated 560 students.8
The parish school board named the school after William Frantz (1845–1930),
a French Quarter jeweler who lived in New Orleans most of his life. A successful
business owner and established civic leader, Frantz served as a member and at one
time as vice president of the Orleans Parish School Board between 1901 and 1920,
the time period during which the board increasingly voiced support for segrega-
tion.9 E. A. Christy, architect of WFPS and many other Orleans Parish schools,
designed the Art Deco structure, which was built by Herman T. Makofsky.10 As
the Great Depression neared its end, the parish school district completed con-
struction of WFPS for under $150,000 and in less than eight months. Despite its
economical price tag, the contrasting light-colored brick and cast-cement struc-
ture exemplified the modernistic, albeit subdued, Art Deco style of the time. By far
the tallest structure in the neighborhood, the school and the playground occupied
most of a city block. WFPS stood as a central structure within the neighbor-
hood. A salient architectural feature, large geometric capital letters above the front
entrance doors, unmistakably identified the building as “William Frantz Public
School.” This highly visible proclamation of WFPS as a public school is as remark-
able today as it was in the 1930s.
Under this name, six steps led to the school’s recessed, double-doored
entrance. Fairly ordinary to adults, the steps likely appeared impressive to children
who entered the school. Low relief, dentin-patterned panels surrounded the entry-
way, emphasizing the geometric patterns of the building. Art Deco light fixtures
adorned either side of the doors and three chevron-patterned reliefs decorated the
roofline directly above the entryway. Oversized, rectangular, multi-paned windows
allowed natural light into the school from both the front and back of the build-
ing. Smaller dentin-framed entrances provided additional access on both sides of
the building. Within the three-story building, wood floors and one central and
two side staircases led to 14 spacious classrooms on either side of the hallways.11
Glass-paned classroom doors allowed students to observe activity in the hallways,
and those walking through the hallways could see into the classrooms. The school
boasted state-of-the-art features such as steam heat, sprinklers, a cafeteria, tele-
phones, and a public address system as well as classrooms specifically designated
for a progressive curriculum for the era, including kindergarten as well as what, at
the time, was referred to as manual training, and domestic science.12 The building
officially opened its doors in September 1938 under the principalship of Miss
Carrie M. Grehan. Miss Grehan and 11 WFPS teachers welcomed 355 kinder-
garten through seventh-grade students.13

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When the school opened, Orleans Parish school district designated it for ele-
mentary-aged White children who lived in the White working-class residential
area known as the Florida neighborhood, nestled in the Upper Ninth Ward of New
Orleans. Originally a lowland swamp filled with cypress trees, the Florida neigh-
borhood sat precipitously close to sea level. The area once served as a landfill, and
it remained an underdeveloped section of New Orleans until the 1890s and early
1900s. Located west of the polluted Industrial Canal, south of Lake Pontchartrain,
but set back away from the Mississippi River to its south, the Florida district
became increasingly populated in the 1930s when the city’s Black residents were
encouraged to purchase small, shotgun-style homes in the neighborhood. More
and more families moved into these small wood-framed row homes because they
were affordable and quickly constructed. Just a few years before building WFPS,
the district opened Johnson Cornelius Lockett Public School on nearby Law
Street for the community’s elementary-aged Black children. At the time of WFPS
opening, district Superintendent Nicholas Bauer not only accepted segregation
but also White supremacy. Bauer had served on the Board of Curators for the
Louisiana State Museum, an organization that avowed White supremacy as a rea-
sonable tenet of government. Bauer himself publicly affirmed White supremacy
when he stated his beliefs that educating Black students was a difficult problem
because they had questionable character and academic capacity for only a fifth-
grade education.14
At the time WFPS was built, the city of New Orleans was one of the larg-
est cities in the United States, but its rate of growth fell behind that of other
metropolitan areas. Once the third largest U.S. city, New Orleans now ranked
as the country’s fifteenth largest city with a population of just under 500,000.
Of the overall population, 70% of New Orleans’ residents were White, and 30%
were Black.15 Although still a predominantly White city, the population of New
Orleans began to look significantly different than the population of Louisiana.
By 1937, pressure of a growing population of New Orleans, resulting from rural
to urban migration brought on by the Depression, provided the impetus to build
WFPS as well as other schools throughout the city. In the preceding decades,
the population of New Orleans increased as did the population throughout the
State of Louisiana. Interestingly, as the state became more populous, the popula-
tion became increasingly White. In fact, the rate of White population growth far
exceeded the growth rate of the Black population. The exception to this pattern
was found in New Orleans where the Black population increased more rapidly
than the White population.16
Unlike other cities in the South, New Orleans housing patterns resembled a
checkerboard consisting of alternating White and Black neighborhoods. The city

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designated numerous small neighborhoods adjacent to each as either “White” or


“Black.” This racially based housing pattern impacted schools. Based on the racial
composition of the neighborhood, the Orleans Parish school district designated
schools within these communities as either White or Black. As a result of the
checkerboard housing pattern, two schools that were segregated based on race
were often located in very close proximity to each other.17
The up-and-coming Florida neighborhood also attracted working-class White
families and their children. The area bustled with activity. New Orleans’ street cars,
including the Desire Line made famous in Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar
Named Desire, rattled through the Florida neighborhood during the 1920s through
the late 1940s. The streetcar made its turn back to the French Quarter only four
blocks from WFPS.18 The family of Lee Harvey Oswald was the most infamous
of the neighborhood’s residents. Oswald’s mother purchased a new home on Alvar
Street directly across the street from WFPS in 1938, the same year the school
opened. The family purchased their home for $3,900, an amount above the aver-
age cost of a home in Louisiana and the United States.19 Oswald’s older brothers
attended WFPS, but the family moved from the Florida neighborhood before Lee
Harvey reached school-age. Oswald’s mother sold the home on Alvar Street in
1944 for $6,500, an amount again above the state and national averages for home
prices. The Warren Commission Report described the area as a nice neighborhood
at the time Oswald and his family lived there.20
At the time the Oswalds moved from the area, the city built a 500-unit,
low-income housing project shifting the demographics in the Florida neighbor-
hood.21 The Florida projects consisted of 47 two- and three-story brick buildings
with open courtyards. Before the projects were built, the Ninth Ward could be
described as a blue-collar neighborhood with above average housing, like that of
Oswald’s family. Now the majority of the new tenants moving into the neighbor-
hood’s projects were poor and White. Many of these new residents relocated to
New Orleans from rural areas searching for work in the industries supporting the
war effort. When World War II ended, so too did their jobs, leaving many resi-
dents living near WFPS struggling to provide for their families.22
Within a decade, the city built a second and significantly larger low-income
housing project in the nearby Desire neighborhood. The two projects, Florida and
Desire, sat adjacent to each other and only railroad tracks and a drainage canal
separated them (see Image 1.1). The Housing Authority of New Orleans initially
separated the two housing projects based on race by designating the Florida proj-
ects for White residents and the Desire projects for Black residents. At the time
they were built, the projects exuded hope for residents. New homes represented
new beginnings and the names of the streets—Abundance, Humanity, Benefit,

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Image 1.1: 73 Official City Neighborhoods. William Frantz Public School is located at 3811 North
Galvez, near the Florida and Desire neighborhoods. (New Orleans City Planning Commission.)

Pleasure, and Piety—characterized the aspirations of officials who built the proj-
ects as well as those who moved into them. However, to build the Desire housing
project, the city destroyed an existing and thriving Black community that included
multiple Black-owned businesses, nine churches with predominantly Black con-
gregants, and the legendary Hideaway Club where the area’s most famous resident,
Fats Domino, launched his career.23 But the new housing offered electricity and
running water, amenities many poor people did not have in their previous homes.
Residents described the units as spacious, with hardwood floors, new cabinets,
appliances, and grounds neatly manicured with trees and shrubs. Families living in
the projects hung laundry on clotheslines. Children played in the courtyards where
people slept on hot evenings.24 Yet saturated ground, unpaved streets, and inade-
quate infrastructure plagued the Desire projects from its origin.25 Prior to opening
the Desire projects, Mayor de Lesseps (Chep) Morrison was warned of the area’s

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compromised sidewalks, streets, sewers, and gas and water mains. Despite the
warning, the city built the housing project and did little to address the concerns.
Unlike the brick buildings in the Florida project, Desire’s 262 buildings with
1,860 housing units26 consisted of poorly constructed wooden-framed structures
with brick facades.27 An era of frugal spending coupled with high demand in the
Housing Authority along with Mayor Morrison’s aggressive building plans and his
obsession with moving Black citizens from neighborhoods he saw as slums and
into public housing compromised the structural integrity of the projects.28 Almost
immediately, the unstable ground, humidity, and termites led to structural damage.
Soon after the projects’ opening, William Aubert and Leontine Goins Luke from
the Ninth Ward Civic and Improvement League lobbied the city for better streets,
sewage systems, and garbage services; they also formed Black PTA groups and led
Black-voter registration drives.29
Other community activists successfully pressured officials to build a clinic and
a childcare facility in the Desire neighborhood. The childcare resources, regret-
table, came too late to save two children who were left unattended while their
mother looked for work and died in a house fire.30 The activists also fought to
improve infrastructure and services in the Ninth Ward and petitioned Orleans
Parish School Board to make school improvements throughout the district. This
early community advocacy and activism served as a training ground for Aubert and
Luke. Both emerged as prominent leaders in the efforts to desegregate Orleans
Parish school district.31 In addition to the Ninth Ward Civic League, The Louisiana
Weekly, the newspaper representing the perspective of New Orleans’ Black com-
munity, repeatedly reported on the deplorable conditions in the all-Black schools.32
Within a year of opening, 14,000 people most of whom were Black and dis-
placed by increased housing costs in other parts of the city, moved into the Desire
housing projects. By 1960, 27,500 children and 15,500 adults lived in the Desire
neighborhood, including a young, Black child named Ruby Bridges whose fam-
ily moved from Mississippi to the area in 1958. Many of the families lived on
less than $1,300 per year and paid between $16 and $25 per month for rent.33
Schools in the neighborhood, facing the same structural challenges found in the
housing units, struggled to accommodate the number of children. The Orleans
Parish School Board built no schools between 1941 and 1951.34 As a result, exist-
ing neighborhood schools throughout the city faced overcrowding. The problem
was particularly acute in Desire. Due to the severe overcrowding, many Black
children attended school for only a fraction of the time as their White peers liv-
ing in the Florida neighborhood. The Orleans Parish School Board did little to
address the overcrowded schools, poor facilities, and reduced instructional time
in district’s schools for Black children. The schools relied on private philanthropic

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10 | william fr antz public school

organizations to subsidize the inadequate public funding provided by the city


and state governments.35 For decades these district-wide practices, referred to as
platooning, relegated Black students to dilapidated schools with little or no heat
and falling ceilings. Students shared desks,36 and unimaginable teacher-to-stu-
dent ratios, as high as 65 to 1 in one elementary school, made learning difficult
if not impossible.37 In a two-shift rotating schedule, one group of Black students
attended classes in the morning and another group of students attended in the
afternoon, resulting in significantly abbreviated instructional time.
Before the projects were built, the Ninth Ward could be described as a blue-col-
lar neighborhood with above average housing, like that of Oswald’s family. By the
1950s as the New Orleans’ economy stagnated, the Ninth Ward became increas-
ingly associated with poverty, crime, and sub-par housing.38 At the same time, city
planners successfully “reclaimed” land from swamps to allow for more suburban
areas to be built.39 White residents with the means to do so began moving from the
Ninth Ward to nearby St. Bernard and Jefferson Parishes. Conditions within the
Ninth Ward continued to deteriorate. Residents, under the ongoing leadership of
community activists such as Aubert and Luke, persisted in their appeals for the city
to improve the neighborhood’s infrastructure and housing; they also petitioned the
school district to address the overcrowded schools. At the same time, the lure of
employment opportunities, larger homes, and more modern infrastructure enticed
White families to move. The promise of better jobs and homes and the preference
to separate themselves from increasing numbers of Black neighbors influenced the
exodus of White families. By 1960, Black and poor White families occupied most
of the homes in the neighborhoods of the Upper Ninth Ward, and new spatial
parameters of race and poverty emerged in the area surrounding WFPS.
Beyond the blatant segregation of sending White students to WFPS and
Black students to Lockett Elementary School, evidence of systemic racism within
the Orleans Parish school district was easy to find. The Directory of the Public
Schools of New Orleans listed “Colored” schools in a separate section than
White schools.40 Additional racist policies directly involved teachers and students.
A White first-year teacher earned an annual salary of $1,000. A Black first-year
teacher earned only $909 per year. White students attended well-maintained
schools with relatively small classes. Black students attended school in dilapidated
buildings with class sizes 50% larger than those of their White peers.41 In the three
years following the opening of the all-White WFPS, the student-to-teacher ratio
for the all-Black Lockett was over 20 students greater than that of WFPS.42
Despite public outcry about these conditions, the Louisiana State
Superintendent of Schools openly acknowledged the situation but deemed it of
little concern. In the mid 1940s, average per pupil expenditure for White students

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in the South was $88.70; for Blacks it was $46.95. In Louisiana the disparity was
even greater. The state spent $113.30 per White student, more than the average
of its neighboring southern states. However, it only spent $34.06 per Black stu-
dent, less than the average of its southern counterparts. Not only did expendi-
tures differ between Black and White students, the number of school days also
varied. In Louisiana, White students went to school 180 days each year, but Black
students attended an average of 156.7 days per year.43 At elementary schools,
playground space at White schools far exceeded that found at Black schools.
Based on the square feet of playground space per pupil, fewer than 15% of Black
elementary schools met the minimum standard. Perhaps due to overcrowding,
few Black elementary schools offered kindergarten classes. By the 1950s, nearly
every White elementary school offered kindergarten compared to less than 45%
of Black elementary schools.44 To make matters worse, Louisiana allowed local
governments to channel funds earmarked for Black schools, such as Lockett, to
other purposes.45
In 1952, the Orleans Parish school district’s Office of Planning and
Construction proposed a plan to alleviate crowding at Black schools. The initial
plan called for a large central campus that would be home to the Black schools,
George Washington Carver Junior and Senior High Schools. The proposed
campus, referred to as a school village, would eventually expand to include more
schools for Black students on a site accessible by only one or two streets, and sur-
rounded by railroad tracks, a drainage canal, and the massive Industrial Canal. The
single campus site provided a way for the district to avoid purchasing multiple,
higher-priced building sites for Black schools. The plan was also seen as a means
to avoid potential court action regarding school desegregation. If the district built
new and improved schools for Black students, it could reduce the platooning in
Black schools. This might quell the simmering opposition to the district’s current
segregation practices or at the very least, put it in a better position to defend sep-
arate-but-equal public schools. The controversial program was fraught with prob-
lems, including how to transport up to 10,000 Black students to the campus at a
time when the district had only 39 buses, all of which were designated for White
students.46 While planning for the construction of a single, separate campus for
Black students, the district continued to invest in individual White schools. For
example, on several different occasions in the 1950s, Orleans Parish school dis-
trict allocated funds for improvements and maintenance for WFPS that included
building a standalone cafeteria.47 The message rang clear; Louisiana’s strong com-
mitment to the education of its White, wealthier children paralleled an equally
strong commitment to keep its Black, poor residents uneducated and isolated, and
thus economically and politically powerless.

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The Orleans Parish school board governed education in the Florida neighbor-
hood including at WFPS, and the district followed the same separate and unequal
pattern as the rest of Louisiana. Louisiana’s system of government created a struc-
ture in which school districts oversaw public education in geopolitical areas known
as parishes, similar to counties in other states. The boundaries in New Orleans
delineated identical borders for Orleans Parish, the parish school district, and the
city.48 The city’s residents elected Orleans Parish School Board members to gov-
ern its schools, and all schools fell under the jurisdiction of the school district. In
nearby parishes ( Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. James, St.
John, and St. Tammany), other school boards oversaw the public schools located
within their boundaries.49 For 22 years after the Orleans Parish school district
opened WFPS, the school board continued to designate the school as a White-
only building. WFPS enrollment steadily increased between 1938 and 1960. Ten
years after opening, 550 students attended WFPS. In the following decade, enroll-
ment continued the upward trend, reaching over 600 students in 1957. For many
of these years, WFPS had consistent leadership under Zita Kevlin who served as
principal for over 15 years. The number of teachers varied, but typically hovered
between 15 and 20.
Few people, other than residents living in the working-class neighborhood
surrounding it, recognized or had ever heard of WFPS prior to 1960. That changed
on November 14, 1960, when the world watched a sole first-grade Black girl, Ruby
Bridges, ascend the steps and enter the doors of WFPS. Bridges, accompanied by
U.S. Federal Marshals, encountered a highly agitated group of protesters as well
as members of the press as she arrived at WFPS. Using a World War II metaphor
referencing the onset of a historic and intense campaign that shaped history, the
press deemed November 14, 1960, as D-day in New Orleans.50 The metaphor
resonated with many. For weeks before and after, people repeatedly used wartime
references such as, “attacks on the Southern way of life,” “threats to America,” and
“a call to arms,” to describe school desegregation and their response to it. And in
rhetoric harkening back to the school’s dedication ceremony, some referred to the
need to “preserve democracy.”
Photographs of WFPS appeared in newspapers and on newsreels across the
United States and beyond within days of Bridges’ enrollment, erasing WFPS’s
persona as an unassuming neighborhood elementary school (see Image 1.2).
Propelled into an iconic role in America’s story of school desegregation, WFPS
entered into the national and tumultuous saga of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement
of the 1960s. Beyond the turbulence of the 1960s, WFPS became permanently
embedded in Americana—the history, culture, and narrative representative of the
nation’s struggle to address deep-seated systems of racism. At the time, the popular

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Image 1.2: Ruby Bridges, accompanied by U.S. Federal Marshals, began attending William Frantz
Public School in November 1960. (Paul Slade/Paris Match Archive via Getty Images.)

press repeatedly featured WFPS, introducing the school to Americans across the
country. In The New Yorker, John Updike, portrayed WFPS as “blasphemed” and
the protesters outside the school as “segregationist banshees.”51 The banshees, also
known as the cheerleaders, referred to White women who day-after-day stood
outside WFPS protesting Bridges’ enrollment in the school (see Image 1.3).
Americans were reminded of the events in following years when Pulitzer Prize
author John Steinbeck recounted how he had been shocked and sickened after
witnessing scenes from New Orleans.52 And in a riveting illustration, Norman
Rockwell visualized the ugliness engulfing WFPS in his famous painting, “The
Problem We All Live With,” which was featured in Look magazine. Look’s massive
circulation depicted Bridges, walking past a backdrop of a white wall graffitied
with the word “NIGGER” and splattered by a thrown tomato as she made her way
to WFPS.53 In 1960 Bridges entered WFPS, and WFPS entered into the living
rooms and collective psyche of millions of Americans.
As the World War II D-day metaphor implied, numerous decisions and
actions preceded and followed the seminal battle on November 14, 1960. Staunch
racism roused those who fought to keep Bridges out of WFPS and to main-
tain segregated schools in New Orleans. An equally ardent commitment to con-
front racism and the city’s segregated schools galvanized those who fought to get

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14 | william fr antz public school

Image 1.3: Women protesting school desegregation lined North Galvez Street in December 1960.
(Paul Slade/Paris Match Archive via Getty Images.)

Bridges into WFPS. Both sides justified their ideology and actions on the basis
of protecting democracy. Bridges’ entry into WFPS began what would be referred
to as the New Orleans School Crisis, a crisis which steeped for decades and roils
yet today.54
To understand the WFPS Bridges entered in November 1960 requires addi-
tional background information on historic challenges to school segregation in
New Orleans. To understand school segregation in New Orleans requires a fur-
ther step back to examine Plessy v. Ferguson, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court
decision that authorized racial segregation.55 In 1892, police arrested Homer
Plessy, a Black man, in a New Orleans rail yard located less than two miles
from the future site of WFPS. Plessy was arrested after refusing to relinquish
his train seat to a White passenger. A New Orleans court convicted Plessy of
violating an 1890 Louisiana law prohibiting people of different races from trav-
eling together on railway cars. Plessy appealed the decision and challenged the
laws that legally segregated many public spaces in New Orleans and throughout
the South. Plessy asserted the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, Plessy believed the
state law violated the amendment’s intent to guard the civil rights of U.S. citizens.
Plessy’s case worked its way through the lower courts and ultimately reached

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the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1896, the Court ruled against Plessy. The Court’s
decision established the legal precedent that the protections of the Fourteenth
Amendment applied only to political and civil rights such as voting and jury
service, not social rights like sitting in an all-White railroad car. The Plessy deci-
sion sanctioned segregated public facilities as long as Blacks were offered equal
facilities. Justice John Harlan disagreed with the other justices, and in his dissent-
ing opinion predicted the expansion of segregation and the incitement of racism
the decision would spur. Harlan’s conjecture proved accurate and foreshadowed
events that would transpire at WFPS in 1960.
For 50 years following the Plessy ruling, few southern Whites questioned
the cultural and legal paradigm of separate-but-equal; for them the concept was
inconsequential. For Blacks, the profound and inescapable impact seeped into
every facet of life, including public education. The Plessy case set legal precedence
for numerous separate-but-equal Jim Crow laws throughout the United States. In
the decades following the Plessy ruling, and despite continued U.S. Supreme Court
decisions upholding Jim Crow laws, people pressed to abolish separate-but-equal
policies and practices.
The principles underlying the ideology of Jim Crow, both the actual laws as
well as the cultural mores, started to be called into question across the United
States in the mid-20th century. In New Orleans, Earl Benjamin Bush challenged
the separate-but-equal education policies of the Orleans Parish School Board.
The lack of support given to schools for Black students, who comprised 60% of
the student population in New Orleans, angered their parents.56 In November of
1951, Aubert and Luke, Ninth Ward Civic and Improvement League activists
who had earlier challenged the living conditions in the Desire neighborhood, held
a meeting at the Macarty School for Black students. After years of protesting for
equal schools but having their demands ignored, the Ninth Ward Civic League
determined it would initiate a lawsuit against the school board. Aubert and Luke
convinced several families to act as plaintiffs and filed a lawsuit against the school
board with the assistance of A. P. Tureaud, a Black attorney and chief legal counsel
of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).57
In Aubert v. Orleans Parish School Board,58 the Ninth Ward Civic League sought
better conditions within the Black schools. The school board considered the com-
plaints but delayed its official response for years. Finally, the board officially denied
the existence of any substantial inequality between Black and White schools and
requested the case be dismissed. Undeterred, Tureaud continued to publicly push
the federal courts to address the reprehensible conditions in the Black schools.
After two years of legal wrangling between Aubert and the school board, U.S.
District Judge Herbert Christenberry allowed the plaintiffs to proceed with
their case.

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16 | william fr antz public school

The NAACP wanted to take action beyond the Aubert case and challenge
segregation as a whole. In 1952, NAACP attorney Tureaud filed a new lawsuit in
federal district court in New Orleans on behalf of several Black parents, including
Ninth Ward parent Earl Bush. An insurance salesman, father of eight school-aged
children, and president of the Macarty PTA, Bush volunteered his children to be
lead plaintiffs in the suit. Bush et al. v. Orleans Parish School Board59 challenged
the constitutionality of racial segregation in the Orleans Parish school district.
Thurgood Marshall, at the time working for the Legal Defense and Educational
Fund of the NAACP, served as Tureaud’s co-counsel. Similar to Plessy, the suit
claimed Louisiana statutes mandating school segregation violated the Equal
Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The
scope of the suit reached well beyond improving the conditions of New Orleans’
Black schools as it directly challenged the Plessy ruling. Ultimately, Bush, under
advisement of Tureaud, decided to stay his case. The decision to pause the Bush
lawsuit allowed Marshall and the NAACP to shepherd a similar school segrega-
tion challenge in Topeka, Kansas.
In the 1950s conditions that prompted the Bush case existed in many U.S. pub-
lic schools. White children attended White-only neighborhood schools. Black
children attended separate schools in substandard buildings with insufficient,
inadequate, and dated materials. In some places, Black children had to travel a con-
siderable distance from their homes to attend school. In Kansas, Oliver Brown and
18 other plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit against the Board of Education of
Topeka. As in the Bush case, Brown claimed racial segregation violated the Equal
Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Brown’s 8-year-old daughter,
Linda, attended the all-Black Monroe Elementary School. To get to Monroe
Elementary each day, she walked more than a mile to school, and much of this
distance passed through a railroad switch yard, to catch a bus to school. School
policy prohibited her from attending the all-White elementary school only seven
blocks from the Brown’s home.60
The cases of the Topeka plaintiffs consolidated under the name Brown v. Board
of Education. It was rumored the NAACP chose Brown as the lead plaintiff on the
lawsuit because of the possible symbolic impact his last name might have on the
case. Whether intentional or not, a case with a plaintiff named Brown created
an allegory difficult to escape. Children of color, so long denied equal education,
wanted access to the same education as White children. Their challenge, however,
went beyond education. To most Americans, public schools provided a familiar
and almost personalized context for the much broader Civil Rights Movement.
During the Civil Rights Movement, both sides, the NAACP as well as their
staunchest enemies, strategically used children and public schools to evoke the
passions of the American people.

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Brown v. Board of Education reached the U.S. Supreme Court in the fall of
1953. While the facts of the Bush and Brown cases differed, each centered on the
constitutionality of segregation in public schools. Lawyers for the Topeka Board of
Education argued against Brown’s claim, saying Monroe Elementary School was
identical to Topeka’s White schools. NAACP attorney Marshall represented the
plaintiffs in the Brown case and argued that even if the facilities were equal, segre-
gation was detrimental to Black children. The NAACP legal team devised a plan
to target Jim Crow laws by striking at them where they perceived them to be the
weakest—public education.61 Marshall, like Aubert, Luke, Bush, and many others
in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, knew the existing school segregation system resulted
in educational discrepancies, too numerous, too substantial, and too consequential
to be ignored. The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its decision on the Brown case
in May 1954. The unanimous ruling overturned Plessy and affirmed the NAACP’s
strategy. In the Court’s opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren stated,

… in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate-but-equal’ has no place.


Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal … In these days, it is doubtful
that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the oppor-
tunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide
it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.62

The Brown case initiated a paradigm shift like no other experienced in the
previous 100 years of U.S. public education. Many civil rights leaders hailed the
decision as the Supreme Court’s most significant opinion of the 20th century.63
In a New York Times editorial, an unknown author declared the high court had
“reaffirmed its faith and the underlying American faith in the equality of all men
and all children before the law.”64 The Louisiana Weekly, the press voice of New
Orleans’ Black community, ran a front-page story on the ruling and hailed it as
the most important decision affecting its readers since the 1857 Dred Scott case.65
Yet, in New Orleans’ White community there was little praise for the ruling. The
Times-Picayune reported that the Orleans Parish School Board president admitted
the city’s Black schools were inferior to its White schools, but he disparaged the
ruling and believed rapid desegregation would lead to chaos. He preferred delaying
desegregation for as much as 50 years.66 While the board president wished for a
50-year delay, it would take almost six years to the day of his comments before the
school district would begin its desegregation process at WFPS.
In 1955, a full year after the Brown decision, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a
directive outlining how school desegregation should proceed. Chief Justice Warren
granted lower federal courts the authority to order public school districts within
their jurisdiction to desegregate schools with “all deliberate speed.” The phrase,
“all deliberate speed,” had a long and rich legal history dating back to Augustus

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18 | william fr antz public school

Caesar. Throughout history, the phrase had been used in situations in which gov-
ernments wished to shift responsibility for implementation to individual entities.
Abraham Lincoln recognized the importance of the concept and referred to it
during discussion of the emancipation of slaves in the United States.67 The historic
phrase became pivotal in the U.S. school desegregation movement when Warren,
fearing school desegregation would pose a great challenge, chose vague language
to describe the rate at which it should occur. The phrase exonerated the high court
from accusations that it had pushed desegregation too quickly on to the states.
Warren anticipated some states would refuse to adhere to the Supreme Court’s
decision. In his mind, the phrase bought the states and the country added time to
wrestle with the divisive issue.
After the decision, attempts to desegregate schools precipitated demon-
strations, heated rhetoric, and other forms of protest in the South. Reaction in
Little Rock, Arkansas exemplified this. In 1957, nine Black students attempted
to enroll in Little Rock’s Central High School. The city erupted in protest, forc-
ing Governor Orval Faubus to declare a state of emergency and to mobilize the
Arkansas National Guard. School officials allowed the students to register only
after President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered federal troops to enforce the
desegregation laws. Protests continued outside the school throughout the year and
stigmatized the city and state as a racist hotbed and ominously foreshadowed what
might lie ahead for WFPS and New Orleans.
At approximately the same time Little Rock’s school desegregation struggles
were front-page news, a panel of federal district court judges in New Orleans,
composed of Judges Wayne Borah, Herbert Christenberry, and J. Skelly Wright,
ruled that, in light of the Brown decision, the Louisiana Constitution and state
statutes requiring school segregation violated the U.S. Constitution.68 Louisiana,
steadfast in its determination and perseverance, relentlessly resisted the panel’s
ruling and the desegregation of its schools. Wright became the central fixture in
numerous legal clashes between the federal courts, the State of Louisiana, and the
Orleans Parish school district. Wright, a product of New Orleans’ segregated pub-
lic schools, graduated from the all-White McDonogh 7 Elementary School and
all-male, all-White Warren Easton High School. He attended college at Loyola
University at the time when it did not admit Black students. All three schools
were located within a seven-mile radius of WFPS. Personally, Wright held no
strong opinions for or against the desegregation of schools. Professionally, he had
little judicial expertise or experience with desegregation and at times doubted his
actions and decisions related to such issues.69 However, between 1952 and 1962,
Wright issued injunctions against virtually every official in the State of Louisiana
including the governor, attorney general, and superintendent of education, as well

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a for tress at 3811 nor th galvez | 19

as the state police, National Guard, district attorneys, sheriffs, mayors, and police
chiefs. In perhaps his boldest move, he issued an injunction against the entire
Louisiana legislature.70
Judge Wright’s judicial decisions drew intense reaction and unyielding defi-
ance in Louisiana. Over the next several years the Louisiana legislature enacted
legislation intending to prevent court-ordered school desegregation. The legislative
actions significantly slowed desegregation and made a farce of the deliberate speed
noted in Chief Justice Warren’s original opinion. The Orleans Parish School Board
reacted defiantly to the ruling from Judges Borah, Christenberry, and Wright as
well. Despite school board attorney Sam Rosenberg’s warnings of their precarious
legal standing, members of the school board declared they would absolutely not
desegregate the district’s schools. The board resolved to use all possible legal means
to prevent the desegregation of its schools and hired a special attorney and widely
recognized segregationist, Gerald Rault, to manage the district’s desegregation
issues. The State of Louisiana subsidized Rault’s salary, and he worked closely with
the state’s attorney general.71
The Orleans Parish School Board moved toward desegregation with little
speed but faced increasing pressure to address the city’s separate-but-unequal
schools. During the 1959–1960 school year, capacity at the school district’s White
schools stood at 73%, while Black-school capacity stood at 114%.72 At this time,
534 students were registered at WFPS and 1,642 at its counterpart for Black
students, Lockett Elementary School. The student-to-teacher ratio at Lockett
was nearly five times greater than that of WFPS. Across the city, overcrowding
impacted over 1,500 Black students in Orleans Parish school district. The district
solved the overcrowded Black schools by continuing its practice of platooning.73
In April 1959, Orleans Parish School Board member Lloyd Rittiner, a segre-
gationist but also a pragmatist, became president of the board. In one of his first
initiatives as board president, Rittiner convinced the school board to poll parents
to gauge their support for school desegregation. The board mailed postcards to
parents asking if they preferred: (1) to keep the schools open with limited deseg-
regation or (2) to close schools rather than begin a limited desegregation plan.
Rittiner hypothesized parents would favor the first option and further speculated
this potential show of parental preference for keeping schools open would make
any desegregation action taken by the Orleans Parish School Board less contro-
versial and incendiary. He believed the poll would force the mayor and business
community to publicly voice support of desegregating the schools and also allevi-
ate public pressure on the school board.74
Rittiner misjudged the situation on multiple points. Over 80% of White par-
ents indicated they would rather close the schools than open them with even a

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20 | william fr antz public school

limited amount of desegregation. The results stunned the board president.75 Much
less shocking, the response of Black parents differed from White parents. An over-
whelming 94% of Black parents voted to keep schools open.76 Rittiner decided the
school board would disregard the input of Black parents and focus its attention
on limiting school desegregation. Rittiner based his decision on the premise that
White people, not Black people, supported the schools and voted the Orleans
Parish School Board members into office. Rittiner was further exasperated when
the mayor and the business community remained silent, refusing to voice support
of the board or the idea of limited desegregation.77
Rittiner was not alone in misjudging his constituents. Two years earlier and to
the dismay of 500,000 Catholics in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Archbishop
Joseph Rummel announced the city’s parochial schools would begin a grade-per-
year desegregation process in the fall 1957. Church members reacted immediately.
Emile Wagner, a prominent Catholic and Orleans Parish School Board member
led those opposed to desegregating the parochial schools. Ironically, Wagner and
Judge Wright had been close friends at Loyola University, and it was Wright who
had recommended Wagner for the school board. Wagner made a direct appeal to
the Pope asking him to renounce Rummel’s plan. Although the Vatican rebuked
Wagner, many of New Orleans’ Catholic residents showed their support for keep-
ing the Catholic schools segregated by withholding contributions to their churches.
Rumors circulated that the State of Louisiana, in a signal of statewide opposition,
might rescind the Church’s tax-exempt status. Wagner organized an opposition
group, the Association of Catholic Laymen. In response, the archbishop threat-
ened to excommunicate members of the group. Ultimately, Rummel lacked the
fortitude or support to keep fighting Wagner and rescinded his earlier decree. As
the public schools begin desegregating in 1960, the elderly Rummel, hampered
by a recent injury, was unable to work in tandem with the Orleans Parish school
district and desegregate the parochial schools. The absence of Rummel’s active
leadership and pressure from the Church’s congregants stalled the desegregation
of the Catholic schools until 1962.78
School board member Wagner and his followers were far from alone in
resisting school desegregation as many people throughout Louisiana vehemently
opposed desegregation and harbored deep-seated racism. These feelings drew
them to a formidable, contentious, and uncompromising leader, Leander Perez,
who unequivocally viewed most Blacks as illegitimate and all Blacks as intellectu-
ally and morally inferior to Whites. He quite willingly and publicly affirmed this
belief on many occasions. A wealthy lawyer from Plaquemines Parish known as
the pit bull and political czar of segregation, Perez never held an elected seat in the
Louisiana legislature. That detail did not deter him. Perez worked closely with a

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a for tress at 3811 nor th galvez | 21

legislative colleague from the northern rural portion of the state, William Rainich,
and Perez relished in the power and public attention his financial standing and
political associations afforded him.79 Rainich, elected to the Louisiana Senate in
1948, drew from previous experience from his time in the Louisiana House of
Representatives. As Louisiana reacted to the various federal court rulings, Rainich
hoped the state would emerge as a model for thwarting federal government over-
reach and for obstructing the efforts of the NAACP.80 With Rainich’s legislative
networks and Perez’s passion, the two men led many of the legislative efforts to
block school desegregation.
Perez, the ringleader of the resistance to school desegregation, embodied the
passion of southern segregationists and combined this with substantial legisla-
tive acumen and relentless disdain for the federal government. As early as 1955,
Perez and Senator Rainich introduced the White Citizens’ Council (a multi-state
radical White supremacist organization with roots in Mississippi) to Louisiana.
Dr. Emmett L. Irwin served as the official leader of the New Orleans chapter,
but it was Perez’s impassioned and fervent speeches that drew more and more
people into the organization. Within a year, the Council boasted approximately
75,000 members from all walks of life in Louisiana, with a third of these from
New Orleans. Like Perez, many of the members belonged to the Catholic Church,
despite the Church’s strong stance against the organization.81
By the fall of 1955, the White Citizens’ Council led segregationist efforts
across Louisiana as well as within New Orleans. Within a short time, Council
chapters existed in over half of Louisiana’s parishes and boasted statewide mem-
bership of 100,000.82 It collected 5,000 signatures on a petition urging the Orleans
Parish School Board to block school desegregation.83 Perez provided legal and
financial assistance to the New Orleans chapter. The largest of the Council groups,
the New Orleans chapter included over 50,000 members at one time and could
easily attract thousands of Whites to rallies to listen to Perez speak.84
Hoping to exclude Black children from all-White schools, White Citizens’
Council leaders Rainich and Perez also pressured the Louisiana legislature to
intervene. In 1958, the Louisiana legislature passed several measures to weaken
desegregation efforts including laws allowing the governor to close any school that
desegregated, providing state funds to any students seeking to leave the traditional
public schools, and granting the state sweeping power to control all schools.85
Convinced Whites would choose private schools over segregated public schools,
particularly if Louisiana created a system to make private schools affordable, Perez
also advocated expanding the role and number of private schools. For a short time,
school board President Rittiner belonged to the White Citizens’ Council but
eventually left the group.86 In contrast, fellow board member Wagner remained

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Another random document with
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[220]
Caput vigesimum sextum.

Adsunt ! adsunt ! — Arma inter socios dividuntur. — Paratur


bellum. — Duo viri adversùs quinquaginta. — Victoris clementia.

H æc inter sex menses effluxêre, nec Vendredi ullam denuò de


patriâ repetendâ mentionem domino fecerat. Sæpiùs autem,
confecto labore, montem, unde insulam, in quâ natus erat,
prospectaret, conscendere solebat. Ibi meditabundus sedebat,
lugens quòd à patre in perpetuum disjunctus esse videretur. Et ipse
Robinson tacebat de hoc itinere ; quippe qui non posset amici votis
priùs obsecundare, quàm cuncta ad novum vivendi genus fuissent
disposita.

Nunc autem absolutis rebus maximè ne [221]cessariis, Robinson


primus navis ad socii patrem arcessendum denuò parandæ auctor
fuit. Quo audito, Vendredi tantâ etiamnum quantâ priùs lætitiâ
affectus, gratum erga Robinsonem animum eodem modo declaravit.
Proximo igitur die opus inchoatum est, instructisque idoneis
securibus longè feliciùs res cessit.

Die quâdam, Robinson, in negotio quodam domestico


occupatus, socium ad littus misit, ut testudinem quæreret ; diù enim
grato hoc cibo caruerant. Ille verò brevì magnâ cum festinatione
rediit ; anhelans pavitansque hæc sola proferre potuit : « Adsunt !
adsunt ! » Territus ipse Robinson interrogat quisnam adsit. « Ô
domine ! una, duæ, tres, sex scaphæ ! » Numero scilicet inter tres et
sex, propter animi agitationem, reminisci non potuit.

Robinson quàm velocissimè collem conscendit, atque non sine


horrore agnoscit, Vendredi non erravisse ; atque ipse numerat sex
scaphas barbaris repletas, qui ap [222]pellere littori conabantur. Tum
celeriter descendit, sociique trepidantis animum confirmat,
interrogans an fideliter et strenuè cum ipso stare velit, si cum
barbaris sit decertandum.

« Vita mea tua est, » respondit ille, cùm interim satis firmatus
fortitudinem pristinam in animum revocâsset. « Age verò, Robinson
exclamat, absit ut barbari inhumana exsequantur consilia ! Quæ
constituerim ego, tibi inter eundum exponam ; nunc non loquendi,
sed agendi tempus est. »

Tum unum è tormentis è vallo deducit, rotis suffultum ; sex


sclopeta majora, quatuor minora, repletaque illa, cum duobus gladiis
profert. Uterque duobus sclopetis manuariis gladioque cingulum
instruit, tria sclopeta majora humero imponit, tormentoque trahendo
adjungitur. Abundabant prætereà globis plumbeis majoribus
minoribusque, et pulvere nitrato. Sic cum hoc [223]militari apparatu
fortiter ad bellum progrediuntur.

Ponte versatili trajecto, consistunt. Tum Robinson socio omne


belli consilium exposuit. « Montem circùm, ait, atque per
densissimam sylvam ibimus, ne ab hostibus conspiciamur. Tum in
arbustis densis ad littus ferè procurrentibus ad eos propiùs
accedemus. Cùm erimus intra teli jactum, subitò tormentum
explodatur bellicum, quo barbari, credo equidem, territi, relictâ
prædâ, in scaphas confugient. » Tum commilitoni manum porrigit ; et
uterque se fortissimi militis officio functurum pollicetur.

Interim tacito gressu usque ad extremam dumetorum partem


perveniunt. Robinson comitis auri insusurrat, ut quàm cautissimè
post magnam quamdam arborem adrepat, redeatque sibi
declaraturus num hostes inde conspici possint. Vendredi, reversus,
nuntiat optimè illos observari posse, ignem circumsidentes, ossaque
alterius captivi [224]jam mactati assata rodentes ; alterum non procul
ab illis vinctum jacere ; hunc ex albo genere hominum videri, et pari
neci destinatum.

Non tenuit iram Robinson, de viro albo inprimis audiens. Tubum


opticum, quem nave servatum secum apportaverat, prætendit post
arborem ipse collocatus, et ea quæ Vendredi retulerat, ipse vera
esse deprehendit. Quinquaginta circiter cannibales apud ignem
consederant ; captivum verò jacentem Europæum esse facilè
agnovit. Tum autem exarsit, sanguis fervet, pectus æstuat. Si verò
primum hunc animi motum sequitur, temerè impetu facto multùm
effundet sanguinis : novit enim rationem cæcâ animi perturbatione
vinci nunquam oportere ; itaque indignationem cohibet.

Ad eam deinde partem dumetorum, quæ longiùs excurrebant,


progressus, animadvertit hiatum mediocrem è longinquo vix
conspiciendum. Collocatum ibi tormentum [225]ita dirigit, ut globus
super capita barbarorum emissus neminem lædat. Deinde socio
tacitè significat ut accuratè ipsum in omnibus imitetur, quæ agentem
ipsum viderit.

Quo facto, duo sclopeta ponit humi, tertium manu tenet : quod
Vendredi imitatus est. Tum funem incendiarium rimulæ tormenti
admovet. Ignem pulvis concipit ; globus exploditur. Fragore audito,
barbari è cespitibus ad terram procidunt, quasi omnes unà occisi,
Robinson et socius in exitum rei intenti erectique, ad pugnam, si
necesse foret, cætera parant. Mox verò barbari, terrore, quo primùm
perculsi fuerant, parumper sedato, in pedes se erigunt. Pavidiores
ad scaphas profugiunt, fortiores arma capiunt.

Illi verò, solo tormenti fragore exterriti, neque ignem, neque


globum viderant ; itaque terror eorum Robinsonis exspectatione
minor fuit. Cùm autem nihil circumspiciendo animadverterent quo
rursus terrerentur, animum statim receperunt. Fu [226]gientes quoque
revertuntur ; cuncti horrendum clamorem edunt, atque sævissimo
vultu gestuque arma vibrantes chorum bellicum instaurant.

Robinson hæret etiam dubius, donec choro finis fieret. Cùm


verò vidisset barbaros iterum considere, duosque mitti qui
Europæum adducerent mactandum, tum diutiùs iram cohibere non
potuit. Scilicet præcipit socio voce submissâ : « Tu ad dextram, ego
ad sinistram : Deus nos adjuvet ! » His dictis, sclopetum ipse
explodit : idem facit Vendredi, qui meliùs Robinsone collineaverat. In
sinistrâ enim parte quinque, in dextrâ tres tantùm prociderunt. Ex
quibus octo, tres interfecti, quinque vulnerati modò erant, Mira fuit
festinatio quà jam omnes qui illæsi fuerant, fugam corripuêre. Alii,
alia in loca aufugientes, immanem edunt ejulatum. Robinson nunc
prorumpere gestit, ut fugientes persequatur, miserumque Europæum
vinculis liberet ; sed obstupuit sanè, cùm [227]nonnullos fugientium
rursùs coalescere, et se ad defensionem parare vidisset. Itaque
quàm celerrimè alterum sclopetum arripit. Idem Vendredi, amboque
suum quisque explodunt. Hìc duo tantum occubuerunt barbari.
Nonnulli autem, vulnerati scilicet, clamantes atque ululantes,
amentium instar, discurrunt ; alii cruenti, alii vehementer læsi. Ex istis
non multo post tres etiam semianimes procidunt.

« Agedum, Vendredi, » Robinson exclamat, dum sclopetum


abjicit explosum, ut tertium repletum arripiat ; « prorumpamus. » His
dictis, facto impetu, ambo in campum ruunt, Robinsonque ad
captivum provolat. Dum autem ad illum accedit, nonnullos
barbarorum fugientium animadvertit gradum sistere, atque ad
pugnam se componere. Hoc Robinson socio innuit. Quiquidem,
signo ejus intellecto propiùs accessit, sclopetoque exploso unum ex
illis prostravit.

Interim Robinson cultro vincula secat, [228]quibus captivi manus


pedesque constricti erant. Tum Germanico sermone interrogat,
quisnam sit. Captivus Latinis verbis respondet se Christianum et
Hispanum esse. Tunc illi Robinson sclopetum manuarium
gladiumque porrigit, ut ad pugnam dirimendam ipse auxilio sit.
Hispanus vix sclopetum gladiumque acceperat, cùm furore percitus,
bellumque commune recentiore ira gerens, in barbaros impetum
facit, et dum cæteri ad scaphas se recipiunt, nonnullos cunctantes
cædit. Jamque illi velis remisque aufugêre.

Vendredi Hispanusque unam è scaphis relictis conscendere


statuunt, ut fugientes persequantur. Robinson autem eos à consilio
avertit, his dictis : « Abundè est, amici ! sanguinis humani satis
profudimus, plus fortasse quàm fas erat. Cæteri vivant, cùm nobis
porrò nocere nec velint, nec valeant. »

« Fieri autem potest, excipit Vendredi, ut majore numero


revertantur. — Sit [229]sanè ! » Robinson respondet, ejus humerum
leniter percutiens ; « nonne exercitus quoque noster auctus est ? »
Hispanum ostendens. « Nunc licet nobis vel legionem integram
istorum aggredi cædereque, seu in aperto, seu intra vallum
præliemur. »

Jam vir noster, ut erat humanissimus, campum pugnæ


lacrymans circumivit, si fortè cuiquam barbarorum adhuc spirantium
posset succurrere. Plurimi autem exspiraverant ; cæterique, inter
manus ejus vinum vulneribus instillantis, animam efflant. Unus et
viginti numero barbari desiderati sunt ; nec vulneratus quidem ullus
inter victores fuerat.
[230]
Caput vigesimum septimum.

Vendredi patrem suum invenit. — Hispanus narrat suos casus.

R obinson, cupidus scaphæ quam barbari reliquerant


inspiciendæ, ad eam accessit, atque non sine magnâ
admiratione in illâ invenit hominem alium, manibus pedibusque
miserabiliter vinctum, mortuo quàm vivo similiorem.

Robinson statim solutis ejus vinculis, eum erigere nititur. Hic


verò neque stare, neque loqui poterat ; flebiliter potiùs ingemebat,
ratus nimirum se nunc ad mortem trahi. Cùm ille gente barbarus, non
autem Europæus esset, Robinson socium vocat mortuorum corpora
congerentem, ut patrio sermone hominem alloquatur. Vix autem
Vendredi captivum conspexit, cùm [231]spectaculum ejusmodi
insecutum est, quod Robinson et Hispanus non sine lacrymis intueri
potuerunt. Scilicet Vendredi, subito quasi lymphatus, in captivi
amplexus provolare, eum osculari, urgere ; clamare, ridere,
exsultare, saltare, flere, manus torquere, faciem et pectus fœdare,
iterùmque exclamare, amentem denique toto habitu referre. Diù
quoque et multum Robinson socium priùs interrogavit quàm ille hoc
unum breviter domino respondisset : « Pater meus ! »

Jam verò cuncta quibus optimus ille juvenis lætitiam


pietatemque exprimere gestiebat, verbis nemo descripserit. Vicies
ille è scaphâ in terram, è terrâ in scapham prosilit. Robinson vini
aliquantulùm quod in lagenâ reliquum habebat, filio tradit, quo patris
membra tumentia foveat. Tum paululùm secessit, ut Vendredi
liberiùs sese totum daret lætitiæ.

Ac aliquantò post reversus, interrogat an cibum aliquem patri


præbuerit : tum [232]respondenti se minimè adhuc de hoc cogitâsse,
Robinson jentaculum suum ipsi offert, quod hic patri tradidit. Tum
repentè è scaphâ prosiluit, atque ita celeriter procurrit, ut jam extra
conspectum esset priùs quàm Robinson eum posset interrogare.
Mox autem reversus est, manu alterâ urceum aquæ plenum, alterâ
panem caseumque tenens. Illum patri, hunc domino porrigit, ut
jentaculum, quo ille se defraudaverat, compensaret. Senex aquâ
gelidâ subitò recreatus est ; quippe qui siti excruciatus in eo erat ut
prorsùs deficeret.

Jam Robinson ad Hispanum in gramine prostratum


languentemque se convertit ; istum quoque à socio potu ciboque
reficiendum curavit. Tum illum ad scapham deducit, in quam,
tormento quoque, sclopetis spoliisque interfectorum oneratam,
Vendredi saltu se dedit ; tamque velociter, vento quamvis adverso,
eam remis impulit, ut Robinson navigantis cursum in littore pedibus
incedens vix æquaret.
[233]

Brevì ad arcem perventum est, in quam omnes nunc ab omni


periculo liberati ingressi sunt. Tum hospites ambo cœnam salubrem
parant. Et certè Robinson subrisit, cùm cogitâsset se personam regis
referre. Toti scilicet nunc insulæ imperitabat ; omnes ejus subditi
vitam illi acceptam referre debebant, ab ejus nutu pendere, atque, si
opus esset, vitam ipsam pro domino profundere.
Tunc sic socium Robinson alloquitur : « Duplici nomine festus
nobis hic dies habebitur : tum quod duos homines ex faucibus
barbarorum eripuimus ; tum quòd tu ipse, ô amice, patrem tuum
recepisti. Lautissimis igitur dapibus hodie mensam instruamus. »

Inter epulandum narravit Hispanus, quo fato inter manus


barbarorum incidisset. Cùm ille sex ferè menses inter eos versatus
fuisset, eorum linguam ita didicerat, ut cogitata verbis exprimeret,
Vendredique apud dominum munere interpretis [234]fungebatur.
Summa eorum, quæ nunc ille narravit, hæc est :

« Navis nostra ad mercaturam nigrorum hominum faciendam


profecta erat. Ab orâ scilicet Africæ venimus, ubi varias merces ex
Europâ cum granulis aureis, ebore atque hominibus nigris
mutaveramus, odioso quidem et inhumano quæstu : hos centum
numero navi imposueramus in Americam transvehendos. Jam viginti
eorum vitâ excesserant, aliis quippe super alios promiscuè
congestis. Tempestas sæva et diuturna ab itinere deerrantes ad
oram Brasiliæ nos abripuit. Cùm navis fatiscere cœpisset, nec in
altum reverti gubernator auderet, satiùs duxit oram terræ continentis
legere. Exortâ subito novâ tempestate, ventis reflantibus rejecta est
navis à continente, et noctu prope insulam quamdam in scopulos
conjecta. Nonnullâ explosimus tormenta, et, sicuti fieri solet,
significavimus nos in discrimine versari, et statuimus navem,
[235]quoad fieri posset, non deserere. Hâc mente servorum nigrorum
vincula solvimus, ut illi nos ad aquam undique per compages laxatas
abundantem hauriendam adjuvarent. Qui simul liberos se sentiunt,
factâ conspiratione, scaphas occupant ad libertatem simul vitamque
servandam. Tum inopes consilii hæsimus. Illos enim vi adhibitâ
cogendi potestas nobis non erat ; quippe nos quindecim numero, illi
octoginta, multi quoque eorum nostris armis potiti. Neque tamen
minùs anceps periculum erat derelictis in nave scopulis hærente,
sine scapharum auxilio : ad preces igitur confugimus, eos orantes
qui paulò antè servi erant, ut vel remanerent, vel nos secum
abducerent. Hìc verò non possum quin humanitati illorum laudes
debitas persolvam. Etsi enim illis sævissimè usi fueramus, tamen
misericordiâ commoti hoc nobis concesserunt, ut in scaphas, sed
cuncti inermes, admitteremur.
[236]

« Tum in eas desiluimus, tantâ multitudine, ut penè


submergerentur. Interim dum ad insulam proximam tendimus,
mutatus subitò ventus nos, quantumvis remis connisos, in altum
propulit. Tum verò præsentissimum fuit vitæ discrimen. Attamen
scaphæ, quamvis maximè oneratæ, et fluctibus crebris jactatæ,
undarum vim superabant ; ac demùm præter omnem
exspectationem, nemine amisso, ad insulam planè ignotam delatæ
sunt, cujus ab incolis humanissimè excepti sumus. Vitam apud illos
hùc usque degimus, suo quisque modo, misero illo quidem ; barbari
quippe, nullum agrum exercentes, piscibus tantùm fructibusque
vescuntur. Illi nobiscum libenter suam cibariorum paucitatem
communicaverunt, nosque docuerunt quâ arte piscarentur, ut ipsi,
quæ essent ad vivendum necessaria, pararemus. Longè melior sanè
erat nigrorum hominum conditio ; quippe qui et huic vitæ [237]assueti,
et nunc in libertatem vindicati essent.

« Paucis abhinc diebus gens quædam finitima insulae bellum


intulit. Tunc omnes arma capiunt : nos quoque existimamus nostrum
esse officium, sanctum atque solemne, hospitibus tam humanis
auxiliari.
« Ego quidem à latere fortissimi illius senis pugnavi, qui leonis
instar in hostes densissimos irruit. Quem cùm ab hostibus
circumventum vidissem, dum dimicanti opem ferre propero, ipse
infelix cum eo captus sum. Duos inde dies duasque noctes manibus
pedibusque vincti degimus, siti insuper fameque excruciati. Hodierno
autem die vix exorto ad scaphas protrahimur, scilicet ut, pro fero suo
more, prædam illi vorarent. Tum verò divina providentia, vos, ô viri
fortes magnanimique, ad nos servandos misit, ut vobis ejusmodi
beneficium deberemus, [238]quod solvere nunquam erit in nostrâ
potestate. »

Hispanus his dictis conticuit ; effusis autem lacrymis significavit


quàm grato esset animo. Robinson incredibili cum lætitiâ comperit
verissimum esse quod priùs conjecerat, Vendredique cum eo divinæ
providentiæ et sapientiam et benignitatem admiratus est.
[239]
Caput vigesimum octavum.

Concio advocata. — Legati missi. — Leges institutæ. —


Spelunca. — Monstrum.

P roximo die, Robinson omnes sibi subditos convocavit, ut rem,


quæ diutiùs differri non poterat, conjunctis viribus perficerent.

Scilicet verendum erat ne, malignis jacentium in campo pugnæ


cadaverum vaporibus, pestis funesta exoriretur. Itaque cuncti, suâ
quisque instructus securi, conveniunt ; cæsisque lignis, Romanorum
morem imitati, corpora defunctorum comburunt. Interim Vendredi
patrem suum docuerat, quantum gentes benè moratæ ab humanâ
carne abhorrerent. Quodquidem mirum seni primò visum est : filius
autem, [240]expositis omnibus quæ ipse à domino acceperat, brevì
patrem eò adduxit ut morem istum inhumanum aversaretur. Senem
illum Dominicum Robinson proptereà appellavit, quòd die dominicâ
eum servaverat.

Jam ille universos in concionem vocat, in quâ Vendredi iterum


interpretis munere, cùm erga Hispanum, tùm apud senem
Dominicum, functus est. Robinson verò, ut apud ipsum summa
imperii erat, his verbis incipit : « Ô amici, quos Dei providentia socios
mihi adjunxit, omnia nunc possidemus quae ad benè beatèque
vivendum requiruntur : absit verò ut ego his bonis tranquillo animo et
quieto fruar, quandiù intellexero esse alios homines qui, cùm à
naturâ jus æquum illis fruendi acceperint, inopiâ tamen et miseriâ
opprimantur ! Hìc loquor de popularibus tuis, ô amice, quem mihi
communis ab Europâ origo propiùs jungit, de Hispanis scilicet qui
barbarorum sunt [241]adhuc in potestate. Itaque hoc à vobis peto ut
suam quisque sententiam dicat, declaretque quâ potissimùm ratione
eos in societatem hujus nostræ conditionis adsciscamus. »

Hæc fatus, unumquemque sententiam proferre jubet. Hispanus


se vel unum eos, in scaphâ de hostibus captâ, adducturum
pollicetur. Dominicus profitetur se idem facere paratum. Vendredi
autem censet satiùs esse patrem suum senem manere, optatque ut
sibi liceat Hispano sese addere. Tum nobile patrem inter et filium fuit
certamen, utri potissimùm contingeret vitæ periculum adire. Itaque
Robinson coactus est, ad rem dirimendam, sententiam ipse suam
dicere, cui omnes læti obtemperaverunt. Hæc erat, ut Hispanus cum
Dominico proficisceretur, Vendredi autem apud se remaneret.

Addidit verò, priusquàm ambo illi in viam se conferrent, necesse


esse ut, arato agri decies majore spatio, semina sereren [242]tur ;
aucto enim colonorum numero, victum quoque necessarium
augendum esse. Igitur per aliquot hebdomades continuas, agricola
quisque factus est : operariorumque diligentiâ, feliciter omnia et citò
confecta sunt ; cunctisque intra quindecim dies absolutis,
constitutum iter paratur. Sed priùs quàm proficisceretur, Hispanus
probi gratique in Robinsonem animi documentum edidit, quod et
prudentiam ejus declaravit. Scilicet confessus est populares suos,
ipsius instar, esse remiges de plebe, rude genus et incultum ; neque
sibi eorum mentem adeò perspectam esse, ut sponsor fiat de
ipsorum fide ac voluntate ; itaque se optimum censere, à Robinsone,
ut potè domino, leges certas constitui, neminemque in insulam
adducendum esse, nisi priùs legibus illis sese obstrinxerit. Robinson,
lætus hospitis fide, ejus consilio obsecutus est. His autem verbis
leges scriptæ erant.

« Quicumque in insulâ vivere, atque [243]in partem


commoditatum, quas illa præbet, admitti cupit, eum oportet :

« 1º. Voluntati domini illius insulæ legitimi in omnibus obedire ;


cunctisque institutis, quæ ille ad salutem communem civium
promovendam præceperit, obtemperare.

« 2º. Vitam agere in labore, temperantiâ et honestate : nemo


enim in hâc insulâ tolerabitur, qui ignaviæ, qui luxuriæ aut ulli
turpitudinis generi se dederit.

« 3º. Abstinere ab omni rixâ : siquis autem injuriam acceperit, ne


sit in propriâ causâ judex, sed querelam ad insulæ dominum deferat,
aut ad eum qui judex ab illo constitutus fuerit.

« 4º. Omnes labores ad communem utilitatem necessarios


libenter suscipere, ac, si res postulabit, domino, vel cum vitæ
discrimine, opem ferre.

« 5º. Si quis ullam ex his legibus æquissimis violare ausus fuerit,


cæterorum [244]officium est adversùs eum coalescere, ut pareat, aut
ex insulâ in perpetuum ejiciatur.

« Neminem verò non hortamur ut has conditiones seriò


perpendat, nomenque jurisjurandi loco non subscribat, nisi priùs
statuerit illis quàm religiosissimè obtemperare.

« Robinson. »
Has leges scriptas Hispanus in vernaculum sermonem vertit.
Quo facto, ille et calamis et atramento instruitur, ut populares ejus
nomen legibus propositis priùs subscribant, quàm proficiscantur.
Tum viaticis scaphæ impositis, magnâ cum pietate valedicunt
Robinsoni socioque, et vela faciunt.

His peractis, Robinson, comite Vendredi, domum venando redit.


Sed non longè processerat, cùm canis stetit latrans ad imam rupem
arbustis consitam. Accedunt ambo propiùs, hiatumque in rupe
[245]deprehendunt adeò arctum, ut irrepere, non verò ingredi,
possent. Robinson socium tentare jussit num per hiatum istum
posset se immittere. Qui caput cùm vix admovisset, horrendo
clamore retraxit, nihilque Robinsonis admonitionem curans, amentis
instar aufugit. Tandem Robinson, eum assecutus, causam fugæ
rogat : « Heu ! heu ! respondet Vendredi, fugiamus ! monstrum
horrendum vidi, ingens, ardentibus oculis, faucibus tantis ut nos
ambo simul absorbere possit.

« — Ehem ! Robinson excipit, fauces satis amplas dicis :


attamen ipse rem explorabo. — Ô domine, exclamat Vendredi, ad
pedes ejus provolutus, per Deum te obsecro ; absit ut hoc facias : te
monstrum illud deglutiet ; tum miser Vendredi domino orbatus erit. »
Robinson subridens interrogat, an ipse ab illo devoratus fuerit. Cùm
Vendredi obmutesceret, illum Robinson domum jussit festinare, ut
lampadem accensam quæreret. Ipse interim ad [246]speluncam
reversus sclopeto armatus, ad ostium se collocat.

Mox Vendredi cum lampade redit, dominumque iteratis precibus


orat, ne morti certæ ultrò se objiciat. Robinson autem, qui re
deliberatâ timoris expers erat, hortatur socium ut animo confidat.
Tum lampadem sinistrâ, sclopetum dextrâ tenens, monstro fortiter
obvius fertur. Capite vix immisso, ad dubiam lampadis lucem ipse
quoque aliquid conspicatus est quod sibi horrorem incussit. Neque
adeò tamen aufugere voluit ; sed admotâ propiùs lampade, perspexit
nihil planè illud esse nisi lamam ætate fractum, et senio mox
interiturum. Scilicet cùm iis animalibus, quæ sic degunt uti natura se
habet, vires non jam suppetunt ut anquirant et parent quæ sunt sibi
ad victum necessaria, tum sese in latibula recipiunt, ubi languore aut
inediâ consumuntur.

Cùm igitur Robinson circumspiciendo nihil deprehendisset


præter animal illud [247]minimè timendum, penitùs in speluncam
irrepsit, vocato ad se Vendredi. Hic etsi vehementer trepidabat, non
potuit quin dominum ducem sequeretur, atque non sine admiratione
vidit quantoperè magnitudinem monstri timor exaggeravisset.

Cùm jam lama in eo esset ut ageret animam, Robinson illum ex


antro propellit, quem, cùm exspiraverit, terrâ obruat. Quo facto,
curiosiùs locum explorantes, inveniunt antrum satis amplum et
jucundum, ex quo magnam in posterum utilitatem se capturos
sperabant : scilicet illud quasi de industriâ excavatum erat. Hoc
statim Robinson elegit, ubi, fervidissimo solis æstu, frigus captaret.
Itaque missus est Vendredi ut instrumenta afferret, quorum ope
cœperunt ostium antri amplificare ; atque in hoc opere, dùm
abessent duo legati, tempus non sine jucunditate consumpserunt.
[248]
Caput vigesimum nonum.

Navis anglica appulsa ad insulam. — Quo casu. — Magna


Robinsonis in præfectum merita. — Spes liberationis.

O cto jam elapsis diebus nondum legati redierant. Vendredi


sæpissimè nunc ad montem procurrebat ; nec tamen, quamvis
intentis intueretur oculis, quidquam conspiciebat. Tandem die
quâdam, cùm Robinson domi occupatus esset, ecce subitò redit ille
exsultans, ac procul : « Adveniunt ! adveniunt ! » Hoc nuntio lætus
Robinson, telescopio arrepto, ad collem properat. Inde è longinquo
prospicit scapham ad insulam tendentem. Sed, quassans caput,
« Incertum, ait ille socio, an hoc verè sit quod exspectamus. »
Vendredi [249]expalluit : Robinson iterum speculatur ; nunc jam res
est non dubia. Scilicet Europæana erat navicula, albique homines in
eâ armati. Extemplò socii alium collem conscendunt, certiora visuri.
Quantus verò fuit stupor cernentium navem ingentem Anglicam, in
anchoris stantem !

Tum Robinsonis animus admiratione, metu, lætitiâ invicem


afficitur. Hinc enim gaudet spe liberationis ; inde verò stupet
metuitque, quòd non liquet quo consilio navis ista hoc appulisset.
Itaque veritus ne piratæ essent, in colle arboribus virgultisque
consito se sociumque collocat in speculis. Inde cernunt scapham
undecim hominibus oneratam ad littus appellere, ex quibus octo
armati, tres reliqui inermes vinctique. Hi quidem vix in littore expositi
vinculis soluti sunt. Unus ex illis misericordiam armatorum
implorabat. Reliqui duo manibus sublatis à Deo auxilium et salutem
petere videbantur. Quibus conspectis, Robinson perturbatus et
anceps [250]consilii stetit. At brevì non sine horrore videt nonnullos
nautarum strictis gladiis necem captivo intentantes, ac deindè tribus
captivis relictis proximum petentes nemus. Illi intereà sedebant
mœsto dejectoque vultu, ad cogitationes quid deinde futurum esset
dolore converso. Tum Robinson, cujus in mentem alienis malis
propria revocabantur, miseris istis hominibus vel ipsius vitæ periculo
opem ferre statuit. Igitur Vendredi jubetur sclopeta, gladios
apparatumque tormentarium quàm celerrimè afferre : ipse remanere
satiùs duxit, speculaturus quæ sequerentur. Cunctis igitur ad
pugnandum paratis, magnâ cum voluptate nostri animadvertunt
nautas vagantes in umbrâ passim recubare, ut somno, diei
fervidissimo tempore, indulgerent. Tum Robinson, cùm paululùm
exspectâsset, confidenti animo ad miseros illos accedit. Qui cùm
facie à Robinsone aversâ sederent, attoniti stupuerunt, auditâ voce
subito clamantis : « Quinam viri [251]estis ? » At illi exsilire, fugamque
parare. Robinson verò Germanico sermone hortatur, ne timeant ; se
servatorem adesse, et de patriâ, de malis, et quid opis ipse ferre
posset, interrogat. « Angli sumus, » respondet unus, qui
Germanicam linguam apprimè intelligebat. « Ego sum præfectus
navis : nautæ mei, conjuratione factâ, navi meâ potiti sunt. Primo
statuerant me cum viris istis bonis interficere ; tandem vitam
deprecantibus concesserunt. Vita autem in hâc insulâ desertâ, inopiâ
et miseriâ perituris, est ipsâ morte acerbior. — Ego vos, inquit
Robinson, ex omni difficultate expediam, vel ipsius capitis mei
periculo, sed duplici lege, scilicet ut mihi tu, quandiù in insulâ, cum
tuis pareas ; deinde ut, si navem tuam tibi restituere mihi contigerit,
me meosque in Angliam revehas. » Quæ cùm præfectus affirmando
promisisset, tum Robinson sclopeto quemque gladioque armavit, eâ
tamen conditione, [252]ut iis nemo ante uteretur quàm ipse jussisset.
« Scelestos homines, addit ille, somnò nunc sopitos, et passim
jacentes occupemus ; sed incruenta sit victoria. »

Tum illi toti ab luctu versi in iram, ducem secuti sunt ; Vendredi
laqueos, quibus illi ligati fuerant, secum ferente. Jam ad proximum
accedunt, in faciem prostratum, et somno tam alto oppressum, ut,
manibus pedibusque vinctis, os ei priùs obstruxerint quam penitùs
experrectus esset. Manibus à tergo revinctis, in eodem statu
immotus manere jubetur ; qui, si vel minimam vocem ediderit,
jugulabitur.

Quo facto, ad secundum properant, quem ligatum pariter


supinum collocant, eadem, nisi sileat, intentantes. Et jam, favente
supremo illo scelerum vindice, sex in vinculis erant, cùm postremi
duo, subitò experrecti surgentesque, arma corripiunt. « Ô vos
scelesti, exclamat Robinson, cernite socios, arma abjicite ; pereat qui
cunctabitur. » Hæc cùm intonuisset, illi, [253]gladiis abjectis, in genua
se prosternere, supplicesque delicti veniam à præfecto petere. Atque
his etiam manus nodis implicantur. Tum Robinson jubet universos in
speluncam contrudi ; ostioque validis arborum ramis obstructo,
mandat custodi ut interficiatur si quis claustrum tentat perrumpere.
Deinde socii facto agmine ad scapham se conferunt, quam vectibus
admotis in siccum protrahunt ; carinâ deinde perforatâ.

Sub horam post meridiem tertiam, tormentum è navi exploditur,


ad revocandos ex insulâ nautas. Quo signo ter repetito cùm nemo
rediisset, alia scapha è navi profecta est ad insulam. Tunc Robinson
cum sociis in collem se recipit. Scaphâ appulsâ, nautæ ad priorem

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