Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board and the 

Desegregation of New Orleans Schools

by

Davison M. Douglas

Arthur B. Hanson Professor of Law and Director, 

Institute of Bill of Rights Law, School of Law, 

College of William and Mary

Prepared for inclusion in the project

Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History

Federal Judicial Center

Federal Judicial History Offi ce

2005

This Federal Judicial Center publication was undertaken in furtherance of the Center’s statutory mission to “conduct, coordinate, and encourage programs relating to the history of 

the judicial branch of the United States government.” The views expressed are those of the 

author and not necessarily those of the Federal Judicial Center.
Blank pages inserted to preserve pagination when printing double-sided copies.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

iii

Contents

Editor’s Introduction vii

Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board and the Desegregation of New Orleans Schools: A 

Short Narrative 1

Early efforts to challenge school segregation in New Orleans 2

Early efforts in Louisiana to prevent compliance with the Brown v. Board of Education decision 3

Renewed efforts to challenge school segregation in New Orleans 3

More legal efforts to forestall school desegregation 4

Judge Wright orders school desegregation to begin in September 1960 4

The Louisiana legislature takes further action to prevent school desegregation 5

Parents sue, and a three-judge court intervenes 6

The state legislature meets again to stop desegregation 6

Last minute wrangling between Judge Wright and state offi cials 7

School desegregation begins in New Orleans 8

The three-judge district court again takes action 9

New legislative efforts to stop school desegregation 9

Another three-judge court ruling 10

Support for desegregation from Washington 10

School desegregation in New Orleans expands in fall 1961 10

Judge Wright moves on 11

The Courts and Their Jurisdiction 13

United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana 13

United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit 14

Supreme Court of the United States 14

The Judicial Process: A Chronology 17

Legal Questions Before the Courts 21

What was the legal basis of the original 1952 lawsuit in Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board? 21

According to the Supreme Court, was legally mandated school segregation constitutional? 21

Did the Brown v. Board decision require the desegregation of New Orleans schools, as argued by 

the plaintiffs in Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board? 22

Did the Louisiana state legislature, as it asserted, have the authority to control the racial 

composition of the state’s schools in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board decision? 22

Did Louisiana have a right of “interposition” to prevent the federal government from carrying 

out an action that the state legislature held to be unconstitutional? 23

What did the federal courts decide in related cases? 24

What was the impact of the case? 25

Legal Arguments in Court 27

Lawyers’ arguments and strategies for the parents of the black students seeking desegregation—

the plaintiffs 27
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

iv

Lawyers’ arguments and strategies for the Orleans Parish School Board and the state legislature 

of Louisiana—the defendants 27

Biographies 29

Wayne Borah 29

Ruby Bridges 30

Robert L. Carter 31

Herbert W. Christenberry 32

Jimmie H. Davis 33

Jack Paul Faustin Gremillion 34

Thurgood Marshall 35

Richard Taylor Rives 36

Alexander Pierre (A.P.) Tureaud 37

J. Skelly Wright 38

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. 39

Save Our Schools and the Committee for Public Education 39

Media Coverage and Public Debates 41

Editorial—“New Desegregation Order” 41

“Letter from a New Orleans Mother” 42

National media coverage 44

Editorial—“The Battle of New Orleans” 44

Other accounts 45

Observations of John Steinbeck on the New Orleans desegregation crisis 45

“The Mother Who Stood Alone,” by Isabella Taves 47

Public opinion 49

Supporters of keeping public schools open 49

Save Our Schools (excerpt), May 1960 50

New Orleans District of the Methodist Church, resolution (excerpt), July 1960 50

Letter to the editor 50

Opponents of desegregation 51

“Death Stalks Our Land With Black Plague,” Knights of White Christians, New Orleans, 

August 1960 51

Letters to the editor 52

New Orleans Times-Picayune, November 21, 1960 52

Telegram from Mayor Jack Howard of Monroe, Louisiana, to state legislature 53

Historical Documents 55

Original complaint fi led in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, September 

4, 1952 55

Amendment to Louisiana State Constitution, article XII, section 1 (1954) 57

Petition requesting an end to school segregation in New Orleans, June 27, 1955 58

Judge J. Skelly Wright’s February 1956 decision requiring school desegregation in New Orleans 

(excerpt) 58

Statement of Louisiana State Senator William Rainach in response to the decision of the threejudge district court, February 15, 1956 60
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

v

The Southern Manifesto 61

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decision affi rming Judge Wright’s desegregation 

order, 1957 63

Interposition resolution and legislation 65

Speech by Governor Jimmie Davis, November 13, 1960 67

Through My Eyes, by Ruby Bridges (excerpt) 68

Joint resolution of Louisiana state legislature urging boycott of desegregated schools, November 

16, 1960 70

Decision and order of U.S. District Court, November 30, 1960 72

Letters sent to Judge Skelly Wright during the desegregation controversy 74

Bibliography and Resources 79
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Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

vii

Editor’s Introduction

The federal court proceedings surrounding the desegregation of New Orleans public 

schools revealed the diffi cult and lengthy process of enforcing the Supreme Court’s 

landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Every desegregation order of 

the federal courts in Louisiana met with the unfl agging resistance of segregationists who were in full control of the state’s government. Despite their uninterrupted 

legal setbacks, the segregationists in the Louisiana legislature, with the support of 

the governor, the attorney general, and the state courts, were able to delay enforcement of even the token desegregation that initially resulted from the federal courts’ 

orders. The strength of the state’s segregationists nearly silenced white moderates in 

New Orleans. Black leadership in New Orleans largely relied on the efforts of local 

black lawyers and the legal arm of the NAACP, which offered the services of such 

respected lawyers as Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter, to keep pressure on the 

courts. The segregationist resistance in Louisiana was more intense than in many 

other struggles over desegregating schools in the South, but the story of the New 

Orleans school crisis illustrates a range of strategies employed by segregationists and 

the legal instruments available to federal judges determined to enforce the Supreme 

Court’s decision in Brown.

Bruce Ragsdale, editor

Director, Federal Judicial History Offi ce, Federal Judicial Center

Note on language in the historical documents: Some of the documents representing 

the segregationists’ views contain offensive language. These selections are included 

in this unit to convey the intensity of resistance to desegregation and to indicate the 

kind of language that was commonly heard in public debate at the time.
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Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

1

Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

and the Desegregation of New Orleans 

Schools: A Short Narrative

In 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States in Brown v. Board of Education

declared legally mandated school segregation to be unconstitutional, but it would 

be years before desegregated schools would become a reality in most of the school 

districts where the Court’s decision applied. In many southern communities, opponents of the Supreme Court’s school desegregation decision fi ercely resisted any 

effort to force local school boards into compliance with the Brown decision. Much 

of the ensuing struggle over school desegregation took place in the district and appellate courts of the federal judiciary.

 New Orleans was one such community where supporters of school integration 

called on the federal courts to enforce the Brown decision while opponents of racial mixing took extraordinary measures to resist any steps toward desegregation, 

“The Problem We All Live With” by Norman Rockwell, 1964. 

Rockwell’s painting was inspired by the experience of Ruby Bridges, who was escorted to school by 

U.S. marshals after Judge J. Skelly Wright ordered the fi rst stage in the desegregation of New Orleans 

public schools. Courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Mass. 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

2

capturing worldwide attention in the process. Although a federal judge ordered the 

desegregation of the New Orleans schools in 1956, the local school board and state 

offi cials successfully resisted implementation of that order until November 1960, 

when four black fi rst graders entered two previously all-white schools. Even then, the 

Louisiana governor and the state legislature continued to resist federal authority.

 Public schools remained desegregated in New Orleans largely because of the 

determination of a small group of black parents who refused to back down and the 

tenacity of a few federal judges who insisted that Louisiana’s political leadership 

comply with the requirements of the U.S. Constitution.

Early efforts to challenge school segregation in New 

Orleans

On September 4, 1952, black attorney A.P. Tureaud, with the assistance of Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter from the Legal Defense and Educational Fund of 

the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), fi led 

a lawsuit on behalf of a group of black parents in the U.S. District Court for the 

Eastern District of Louisiana seeking the racial desegregation of the New Orleans 

public schools. Although a prior lawsuit had sought equal facilities and resources for 

black and white schools in New Orleans, this lawsuit challenged segregation itself, 

claiming that Louisiana’s state statutes and constitutional provisions mandating 

school segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. During the previous few years, black parents in New 

Orleans had grown increasingly unhappy with the poor support given schools for 

black students, who constituted nearly 60% of the city’s student population. With 

the encouragement of the local NAACP and attorney Tureaud, a group of parents 

fi led a lawsuit challenging school segregation as unconstitutional. Oliver Bush, an 

insurance salesman with the all-black Louisiana Industrial Life Insurance Company, 

father of eight school-aged children and president of the Macarty PTA, volunteered 

to have his children be the lead plaintiffs in the suit, which became known as Bush 

v. Orleans Parish School Board.

 At the encouragement of Thurgood Marshall, Tureaud agreed to suspend his 

newly fi led lawsuit until the Supreme Court of the United States issued its ruling on 

a pending group of cases that called for a decision on the constitutionality of school 

segregation. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued its unanimous ruling in 

Brown v. Board of Education, declaring legally protected public school segregation 

unconstitutional. 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

3

Early efforts in Louisiana to prevent compliance with the 

Brown v. Board of Education decision

Across the South, in the states of the old Confederacy and in the border states where 

much of public life remained legally segregated, many white political leaders attacked 

the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. Within a few days of the decision, the Louisiana legislature passed a resolution condemning the Supreme Court’s 

“usurpation of power” and later enacted various statutes that imposed administrative barriers to students seeking to transfer to a new school. In November 1954, the 

voters of Louisiana approved an amendment to the state constitution that required 

school segregation in an effort “to promote and protect public health, morals, better 

education and the peace and good order in the State, and not because of race.” 

Renewed efforts to challenge school segregation in New 

Orleans

In May 1955, the Supreme Court issued another decision in the Brown v. Board of 

Education case, this time directing the school boards involved in the case to desegregate 

their schools “with all deliberate speed.” In response, NAACP attorneys Thurgood 

Marshall and Robert Carter urged black parents across the South to demand that 

local school boards comply with precedent established by the Brown decision. A.P. 

Tureaud petitioned the Orleans Parish School Board, asking it to comply with the 

Brown decision by desegregating the city’s schools. On August 20, 1955, after the 

Board took no action on his petition, Tureaud reopened the 1952 lawsuit demanding 

the desegregation of the New Orleans schools and also asked for an order declaring 

unconstitutional the recent acts of the Louisiana legislature that reinforced school 

segregation. Robert Carter, of the national offi ce of the NAACP, assisted Tureaud in 

developing and arguing the case. 

 In February 1956, a three-judge district court, made up of U.S. Court of Appeals 

Judge Wayne Borah and U.S. District Court Judges Herbert Christenberry and J. Skelly 

Wright, held that the state statutes designed to thwart school desegregation and the 

Louisiana state constitutional provisions that required school segregation violated 

the U.S. Constitution. (Federal law at the time provided for the appointment of such 

three-judge courts when litigants sought to prevent enforcement of state laws that they 

believed to be unconstitutional.) Later that day, Judge Wright held that the Orleans 

Parish Schools were unconstitutionally segregated and ordered the Orleans Parish 

School Board to end school segregation. Judge Wright’s order, the fi rst desegregation 

order issued by a judge in the Deep South states stretching from South Carolina to 

Louisiana, imposed no specifi c date by which the school board had to desegregate 

the New Orleans schools.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

4

More legal efforts to forestall school desegregation

During the summer of 1956, the Louisiana state legislature responded to Wright’s 

desegregation order with another set of laws designed to forestall that action. None 

of the legislature’s efforts to preserve segregation withstood challenges in the federal 

courts, but the legislature was able to delay enforcement of the desegregation order 

for another four years. The barrage of obstructive laws also encouraged those who 

defended segregation. One typical law approved in 1955 authorized the state legislature to determine the racial composition of schools in large cities, such as New 

Orleans. In November 1956, the voters of Louisiana approved a state constitutional 

amendment that barred all lawsuits against school boards.

 When the Orleans Parish School Board argued that the legislature’s act deprived 

the board of the authority to carry out the desegregation order, Judge Wright declared 

the state law unconstitutional and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit 

upheld his decision. The Louisiana legislature, however, was undeterred. In 1958, 

the legislature enacted yet a third round of anti-desegregation laws, which empowered the governor to close any “racially mixed public school or schools under court 

order to racially mix its student body.” A new statute provided that “no child shall 

be compelled to attend any school in which the races are commingled,” and offered 

tuition grants for private schools if a school system operated “no racially separate 

public school.”

Judge Wright orders school desegregation to begin in 

September 1960

In July 1959, A.P. Tureaud, assisted by attorney Constance Baker Motley from the 

national offi ce of the NAACP, went back into court to request that Judge Wright 

establish a specifi c timetable for the desegregation of the New Orleans schools. On 

July 15, 1959, more than three years after his initial decision fi nding the New Orleans 

schools unconstitutionally segregated, Judge Wright ordered the Orleans Parish 

School Board to present a desegregation plan to him by March 1, 1960 (the lawyers 

representing the black schoolchildren had asked for an August 15, 1959, deadline). 

Wright subsequently extended his deadline to May 16, 1960.

 On May 16, 1960, the Orleans Parish School Board advised Judge Wright that it 

had not prepared the required desegregation plan because of the various restraints 

imposed on the school board by the state legislature. Judge Wright responded with 

an order requiring the school board to implement a desegregation plan that he had 

devised. Wright’s plan allowed all fi rst grade students in New Orleans, beginning in 

September 1960, to choose to attend either the white or black school closest to their 

home. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Supreme Court Justice 

Hugo Black, the justice assigned to the Fifth Circuit to provide initial review of ap-
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

5

peals while the full Court was not in session, denied the school board’s request for 

a “stay” of Wright’s order. (The full Supreme Court concurred when it convened in 

the fall.)

 Orleans Parish School Superintendent James Redmond estimated that the entering fi rst-grade class in the fall of 1960 would include 7,000 black students and 4,000 

white students. The Louisiana legislature and the Citizens Council began to seriously 

discuss closing the schools rather than allow Wright’s order to go into effect. An 

organization called Save Our Schools (SOS) emerged as one of the few public voices 

of white moderation and promoted efforts to keep the schools open. Many of the 

members of SOS supported integration, but they never publicly advocated integrated 

schools. The group’s public statements focused instead on the damage to the city’s 

reputation and economy if the schools were to close. Another group of white parents, 

the Committee for Public Education, included many supporters of segregation, but 

they too were determined to prevent school closing, and they had the support of a 

majority of the Orleans Parish School Board.

The Louisiana legislature takes further action to prevent 

school desegregation

In what was by then a familiar pattern, during the summer of 1960 the Louisiana 

legislature took additional action to thwart Judge Wright’s desegregation order and 

assert state authority over public schools. The legislature granted the governor authority to take over the operation of any school district that was subject to court-ordered 

desegregation. Another statute provided that the legislature had the sole right to 

decide which schools were for white children, which schools were for black children, 

and which were to be integrated. The state legislature also established a “sovereignty 

commission” to examine legal measures, including invoking “interposition,” that 

might protect the sovereignty of Louisiana. The doctrine of interposition, accepted 

by many white southerners, held that a state had the authority to block or “nullify” an 

action of the federal government if the state concluded that the federal government 

(including a federal judge) had acted in an unconstitutional manner.

 The attorney general of Louisiana, Jack Gremillion, fi led suit in a state court 

seeking to restrain the Orleans Parish School Board from desegregating its schools 

as required by the federal court order. On July 29, 1960, state court Judge Oliver P. 

Carriere agreed that the Louisiana state legislature had the sole right to determine the 

racial makeup of the state’s public schools and directed the school board to take no 

further action to comply with Wright’s desegregation order. Governor Jimmie Davis 

then entered the fray on August 17, 1960, announcing his intention to take control of 

the Orleans Parish schools pursuant to his authority under the newly enacted state 

law.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

6

Parents sue, and a three-judge court intervenes

In response to a suit fi led by A.P. Tureaud and another fi led by a group of white parents 

who wanted to keep the schools open, Richard Rives, chief judge of the U.S. Court 

of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, assembled a three-judge district court composed of 

himself and U.S. District Court Judges Herbert Christenberry and J. Skelly Wright to 

consider the constitutionality of the state’s various actions. On August 27, 1960, the 

three-judge court issued a temporary injunction restraining the governor and other 

state and local offi cials from acting under the authority of the state court injunction 

and the various statutes passed by the Louisiana legislature that interfered with the 

desegregation of the New Orleans public schools. The three-judge court also declared 

unconstitutional seven of the recently enacted state segregation statutes, including 

the one that permitted Davis to close schools facing integration.

 At the request of the Orleans Parish School Board, Judge Wright accepted an 

alternative desegregation plan devised by the school board and delayed implementation of the desegregation order from September 8 until November 14, 1960. The 

board’s plan relied on the state pupil placement law, which required black students 

wishing to attend an all-white school to apply for transfer. The law also gave the 

school board authority to determine eligibility for transfer based on psychological 

testing, academic aptitude, and character assessment. Wright later revealed that the 

U.S. Department of Justice had urged him to delay desegregation until after the 1960 

presidential election. This delay constituted the fi rst time that Judge Wright ruled 

against the plaintiffs in the case. Tureaud strenuously objected to the two-month 

delay, but failed to convince either the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals or the Supreme 

Court to reverse the delay.

 On October 27, New Orleans School Superintendent James F. Redmond announced that after extensive psychological and ability testing, 5 of 137 black applicants had been accepted and would attend fi rst grade at two white schools. He also 

announced that fi rst grade classrooms would be segregated by sex.

The state legislature meets again to stop desegregation

The delay in the onset of school desegregation allowed segregationist pressure to build 

throughout the state. The day after Redmond announced that fi ve black children 

would enter white schools in November 1960, Governor Davis, yielding to pressure 

from segregationist leaders from throughout the state, reversed course and called the 

state legislature into a special session beginning on November 4. 

 Within fi ve days, the legislature again passed a bewildering assortment of measures 

to prevent or at least delay desegregation in New Orleans. These actions included an 

interposition resolution, declaring the decisions of the courts in the fi eld of desegregation to be a “usurpation” of power, and legislation imposing a mandatory jail 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

7

term and fi ne on any federal judge or other federal offi cer who attempted to impose 

school desegregation. The state legislature also transferred all powers from the Orleans Parish School Board to the legislature. Immediately after the governor signed 

the laws, the legislative leaders appointed a committee, which assumed control of 

the Orleans Parish schools with the intention of blocking the desegregation planned 

for November 14.

Last minute wrangling between Judge Wright and state 

offi cials

Three hours after the legislative committee met on November 10, 1960, to assume 

control of the New Orleans schools, Judge Wright restored the elected school board to 

power and blocked enforcement of the new state statutes. At the request of the local 

U.S. attorney, Judge Wright also issued an order restraining state and local offi cials 

from arresting or initiating any criminal proceedings against federal offi cers for the 

performance of their duties.

 But the state struck back. On Saturday, November 12, State Education Superintendent Shelby Jackson declared a statewide school holiday on Monday, November 

14, as a means of preventing school desegregation in New Orleans on that day. The 

next day Judge Wright directed Superintendent Jackson to appear in Wright’s court 

and explain why Jackson should not be found in contempt of court, since the August 

27 injunction of the three-judge court specifi cally prohibited Jackson from taking 

any action to forestall school desegregation in New Orleans. Also on November 12, 

President Eisenhower’s attorney general, William Rogers, announced that the full 

powers of the Department of Justice would be used if necessary to support Judge 

Wright’s desegregation order.

 Caught between the desegregation order of the federal district court and the 

order from the state superintendent of education that schools close for a holiday, the 

Orleans Parish School Board decided to proceed with its planned desegregation on 

November 14. But the Louisiana state legislature, convening on Sunday, November 13, 

placed the entire state legislature in charge of the Orleans Parish schools, reaffi rmed 

that November 14 would be a school holiday, voted to fi re the Orleans Parish school 

superintendent and school board attorney, and dispatched various sergeants-at-arms 

to New Orleans to ensure that the schools would not open the next morning in New 

Orleans. The legislature completed its work and recessed at 9:00 p.m. on Sunday.

 Forty-fi ve minutes later, Judge Wright issued a new order against the entire 140-

member state legislature, the governor and lieutenant governor, and various other state 

and local offi cials, directing them to take no action “interfering with the operation 

of the public schools for the Parish of Orleans by the Orleans Parish School Board.” 

Federal marshals prepared to escort the black children into the white schools the next 

morning.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

8

School desegregation begins in New Orleans

On the morning of November 14, 1960, four black girls—Ruby Bridges, Tessie Prevost, 

Gail Etienne, and Leona Tate—entered fi rst grade at McDonogh No. 19 and William 

Frantz elementary schools, formerly all-white schools located in lower-income, predominantly white neighborhoods. (A fi fth black student, also slated to attend a white 

school, was removed at the last minute when it was discovered that her parents had 

not been married when she was born. Fearing controversy, the school board and Judge 

Wright agreed that she should not be one of the students attending a white school.) 

More than 100 law enforcement offi cers surrounded the two schools to prevent violence as hundreds of spectators—mostly women and children—gathered to jeer the 

black children and to urge white parents and children to boycott the schools. 

 Also on November 14, the state legislature went back into session to respond 

to what Lieutenant Governor C.C. Aycock called “the genesis of an era of judicial 

tyranny.” The legislature voted, again, to remove the elected Orleans Parish School 

Board from offi ce, and various state offi cials successfully petitioned a state judge for 

an order to restrain the elected school board from taking any further action. Before 

the night was over, however, Judge Wright issued an order nullifying the state court 

order and restraining state offi cials from taking any action to remove the elected 

school board.

 On November 15, the state legislature called on other states to invoke the doctrine of interposition in a coordinated effort. That evening 5,000 people turned out 

for a Citizens Council of Greater New Orleans rally protesting desegregation. State 

Representative W.K. Brown of Grant Parish called for the arrest of Judge Wright 

for “causing disorder, chaos, strife and turmoil in this state.” Leander Perez, district 

attorney for nearby Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes and one of the leading 

segregationists in the state, told the crowd: “Don’t wait for your daughter to be raped 

by these Congolese. Don’t wait until the burr-heads are forced into your schools. Do 

something about it now.”

 Inspired by the call of the Citizens Council, about 1,000 persons, mostly high 

school students, swarmed through various downtown buildings the following day. 

When the mob approached the school administration building, they were turned 

back by police wielding fi re hoses. The mob then rampaged through the city’s business district, throwing bricks and bottles at buses and cars occupied by blacks. Several 

people were injured. That evening, blacks retaliated, fi ring shots and throwing rocks 

at whites. Police arrested more than 250 individuals.

 The Louisiana legislature approved a resolution commending “the parents who 

withdrew their children from the schools sought to be integrated” and calling on 

these parents and their children to continue a boycott. Another resolution called for 

the disqualifi cation of Judge Wright from further participation in the New Orleans 

school desegregation litigation on grounds that he “has a personal bias against the 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

9

State of Louisiana, its Executive Department, its Legislature and its Judiciary . . . which 

has made it impossible for him to fairly and impartially discharge the duties of his 

offi ce.” United States Senator Russell Long addressed the Louisiana state legislature 

and announced that he “would personally vote to impeach the entire [U.S.] Supreme 

Court.”

The three-judge district court again takes action

Despite the public violence and calls for suspension of the desegregation order, a 

three-judge federal district court, again composed of Rives, Christenberry, and Wright, 

denied the school board’s motion to vacate Wright’s desegregation order and issued 

an order restraining more than 700 state and local government offi cials from interfering with school desegregation in New Orleans. The court also decisively rejected 

the state of Louisiana’s argument that it had interposed the state’s sovereignty against 

the “usurpation of power” by the federal courts, fi nding the doctrine of interposition 

to be without merit. 

New legislative efforts to stop school desegregation

Even after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to vacate the decision of the three-judge 

panel, the Louisiana legislature continued its efforts to block desegregation. The 

legislature denied funds to the Orleans Parish School Board and asserted its own 

authority to appoint a school board committed to maintaining segregation.

 In the meantime, the group Save Our Schools (SOS) began to transport a few 

white children to the desegregated schools. In response, the local Citizens Council 

published the names of SOS volunteers and the few other whites who were “breaking” 

the school boycott. The families of the white students who continued to attend the 

desegregated schools faced reprisals and harassment: Some lost jobs, others lost their 

leases, and others received death threats. Fewer than ten white children continued 

to attend the two desegregated schools. Local police established 24-hour guards at 

the homes of those white families, and on December 9, 1960, U.S. marshals began 

escorting white children to the desegregated schools. The U.S. marshals had already 

been escorting the four black children to school since November 14.

 The organized business community in New Orleans had resisted earlier requests 

to support desegregation as a means of keeping the public schools open, but a group 

of over 100 white business and professional leaders, worried that the desegregation 

fi ght would damage the tourist trade and business in the city, warned in a December 

1960 newspaper advertisement that the state’s resistance to school segregation was 

“untenable” and urged an immediate end to “threats, defamation and resistance of 

those who administer our laws.” Immediately thereafter, the signers of the advertisement began to receive harassing phone calls and were criticized at a Citizens Council 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

10

rally. At this rally, Emmett L. Irwin, chair of the local Citizens Council, brought several young white children, some in blackface, onto the stage of the auditorium. On 

Irwin’s signal, the children began kissing each other. Irwin told the crowd: “That’s 

just a little demonstration of what integration means.”

Another three-judge court ruling

In response to petitions fi led by the NAACP and the U.S. Department of Justice, in 

December 1960, a three-judge federal district court composed of Rives, Christenberry, and Wright restored the authority of the Orleans Parish School Board and its 

attorney, who had been dismissed by the state attorney general. 

 The court’s decisions provoked the state legislature’s usual resolutions condemning federal interference with state sovereignty, but Governor Davis vetoed the act 

granting the legislature authority to appoint a new school board for Orleans Parish, 

noting that the three-judge federal court had restrained enforcement of a similar law 

granting the governor the power to appoint a new board.

Support for desegregation from Washington

In early 1961, a new round of state legislative efforts to maintain segregation faltered 

in the face of federal authority. At the direction of U.S. Attorney General Robert 

Kennedy, the Department of Justice fi led contempt of court proceedings seeking to 

force release of funds to the fi nancially strapped Orleans Parish school district. Both 

Judge Wright and the Orleans Parish School Board had sought the department’s 

intervention. 

 On March 20, 1961, the Supreme Court of the United States affi rmed the recent 

orders of the three-judge federal court declaring unconstitutional the various efforts 

by the state of Louisiana to resist desegregation. Although segregationists in Louisiana 

would continue to resist school desegregation in New Orleans, Wright’s determination 

to enforce desegregation, coupled with the support of the Department of Justice and 

the affi rmation of the Supreme Court, ensured that the New Orleans schools would 

remain open and at least partially desegregated.

School desegregation in New Orleans expands in fall 1961

In the fall of 1961, eight black fi rst graders in New Orleans entered previously all-white 

schools, while the four black students who had launched the desegre gation era the 

prior year moved on to the second grade. In May 1961, the NAACP had petitioned 

Judge Wright for much more extensive desegregation, but Wright declined to issue 

such an order. The opening of school in the fall of 1961 was far more peaceful than 

the prior year. Although many white parents continued to boycott the desegregated 

schools, there were no disruptions.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

11

 In the meantime, in October 1961, the Supreme Court once again affi rmed a 

federal district court decision striking down state legislation that made it a crime to 

encourage children to attend desegregated schools. In many ways, a more signifi cant 

decision came on November 29, 1961, when the Louisiana Supreme Court decided 

that the state statute granting the governor authority to replace the elected Orleans 

Parish School Board was as a practical matter unenforceable. This marked the fi rst 

time that a Louisiana state court had recognized the authority of the federal courts’ 

desegregation rulings. The Louisiana Supreme Court commented: “[T]he Louisiana 

statute . . . has been declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. 

. . . While we entertain serious doubt as to the soundness of that ruling, . . . the fact 

remains that the specifi c statute involved here has been stricken with nullity and rendered permanently ineffective by the highest court of the land.” Louisiana Attorney 

General Jack Gremillion announced in early 1962 that federal courts would continue 

to order desegregation and that local communities could avoid desegregation litigation if they tried to “solve some of their racial problems themselves.” The tide had 

turned in Louisiana.

Judge Wright moves on

On December 15, 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed J. Skelly Wright to 

the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Earlier efforts to 

elevate Wright to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had been thwarted 

by southern senators upset with his desegregation rulings. Wright was confi rmed by 

the U.S. Senate and joined the District of Columbia Circuit in April 1962. On April 

3, 1962, in his fi nal order in the New Orleans desegregation case, Wright, noting the 

persistence of signifi cant inequalities between black and white schools, provided 

that in the fall of 1962, grades one through six of the New Orleans schools would be 

desegregated—a signifi cant increase over the prior two years. President Kennedy’s 

appointee as Wright’s successor, U.S. District Judge Frank Ellis, promptly vacated 

Wright’s fi nal order and continued the desegregation of the New Orleans schools 

on a one-grade-each-year basis. The pace of school desegregation in New Orleans 

would remain steady, but slow.
Blank pages inserted to preserve pagination when printing double-sided copies.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

13

The Courts and Their Jurisdiction

The legal efforts to desegregate the New Orleans public schools involved three federal 

courts: the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, usually involving 

a single judge, such as Judge Wright, but sometimes a three-judge panel convened 

to assess the constitutionality of state legislation enacted to block school desegregation; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit; and the Supreme Court of the 

United States.

United States District Court for the Eastern District of 

Louisiana

District courts are located throughout the United States in over 90 districts, with 

jurisdiction to hear all cases involving what are called “federal questions”—cases 

involving an alleged violation of federal statute, federal treaty, or a federal constitutional provision and some disputes based on state law violations, if the parties to the 

dispute are residents of different states (diversity jurisdiction).

 In this case, the black plaintiffs alleged that the Orleans Parish School Board had 

violated the plaintiffs’ rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth 

Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by assigning their children to racially separate 

schools. Judge J. Skelly Wright, a U.S. district court judge in New Orleans, presided 

over this case in the district court and issued the most critical rulings in the case.

 The Eastern District of Louisiana was established by Congress in 1881. (Twice 

before 1881, Congress had divided Louisiana into two federal judicial districts and 

then reunited the state as a single judicial district.) At the time of the Bush v. Orleans 

Parish School Board proceedings, Congress had authorized the district court to have 

two judges. Judge Wright served on the court from 1949 to 1962, and Judge Herbert 

Christenberry served from 1947 to 1975. 

 Certain aspects of the Bush v. Orleans case were heard by a three-judge district 

court. Congress fi rst required three-judge district courts in 1908 in certain cases 

brought under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act or the Interstate Commerce Act. Between 

1910 and 1976, if a party contended that a state offi cial was enforcing a state statute or 

state constitutional provision that violated the U.S. Constitution, federal law required 

that a district court consisting of three federal judges hear the case. These three-judge 

district courts sat only when a need for them arose and were appointed by the chief 

judge for the court of appeals in the circuit. The law required that at least one of the 

three judges be a court of appeals judge. Appeals from the three-judge courts went 

directly to the Supreme Court.

 Because some of the claims in the New Orleans desegregation litigation involved 

the implementation of Louisiana state statutes that the plaintiffs argued violated the 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

14

Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, on several occasions a three-judge 

district court was assembled. United States District Court Judge Skelly Wright sat on all 

of these three-judge courts and wrote the opinion for the court in every instance.

 Three-judge district courts are still required by federal law in cases challenging 

the constitutionality of the apportionment of congressional seats or apportionment 

of state legislatures.

United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

After a U.S. district court judge has rendered a decision, in most cases either party 

may appeal that decision to a U.S. court of appeals. At the time of the Bush case, there 

were eleven courts of appeals organized by Congress in the regional judicial circuits 

of the United States (there are now twelve regional circuits and one special subjectmatter circuit, each of which has a court of appeals). The appeal from a decision of 

a U.S. district court judge almost always goes to the court of appeals for the “circuit” 

in which the case arose. Cases appealed from U.S. district courts in Louisiana go to 

the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which meets in New Orleans. The 

Fifth Circuit court of appeals heard cases in 1960 from the district courts in Florida, 

Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. (In 1980, Congress divided the 

Fifth Circuit and organized Georgia, Alabama, and Florida as the Eleventh Circuit.) 

The U.S. courts of appeals typically hear appeals in panels of three judges. In this 

case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard several appeals from Judge 

Skelly Wright’s rulings in the district court.

 A party that loses in the U.S. court of appeals can ask either the original panel 

of three judges or all of the judges in that particular court to reconsider the panel’s 

decision. In 1960, there were seven active-status judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals 

for the Fifth Circuit. When the full court agrees to hear a case appealed to all of the 

judges, it is known as hearing the case “en banc.” The court is not required to hear 

a case en banc and does so infrequently. On several occasions in the New Orleans 

school desegregation litigation, the Orleans Parish School Board asked the Fifth 

Circuit court of appeals to hear a case en banc, but the court consistently refused to 

do so. 

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the nation. Congress 

authorized it to review cases from U.S. courts of appeals, state supreme courts, and 

three-judge federal courts that involve “federal questions”—questions of interpretation of a federal statute, treaty, or constitutional provision. With a few exceptions, 

the Supreme Court is not required to hear any particular case. The Supreme Court 

agreed to consider certain claims raised in the Bush v. Orleans case, and it consistently 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

15

affi rmed the decisions of the lower courts. The Supreme Court, however, never exercised a full review of the Bush case.
Blank pages inserted to preserve pagination when printing double-sided copies.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

17

The Judicial Process: A Chronology

September 4, 1952

New Orleans attorney A.P. Tureaud, with the assistance of the NAACP, fi led a complaint in federal district court in New Orleans challenging the constitutionality of 

racial segregation in the public schools. Tureaud sued on behalf of a group of black 

students, led by Edward Bush. By agreement between the parties, proceedings on this 

complaint were suspended pending the Supreme Court’s resolution of the Brown v. 

Board of Education case.

May 17, 1954

The Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, declared legally enforced public 

school segregation to be unconstitutional. 

May 31, 1955

The Supreme Court issued its second decision in Brown v. Board of Education, holding that school desegregation must proceed “with all deliberate speed,” but setting 

no specifi c timetable.

August 20, 1955

Attorney A.P. Tureaud fi led an amended complaint in the Bush case seeking (1) a declaration that the state anti-desegregation statutes and state constitutional provisions 

mandating segregation violated the U.S. Constitution and (2) an order requiring the 

desegregation of the New Orleans schools. 

February 15, 1956

A three-judge federal district court, composed of U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Wayne 

Borah and U.S. District Court Judges Herbert Christenberry and J. Skelly Wright, 

ruled that the Louisiana constitutional provision and state statutes requiring school 

segregation were unconstitutional. On the same day, U.S. District Court Judge Skelly 

Wright ordered the Orleans Parish School Board to move “with all deliberate speed” 

to desegregate the New Orleans schools. Judge Wright imposed no timetable on the 

school board to begin desegregation.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

18

March 1, 1957

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a decision affi rming Judge 

Wright’s February 15, 1956, order prohibiting further segregation of schoolchildren 

in New Orleans. Judge Elbert Tuttle wrote the opinion, joined by Judges Richard 

Rives and John Brown. The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit refused 

a request for an en banc hearing and the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal 

of the decision.

July 15, 1959

Judge Wright imposed on the Orleans Parish School Board a deadline of March 1, 

1960, by which time it had to fi le with the court a desegregation plan for the Orleans 

Parish schools. Wright subsequently extended this deadline to May 16, 1960.

May 16, 1960

After the Orleans Parish School Board notifi ed Judge Wright that it could not fi le a 

desegregation plan because of state restrictions on its authority, Wright put in place 

his own plan requiring the desegregation of the Orleans Parish schools beginning 

with the fi rst grade in September 1960. Judge Wright’s plan provided that “all children entering the fi rst grade may attend either the formerly all white public school 

nearest their homes, or the formerly all Negro public school nearest their homes, at 

their option.” 

June 2, 1960

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit turned down the Orleans 

Parish School Board’s request that the panel stay Judge Wright’s May 16, 1960, desegregation order.

July 10, 1960

Justice Hugo Black, acting for the Supreme Court of the United States, refused to stay 

Judge Wright’s May 16 desegregation order. The full Court concurred in the fall.

August 30, 1960

At the request of the Orleans Parish School Board, Judge Wright delayed implementation of his desegregation order from September 8 until November 14, 1960, 

and Wright accepted the board’s desegregation plan, which gave the board greater 

authority over the placement of black students who requested transfer to previously 

all-white schools. 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

19

November 10, 1960

A few hours after a new legislative committee assumed control of the Orleans Parish 

schools, Judge Wright issued a temporary restraining order against the seizure of the 

Orleans Parish School Board by the state legislature.

November 13, 1960

At 9:45 p.m., following the adjournment of a special session of the state legislature, 

Judge Wright issued restraining orders against the entire 140-member state legislature, the governor and lieutenant governor, and various other state and local offi cials, prohibiting them from interfering with the operation of the public schools 

the following day.

November 14, 1960

On the day the four black girls entered formerly all-white elementary schools, Judge 

Wright issued another temporary restraining order prohibiting state offi cials from 

removing the elected school board.

November 30, 1960

The three-judge federal district court, consisting of Rives, Christenberry, and Wright, 

issued an order restraining more than 700 state and local government offi cials, including the governor and the state legislature, from interfering with desegregation. 

The court also declared unconstitutional the Louisiana legislature’s interposition law, 

which attempted to nullify desegregation orders by the federal courts. 

December 12, 1960

The Supreme Court unanimously rejected the request of state offi cials to stay the 

November 30 order of the three-judge court.

December 21, 1960

The three-judge federal district court struck down a state statute vesting the governor 

with authority to appoint a new school board in Orleans Parish in place of the duly 

elected board. The court held in contempt state offi cials who had withheld the pay 

of teachers at the two desegregated schools and of more than fi fty members of the 

Orleans Parish administrative staff. The court also removed the state legislature’s 

restrictions on the school board’s funds and restrained the legislature from replacing 

the school board counsel.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

20

March 20, 1961

The Supreme Court affi rmed three decisions of the three-judge court in the New 

Orleans school desegregation fi ght: the August 27, 1960, order declaring unconstitutional seven acts enacted by the Louisiana state legislature in the summer of 1960; the 

November 30, 1960, order declaring unconstitutional Louisiana’s Act of Interposition 

and the other statutes enacted during the November special session of the legislature; 

and the December 21, 1960, judgment that provided, among other things, that banks 

in New Orleans must honor Orleans Parish school checks despite the instructions of 

the state legislature to the contrary.

April 3, 1962

Judge Wright issued his fi nal order in the New Orleans desegregation case, providing 

that in the fall of 1962 grades one through six of the New Orleans schools would be 

desegregated.

May 23, 1962

U.S. District Judge Frank Ellis, Judge Wright’s replacement on the federal bench in 

New Orleans, vacated Wright’s fi nal order and restored the schedule for the desegregation of the New Orleans schools to one grade each year.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

21

Legal Questions Before the Courts 

What was the legal basis of the original 1952 lawsuit in 

Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board?

Attorney A.P. Tureaud, in his complaint fi led in federal district court in September 

1952, alleged that various Louisiana statutes and constitutional provisions mandating 

school segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In an earlier lawsuit, Tureaud had argued that the 

Orleans Parish School Board was in violation of the “separate but equal” doctrine 

because black schools in New Orleans did not receive the same fi nancial support that 

white schools received. At this time, federal courts held that racially separate schools 

were constitutional so long as black and white schools were “equal.” In fact, black 

and white schools in the South were far from equal—white schools were typically 

much better supported than black schools. But by the early 1950s, federal courts had 

consistently refused to order school desegregation even in the face of demonstrated 

inequality, preferring instead, on a few occasions, to require local school boards to 

equalize their schools.

 Tureaud now argued that racially separate schools were inherently unequal, and 

he asked a federal court to conclude that state laws mandating school segregation 

violated the U.S. Constitution. Tureaud agreed to suspend proceedings on the lawsuit 

until the Supreme Court issued its decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which 

was pending before the Court.

According to the Supreme Court, was legally mandated 

school segregation constitutional?

In the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, a case involving challenges to 

school segregation in Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, and Virginia, the Supreme 

Court concluded that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and thus 

unconstitutional. The Court explained: “Segregation of white and colored children 

in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is 

greater when it has the sanction of law; for the policy separating the races is usually 

interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group.”

 This decision meant that any legally mandated racial segregation in the nation’s 

public schools violated the Constitution. But the Supreme Court did not order segregated school districts to desegregate their schools immediately. Rather, in 1955, 

it stated that school districts involved in the Brown case should proceed with “all 

deliberate speed” to desegregate their schools.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

22

Did the Brown v. Board decision require the desegregation 

of New Orleans schools, as argued by the plaintiffs in Bush 

v. Orleans Parish School Board?

In 1954, when the Supreme Court held in Brown v. Board of Education that statemandated school segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Louisiana required racial segregation in public schools. The Brown decision 

called into question the legality of pupil assignments in Louisiana and every other 

state that required segregation. In response to Brown, the plaintiffs in Bush v. Orleans 

Parish School Board argued that the continuation of school segregation in New Orleans schools was unconstitutional. When the Orleans Parish School Board refused 

to desegregate their schools after the Brown decision, lawyers representing a group of 

black parents asked a federal court to order the board to do so. Judge Skelly Wright 

issued such an order in 1956 and cited the Brown decision as his authority.

 The Supreme Court’s Brown decision extended only to states that required racial 

segregation in public schools or permitted individual schools districts to require 

segregation. In some states, public schools were racially segregated because of racially 

segregated neighborhoods. That type of school segregation, often called “de facto” 

segregation, as opposed to “de jure” (by law) segregation, was not unconstitutional 

according to the Brown decision. By the 1970s, in cases such as Keyes v. Denver School 

District No. 1, the Court challenged school segregation that resulted from segregated 

neighborhoods if the residential segregation was a result of government policy. 

Did the Louisiana state legislature, as it asserted, have the 

authority to control the racial composition of the state’s 

schools in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board decision?

The various strategies devised by the state legislature to avoid school desegregation 

were declared unconstitutional by the federal courts.

In response to various court orders to desegregate New Orleans public schools, 

the Louisiana state legislature approved legislation and proposed constitutional 

amendments that asserted the state’s authority over governance of the public schools 

in Louisiana. These laws set up a prolonged contest with the federal courts. Among 

the most signifi cant actions were (1) passing a statute that gave the state legislature, 

not the Orleans Parish School Board, authority to determine the racial composition 

of the New Orleans schools; and (2) passing a state statute that replaced the elected 

school board with a new school board composed of members of the state legislature. 

 The federal courts held that the statute that gave the state legislature, as opposed 

to the Orleans Parish School Board, authority to determine the racial composition 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

23

of the New Orleans schools did not relieve the school board of its responsibility to 

comply with Judge Wright’s desegregation order. If this statute were construed to 

permit the school board to take no action to desegregate, then the desegregation 

mandate of the federal courts would be undermined.

 In response to the statute that replaced the elected school board with a new 

school board composed of members of the state legislature committed to segregation, the federal courts also held that any action that interfered with the Orleans 

Parish School Board’s responsibility to desegregate the New Orleans schools was 

unconstitutional. 

Did Louisiana have a right of “interposition” to prevent 

the federal government from carrying out an action that 

the state legislature held to be unconstitutional?

The November 30, 1960, decision of the three-judge district court stated that the 

theory of interposition had been repudiated by the ratifi cation of the U.S. Constitution, which based its authority on “We the people,” not on a compact of states.

 The Louisiana legislature asserted the right of interposition, claiming that a state 

could nullify a federal government action that, in the opinion of the state legislature, 

violated the Constitution. The theory of interposition had its roots in the nullifi cation 

crisis of the antebellum era and was revived after 1954 by several southern legislatures 

as a means of resisting court-ordered desegregation. The state legislature of Louisiana concluded that racially segregated schools did not violate the Equal Protection 

Clause of the U.S. Constitution as the Supreme Court had held in the Brown case, so 

long as black and white schools were equal. Thus, according to the legislature, when 

the Court in Brown held that racially segregated schools were inherently unequal, it 

misconstrued the U.S. Constitution.

 According to the legislature’s interposition resolution, when Judge Wright, relying on the Brown decision, ordered the desegregation of the New Orleans schools, 

he was acting in an illegitimate manner because he was ordering that which the U.S. 

Constitution did not require. Confronted with what it believed to be an abuse of 

federal power, the state legislature concluded that it had a duty to “interpose” itself 

between Judge Wright and the school board of New Orleans—meaning that it must 

block implementation of Judge Wright’s desegregation order.

 The three-judge district court decision of November 30, 1960, concluded that if 

a confl ict arose between the federal courts and a state legislature over the meaning of 

the U.S. Constitution, the interpretation of the federal courts must control. To allow 

a state legislature to override the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the U.S. Constitution would cause great harm to the federal union and could lead to anarchy. If the 

state of Louisiana believed that the Supreme Court had misconstrued the meaning 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

24

of the U.S. Constitution, the decision stated, the state’s proper recourse was to seek 

an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, not to disobey the Court’s order.

What did the federal courts decide in related cases?

In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court declared de jure school segregation unconstitutional, but the Court’s order to desegregate applied only to the school 

districts that were part of the four suits encompassed by Brown. The decision established a precedent, however, to which states needed to conform through voluntary 

desegregation or be subject to suits asking the federal courts to enforce desegregation. Although some school districts desegregated after the Brown decision without 

a specifi c court order requiring them to do so, most southern school desegregation 

took place as a result of a federal court ordering a school district to comply with the 

Brown decision. During the fi ve years after the Brown decision, a few federal courts, 

mostly in the upper South and in Texas, issued orders requiring desegregation, but 

many of these orders were not immediately enforced. Similarly, although Judge Wright 

found the New Orleans schools unconstitutionally segregated in February 1956, the 

New Orleans schools remained racially segregated until November 1960.

 In a few instances, resistance to court-approved desegregation was dramatic. 

In Little Rock, Arkansas, a federal judge approved a school desegregation plan that 

provided that nine black students would attend the previously all-white Central 

High School in September 1957. On the fi rst day of school, Arkansas Governor 

Orval Faubus deployed troops from the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the 

black students from entering the high school. When a federal court ordered Faubus 

to remove the National Guard, the Governor complied, but a mob then blocked the 

black students from entering the school. In response, President Dwight Eisenhower 

called in the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to protect the black students. In 

February 1958, with the troops still present and racial tensions still high, the Little 

Rock School Board asked the federal district court to permit the board to remove the 

black students from Central and to postpone desegregation until September 1960. A 

judge of the federal district court agreed to the request, citing the extreme hostility to 

school desegregation among whites in Little Rock. The NAACP appealed that decision of the district court. On September 29, 1958, the Supreme Court, in the case of 

Cooper v. Aaron, unanimously overturned the district court’s order permitting delay, 

and the Supreme Court ordered desegregation to proceed immediately. Although the 

Supreme Court agreed to hear very few school desegregation cases during the fi rst 

several years after Brown, the Court’s decision in Cooper signaled that it would not 

permit defi ance of federal court orders to subvert the desegregation process.

 By 1960, some token school integration had taken place in most of the states 

that had legally required or authorized segregation. Louisiana was one of only fi ve 

southern states—along with Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina—to 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

25

have resisted school desegregation throughout the state. The great majority of school 

districts that were legally segregated in 1954, however, remained segregated well into 

the 1960s. In 1963, less than 2% of black students in the states of the former Confederacy attended desegregated schools.

What was the impact of the case?

The New Orleans school desegregation litigation did not establish any new legal 

precedents. The Supreme Court had already declared in 1954 in Brown v. Board of 

Education that school desegregation was unconstitutional and other federal courts 

had already ordered school boards to desegregate in compliance with the Brown 

decision.

 But the court-ordered desegregation of the New Orleans schools was nevertheless 

highly signifi cant. First, New Orleans was the fi rst Deep South city to desegregate its 

schools, and desegregation succeeded notwithstanding the relentless efforts of the 

state legislature and other state offi cials to resist. When the process of desegregation 

continued in New Orleans despite the fi erce resistance of the state’s governor, attorney 

general, and state legislature, it signaled that opposition to school desegregation in 

the South would not thwart the federal courts’ orders that the Constitution be followed.
Blank pages inserted to preserve pagination when printing double-sided copies.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

27

Legal Arguments in Court

Lawyers’ arguments and strategies for the parents of the 

black students seeking desegregation—the plaintiffs

From the beginning of the litigation—the fi ling of the complaint in 1952—the black 

parents and their lawyers argued that the continued segregation of schoolchildren by 

race in New Orleans violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. After the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of 

Education decision, in which the Court held that state-mandated racial segregation 

in public elementary and secondary schools was inherently unequal and violated the 

Equal Protection Clause, the plaintiffs would cite the Brown decision as authority 

for the desegregation of the city’s schools. Desegregation would be implemented 

by order of the federal court if the local school board refused to implement its own 

desegregation plan. 

 In response to the Louisiana state government’s argument that they were not 

bound to the Brown decision because the case was incorrectly decided, the plaintiffs 

argued that to allow a state to undermine a decision of the Supreme Court would 

subvert the constitutional structure of the nation.

Lawyers’ arguments and strategies for the Orleans Parish 

School Board and the state legislature of Louisiana—the 

defendants

Lawyers defending the Orleans Parish School Board and various state offi cials in 

the State of Louisiana argued that state and local offi cials were not constitutionally 

required to desegregate the New Orleans public schools.

 Between 1956 and the summer of 1960, lawyers representing the Orleans Parish 

School Board cited various actions taken by the Louisiana state legislature to argue 

that the school board was exempt from, or lacked authority to comply with, Judge 

Wright’s 1956 desegregation order. For example, the school board’s lawyers argued 

that the 1954 state constitutional amendment that purported to justify racial segregation based on public health and safety rather than racial superiority did not violate 

the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Similarly, the school board’s lawyers argued 

that when the state of Louisiana transferred authority to make racial classifi cations 

from the Orleans Parish School Board to the state legislature, Judge Wright’s order 

requiring the board to desegregate had no further effect.

 The Orleans Parish School Board’s lawyers and the Louisiana state offi cials eventually diverged, taking opposing positions in the case. Until the summer of 1960, both 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

28

the school board’s lawyers and various state offi cials argued that they should not be 

bound by Judge Wright’s desegregation order. But during the summer of 1960, the 

school board decided that it had exhausted all of its appeals and had no choice but 

to comply with Judge Wright’s desegregation order. The state legislature, Governor 

Jimmie Davis, and Attorney General Jack Gremillion, however, disagreed. They argued 

that Judge Wright’s order constituted a usurpation of Wright’s authority as a federal 

judge, and they vowed to resist implementation of his desegregation order, even after 

both the court of appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court during the 

summer of 1960 rejected appeals to vacate Wright’s order.

 The state legislature in November 1960 passed an “interposition resolution,” 

in which it sought to assert “the sovereignty of the state of Louisiana” against the 

usurping authority of the federal courts. The state argued that the Brown decision 

was illegitimate—it was not a faithful reading of the Equal Protection Clause of the 

Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Thus, the state argued, it had a duty 

to resist the efforts of the federal courts to force school desegregation in Louisiana 

based on an illegitimate constitutional principle. The state found this duty in the 

theory of “interposition,” which held that states have a duty to protect their citizens 

from unconstitutional behavior by the federal government.

 The state further argued that only Congress had authority to enforce the Equal 

Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, since section 5 of that amendment 

provided that “The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate 

legislation.” The federal courts, however, disagreed, concluding that although section 

5 did give Congress power to enact legislation to enforce the Equal Protection Clause, 

a court could also declare a state or locality’s behavior violative of the Fourteenth 

Amendment and order appropriate remedial actions.

 The three-judge federal court and the Supreme Court rejected all of the state’s 

interposition arguments. 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

29

Biographies

Wayne Borah (1891–1966) 

Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (1949–1966) and the U.S. 

District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana (1928–1949)

Wayne Borah served as a judge on the U.S. 

Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and in 

that capacity participated as a member of the 

three-judge court in 1956 that declared unconstitutional various Louisiana state statutes 

and state constitutional provisions designed to 

prevent school integration.

 Borah was born to a wealthy family in 

Baldwin, Louisiana, in 1891. After graduating 

from law school at Louisiana State University in 

1915, serving in the Army during World War I, 

practicing law, and serving as an assistant U.S. 

attorney, Borah was appointed U.S. attorney for 

the Eastern District of Louisiana in 1925. He 

served there until he was appointed U.S. district 

judge for the same district in 1928 by President 

Calvin Coolidge. Borah remained a federal district court judge for twenty-one years. In 1949 

he was elevated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for 

the Fifth Circuit by President Harry Truman. 

 Borah served as a judge in some of the most 

important civil rights cases in Louisiana during the 1950s. In 1950, he was a member 

of a three-judge federal district court that found unconstitutional state laws that 

mandated the exclusion of blacks from Louisiana State University. In 1956, Borah 

served on another three-judge federal court that issued an opinion declaring unconstitutional various Louisiana state statutes and constitutional provisions designed to 

forestall school desegregation, a decision that eventually led to the desegregation of 

the New Orleans schools in 1960.

Wayne Borah

 Courtesy of the Fifth Circuit Library, 

New Orleans. 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

30

Ruby Bridges (1954– ) 

One of the fi rst four black students to attend an integrated school in New Orleans

Bridges, the oldest of five 

children, was born in 1954 

on a Mississippi farm where 

her paternal grandparents 

worked as sharecroppers. 

As a small child, Bridges 

moved with her family to 

New Orleans, where her father found work as a service 

station attendant. Bridges 

attended an all-black kindergarten, but based on her 

score on a test administered 

by the school board, she was 

selected to be one of the fi rst 

black children to attend a 

previously all-white school 

in New Orleans. Although 

her father opposed Bridges 

attending a white school, 

her mother supported the 

idea, believing that it would 

afford a better education 

for Ruby. On November 

14, 1960, Bridges, escorted 

by four federal marshals, 

entered the previously allwhite William Frantz Public School in New Orleans. There, she confronted jeers and 

death threats from whites who opposed integration. Bridges spent much of her fi rst 

grade year as one of the only students in her school, as white parents boycotted the 

school. Bridges’ teacher that year, Barbara Henry, was from Boston and was one of 

the few white teachers in New Orleans willing to teach a black child. The two held 

class together every day for a year. (The few white students who attended the Frantz 

school that year were taught in a separate classroom.) Bridges’ family faced retaliation. Her father lost his job and her grandparents lost their position as tenant farmers 

in Mississippi. Bridges’ experience inspired the famous 1964 painting by Norman 

Rockwell, “The Problem We All Live With,” fi rst published in Look magazine.

 After graduating from high school in New Orleans, Bridges attended a business 

school and worked for fi fteen years as a travel agent. She eventually married and had 

Ruby Nell Bridges

Courtesy of the UPI/Bettman Archives. 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

31

four sons. In 1993, Bridges’ youngest brother was murdered in New Orleans. The 

death had a signifi cant impact on Bridges’ life. She began to speak publicly about her 

experiences desegregating the New Orleans schools in 1960 so as to communicate 

that “racism has no place in the minds and hearts of children.” Bridges also founded 

the Ruby Bridges Foundation to help strengthen public education by encouraging 

parents to become more involved in their children’s education. In 1995, Robert Coles 

published a children’s picture book, The Story of Ruby Bridges, about Bridges’ experiences desegregating the New Orleans schools. An award-winning television movie, 

“Ruby Bridges,” was released in 1998, and in 1999 Bridges published Through My 

Eyes, an award-winning book about her fi rst year at William Frantz Public School. 

In 2000, Deputy Attorney General of the United States Eric Holder made Bridges an 

honorary U.S. marshal.

 In addition to Bridges, Gail Etienne, Tessie Prevost, and Leona Tate also desegregated the New Orleans schools on November 14, 1960. While Bridges attended 

William Frantz School, the others attended McDonogh 19. Each of the four girls 

graduated from high school in New Orleans in 1972. Etienne went on to take secretarial courses at Southern University, a historically black university in Baton Rouge, 

Louisiana. Prevost attended the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette 

and became a typist with the City of New Orleans Department of Streets. Tate married and became a mother of three children. In 1984, the “New Orleans Four” and 

their parents were formally recognized by city offi cials for their “extraordinary faith 

and courage in pursuit of equal education for all.”

Robert L. Carter (1917– ) 

NAACP attorney, and subsequently a federal judge

Robert Carter, an attorney with the 

national offi ce of the NAACP in New 

York City, assisted with the school desegregation litigation in New Orleans 

during the 1950s.

 Carter was born in Florida in 1917 

but spent his childhood in East Orange, 

New Jersey. While attending East Orange High School, Carter confronted 

the indignities of racial segregation. 

His high school did not permit black 

students to use the school swimming 

pool except on Friday afternoons after 

the white students had fi nished swimming. After high school, Carter atRobert L. Carter

Courtesy of the chambers of Judge Carter.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

32

tended Lincoln University, graduating in 1937, and Howard University Law School, 

graduating in 1940. Carter served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a second lieutenant 

during World War II. Carter’s experience with racial segregation in the Army inspired 

him to go to work for the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund as a legal 

assistant in 1944 and as an assistant special counsel in 1945. He became the general 

counsel for the NAACP in 1956 and remained with the organization until 1968.

 During his tenure with the NAACP, Carter argued and won several landmark 

cases before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education (1954) (school 

segregation), NAACP v. Alabama (1957) (freedom of association), and Baker v. Carr 

(1963) (reapportionment of legislative seats).

 Carter, along with Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, assisted New Orleans attorney A.P. Tureaud in the litigation of Bush v. Orleans Parish 

School Board, conducting a 1955 hearing before a three-judge district court, arguing 

that various Louisiana state laws and state constitutional provisions designed to 

prevent school desegregation were unconstitutional. Carter also participated in a 

hearing before Judge Skelly Wright in 1955, arguing that the New Orleans schools 

were unconstitutionally segregated by race. Prevailing before Judge Wright, Carter 

successfully preserved that victory on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 

Fifth Circuit.

 In 1972, President Richard Nixon appointed Carter to the U.S. District Court for 

the Southern District of New York. Carter took senior status in 1986, but still sits as 

a federal judge.

Herbert W. Christenberry (1897–1975)

Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana

Herbert Christenberry served as a U.S. district court judge in New Orleans and 

participated in several major cases challenging racial segregation in the state of 

Louisiana.

 Christenberry was born in 1897 in New Orleans to a working class family. After 

serving in the U.S. Navy during World War I, Christenberry was educated at New 

York University and Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans, from which 

he graduated in 1924. After nine years in private practice, Christenberry became 

assistant attorney for the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans in 

1933, where he remained for two years. In 1935, he became an assistant district attorney for the Parish of Orleans where he remained for two years before becoming 

an assistant U.S. attorney in 1937. In 1942, Christenberry became the U.S. attorney 

for the Eastern District of Louisiana, an appointment he held until President Harry 

Truman appointed him a federal judge in 1947. In 1949, he became chief judge of 

the Eastern District of Louisiana, a position he held until 1967. In 1957, President 

Eisenhower had considered Christenberry for appointment to the U.S. Court of Ap-
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

33

peals for the Fifth Circuit, but Christenberry’s rulings in civil rights cases ruined his 

chances, and the seat went to John Minor Wisdom, who had not previously served 

as a judge. (Wisdom became a strong supporter of desegregation and civil rights in 

general.)

 Christenberry issued several orders during the 1950s desegregating state colleges 

and universities in Louisiana. In the New Orleans school desegregation case, he was 

a regular member of a three-judge federal court that consistently declared various 

statutes enacted by the Louisiana state legislature unconstitutional.

 In 1965, Christenberry received national attention for citing police in Bogalusa, 

Louisiana, for contempt of court because they persistently refused to obey his prior 

order directing them to protect civil rights marchers from assaults by local whites. 

He continued to serve as a federal district court judge until his death in 1975.

Jimmie H. Davis (1899–2000) 

Governor of Louisiana

Jimmie H. Davis served as governor of Louisiana during the desegregation of the 

New Orleans schools and engaged in several efforts to forestall integration.

 Born in 1899, Davis was one of eleven children in a sharecropper family in 

Quitman, Louisiana. He attended Louisiana College and earned a master’s degree 

from Louisiana State University. Davis became an accomplished country and gospel 

music singer, writing more than 400 songs, including the international hit, “You Are 

My Sunshine.” By the 1930s, Davis was one of the best known country singers in the 

United States. In the 1940s, Davis launched an acting career, performing in several 

Hollywood westerns.

 Davis also had an abiding interest in politics. Throughout the 1930s, he served 

as clerk of court in Shreveport, Louisiana. He was elected commissioner of public 

safety in Shreveport and later served as Louisiana state public safety commissioner. 

In 1944, Davis was elected governor of Louisiana, frequently singing to his audience 

during campaign appearances. Davis served until 1948. Thereafter he continued his 

singing and acting career.

 In April 1960, Davis was elected governor of Louisiana for a second time, defeating 

in the Democratic primary segregationist William Rainach and moderate deLesseps 

Morrison, mayor of New Orleans. Pressed by the political currents of the day, Davis 

ran as a segregationist, promising to preserve segregated schools and to go to jail if 

necessary to prevent integration. Davis assumed offi ce on May 10, six days before 

Judge Skelly Wright ordered the desegregation of the New Orleans schools to begin 

in the fall of 1960. When it became apparent that the Orleans Parish School Board 

was determined to begin desegregation on November 14, 1960, as required by the 

federal court, Davis called the state legislature into special session to enact various 

measures, including an interposition resolution, to forestall the integration of the 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

34

New Orleans schools. While Davis was committed to the retention of segregated 

schools, he was also unwilling to close the schools in order to preserve segregation. 

Jack Paul Faustin Gremillion (1914–2001) 

Louisiana attorney general

Jack Gremillion served as attorney general of Louisiana from 1956 until 1972, during 

which time he helped resist the desegregation of the New Orleans schools. 

 Born in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, in 1914, Gremillion graduated from the 

law school at Louisiana State University in 1937 and took a job in a local district 

attorney’s offi ce. Gremillion served in the U.S. Army during World War II before 

resuming his career as a prosecutor. In 1956, Gremillion was elected attorney general 

of Louisiana.

 As attorney general, Gremillion led a state effort to shut down the NAACP in 

Louisiana, and the organization was forced to suspend its activities in the state for a 

period of time.

 Gremillion also helped craft the state’s legal strategy to avoid school desegregation. 

Gremillion helped draft the 1956 statute that gave the state legislature, rather than 

the elected Orleans Parish School Board, authority to determine the racial composition of schools in New Orleans. The purpose of the statute was to undermine the 

desegregation order of Judge Wright, who had ordered the Orleans Parish School 

Board to desegregate the New Orleans schools. Thereafter, Gremillion fi led suit in 

state court, which upheld the statute (a decision in confl ict with Judge Wright’s view 

that the law was unconstitutional). 

 In July 1960, Gremillion fi led in state court another suit that prohibited the local 

school board from taking any action to comply with Judge Wright’s May 1960 desegregation order. Gremillion again argued that the legislature had placed authority 

over the question of desegregation with the state legislature, not the Orleans Parish 

School Board. A state court judge agreed and issued a temporary restraining order 

against the school board. Before a three-judge federal district court a month later, 

while defending the state’s actions to preserve racial segregation, Gremillion stormed 

out of the courtroom, calling the court a “den of iniquity.” Gremillion was later found 

in contempt of court. Gremillion would continue to engage in legal maneuvering to 

prevent school desegregation in New Orleans.

 Not everyone admired the pugnacious Gremillion. Earl Long, who served as 

governor of Louisiana from 1956 until 1960 as the desegregation crisis unfolded, 

said of Gremillion: “If you want to hide something from Jack Gremillion, put it in a 

law book.”

 Gremillion was later convicted of federal perjury charges in 1971 and sentenced 

to three years in federal prison. 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

35

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) 

NAACP attorney; later a federal judge, solicitor general of the United States, and 

Supreme Court justice

Thurgood Marshall, the most prominent civil rights attorney in American 

history, served as general counsel of the 

NAACP Legal Defense Fund and later 

as the fi rst African-American Supreme 

Court justice. During the 1940s and 

1950s, he was involved in several important civil rights cases in Louisiana, 

including litigation successfully challenging the inequality in salaries paid 

to black and white teachers, the exclusion of blacks from many of Louisiana’s 

state universities, and the segregation 

of the New Orleans schools.

 Marshall was born in 1908 in Baltimore to a middle-class black family. He 

graduated from Lincoln University and 

Howard University Law School, where 

he became a protégé of Howard’s dean, 

Charles Hamilton Houston. Marshall 

graduated fi rst in his class from Howard in 1933. After practicing law in 

Baltimore, Marshall moved to New 

York City in 1936 to work as a staff lawyer for the NAACP. In 1940, Marshall became 

general counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a position he 

held until 1961.

 During the school desegregation crisis in New Orleans, Marshall assisted A.P. 

Tureaud in an attempt to ensure enforcement of Judge Skelly Wright’s desegregation 

order. Although Marshall was overseeing school desegregation efforts throughout the 

South, he traveled to New Orleans for some of the crucial hearings before the district 

court.

 In 1961, President John Kennedy appointed Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals 

for the Second Circuit. He served there until 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson 

appointed Marshall solicitor general of the United States. In 1967, President Johnson appointed Marshall to serve as an associate justice on the Supreme Court of the 

United States. Marshall retired from the Court in 1991.

Thurgood Marshall

Courtesy of the Collection of the Supreme Court 

of the United States.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

36

Richard Taylor Rives (1895–1982)

Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit

Richard Taylor Rives was a member of the U.S. Court 

of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit during the 1950s and 

1960s, during which time he presided over a number 

of important civil rights cases.

 Born in 1895 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rives 

did not attend law school; he read law instead and 

entered the private practice of law in 1914 at the 

age of 19. He practiced law for two years, and then 

spent three years in the U.S. Army before resuming 

law practice. Rives remained in private law practice 

until his appointment to the bench in 1951.

 Rives was active in Alabama Democratic Party 

politics. He directed several statewide political campaigns, including the U.S. Senate campaign of Hugo 

Black, and was close friends with Alabama Senators 

John Sparkman and Lister Hill. Rives never sought 

political offi ce himself, believing that his liberal views 

on race would make election an impossibility.

 Rives was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit by President 

Harry Truman in 1951. During his time on the Fifth Circuit, Rives, along with Elbert 

Tuttle of Georgia, John Brown of Texas, and John Minor Wisdom of Louisiana, formed 

a liberal coalition that vigorously enforced desegregation mandates. Perhaps Rives’ 

most notable opinion was a 1956 decision in which he held that bus segregation in 

Montgomery, Alabama, violated the Constitution.

 Rives served with Judges Herbert Christenberry and J. Skelly Wright on a threejudge federal district court that consistently struck down various efforts by the state 

of Louisiana to block school desegregation in New Orleans.

 Rives served as chief judge of the Fifth Circuit from 1959 until 1960. In 1965 Rives 

took senior status. He opposed congressional efforts to split the Fifth Circuit into 

two circuits (which was eventually accomplished in 1980), believing that the division 

would harm civil rights by dividing the Fifth Circuit’s liberal judges into two circuits. 

Because he lived in Alabama, he became a member of the new Eleventh Circuit U.S. 

Court of Appeals in 1981 and remained on the court until his death in 1982.

Richard Rives

Courtesy of the Fifth Circuit 

Library, New Orleans
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

37

Alexander Pierre (A.P.) Tureaud (1899–1972) 

NAACP attorney

Alexander Pierre (A.P.) Tureaud was the most 

prominent civil rights attorney in Louisiana 

from the 1940s until the 1960s and played a 

leading role in the desegregation of the New 

Orleans public schools.

 Tureaud was born in 1899 in New Orleans 

into a black Creole family. In 1916, Tureaud 

moved to Chicago as part of the Great Migration of southern blacks to northern cities and 

eventually settled in Washington, D.C., with a 

job as a clerk in the U.S. Department of Justice 

in 1918. While in Washington, Tureaud fi nished 

high school, attended St. John’s College, and in 

1921 enrolled in Howard University Law School. 

Upon graduating from Howard Law School 

in 1925, Tureaud returned to New Orleans to 

practice law. When Tureaud became a member 

of the bar of Louisiana in 1927, there were only 

four other black lawyers in the entire state. He 

worked in the offi ce of the comptroller of customs in New Orleans from 1927 until 

1941.

 Tureaud became active in the New Orleans branch of the NAACP—the fi rst branch 

established in the Deep South—and in 1950 became the branch president. In 1941, 

Tureaud, along with Thurgood Marshall of the national offi ce of the NAACP’s Legal 

Defense and Educational Fund, successfully challenged the inequality in salaries paid 

to black and white teachers in New Orleans. Over the next twenty-fi ve years Tureaud 

fi led most of the important civil rights litigation in Louisiana, including suits challenging the exclusion of blacks from the state’s colleges and universities, the exclusion 

of blacks from New Orleans city buses and city parks, and the inequality in funding 

for black and white schools in New Orleans. Tureaud also fi led litigation challenging 

school segregation in New Orleans. In time, Tureaud was called “Mr. Civil Rights of 

Louisiana.” Tureaud ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1958.

 Tureaud fi led litigation challenging school segregation in New Orleans in 1952, 

litigation that would eventually succeed in 1960 when four black children entered two 

all-white schools. By this time, Tureaud’s home was under FBI surveillance. Tureaud 

continued his legal work during the 1960s, winning before the Supreme Court an 

important victory protecting the rights of sit-in protesters. Tureaud retired from law 

practice in 1971 and died in 1972.

A.P. Tureaud 

N.d., Amistad Research Center at Tulane 

University.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

38

J. Skelly Wright (1911–1988) 

Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana; later judge of the 

U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia

J. Skelly Wright was the judge who ordered 

the desegregation of the New Orleans 

schools.

 Born in 1911 into a working class IrishAmerican family in New Orleans, Wright 

graduated from nearby Loyola University 

in 1931 and Loyola University law school 

in 1934. While in law school and for a year 

thereafter, Wright taught at Fortier High 

School in New Orleans, where his students 

voted him their “most popular teacher.” In 

1936, he was appointed an assistant U.S. 

attorney. After a break for service as an offi cer in the Coast Guard during World War 

II and a stint in private practice, Wright 

was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana in 1948. In 1949, 

President Harry Truman appointed Wright 

judge of the U.S. District Court for the 

same district. At that time Wright was 38, 

the youngest judge on the federal bench. 

 Over the course of his tenure on the 

federal district court in New Orleans, Wright issued a number of important rulings 

in cases brought by the NAACP challenging racial segregation and discrimination in 

Louisiana. Wright later credited Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP with introducing 

him to “the harsh realities of racism” and persuading him that “if the law did not 

prohibit racial discrimination, then the law was wrong.” 

 In particular, Wright issued decisions permitting blacks to attend the law school 

and the undergraduate school at Louisiana State University, desegregating the city 

parks and buses of New Orleans, allowing interracial sporting events, and restoring 

hundreds of black voters to voting rolls. Wright’s most controversial decision, however, 

was his decision ordering the desegregation of the New Orleans schools. As a result 

of that decision, Wright became perhaps the most reviled man among segregationists 

in the state of Louisiana and better known than even the governor of the state.

 Wright declared the New Orleans schools unconstitutionally segregated in 1956, 

the fi rst federal judge in the Deep South to do so. Four years later, Wright ordered the 

desegregation of New Orleans schools, which began on November 14, 1960, when 

J. Skelly Wright

Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

39

four black fi rst graders entered two previously all-white schools. Wright became a 

pariah in his own community. Crosses were burned on his lawn, he was hanged in 

effi gy, he was a regular target of vile telephone calls, and he was forced to ask federal 

marshals to guard his home and escort him to and from work.

 In 1962, President John Kennedy removed Wright from the tempest in New 

Orleans, appointing him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Wright 

served as an active judge on the D.C. Circuit until 1986. He served as chief judge of 

the D.C. Circuit from 1978 until 1981. 

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

In 1940, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 

established the Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., to direct its litigation efforts. The “LDF” or “Inc. Fund,” as it was variously known, was established to accept 

tax-deductible contributions that could not be accepted by the NAACP because of its 

status as a lobbying organization. Thurgood Marshall, who had served as an attorney 

with the NAACP since 1934, became the executive director of the LDF at its founding and served in that position until 1961. For many years the governing boards of 

the NAACP and the LDF overlapped and the two organizations closely coordinated 

strategy. In 1957, after the Internal Revenue Service launched an investigation into 

the connections between the two organizations and challenged the validity of LDF’s 

tax-exempt status, Thurgood Marshall initiated a complete separation of the governing boards of the NAACP and the Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

 Marshall and other lawyers for the Legal Defense and Educational Fund represented the plaintiffs in the several cases encompassed in the Brown v. Board of 

Education decision, and they played a major role in initiating suits to force school 

districts to desegregate schools following the Brown decision. In the Bush v. Orleans

case, Marshall and LDF lawyers, including future LDF director Jack Greenberg and 

future federal judge Constance Baker Motley, regularly assisted A.P. Tureaud, Louisiana coordinator for the NAACP and lead lawyer for the black parents in the New 

Orleans case.

Save Our Schools and the Committee for Public Education

Organized white support for keeping public schools open in New Orleans

In the fall of 1959, a group of white women in New Orleans established an organization in an effort to “Save Our Schools.” The goal of the organization was to keep 

the public schools open in the face of threats to close down the school system rather 

than comply with Judge Skelly Wright’s order to desegregate. Initially the group met 

in private to discuss how to build support for maintaining free, public schools. Save 

Our Schools, or “SOS” as it was commonly known, aimed most of its efforts at the 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

40

city’s infl uential white leaders. In the spring of 1960, SOS opened a public campaign 

that included newsletters, personal calls on business and political leaders, and the 

placement of newspaper announcements about the costs that would result from a 

closure of New Orleans schools. SOS hired a professional advertising agency to advise 

its public campaign, and the members were assisted by representatives of the Southern 

Regional Council, a long-standing organization devoted to interracial cooperation. 

After consulting with black leaders in New Orleans, the offi cers of SOS decided to 

keep their membership all white, just as they avoided any public comments in favor 

of integration.

 In the fall of 1960, SOS campaigned for the reelection of a school board member 

who had agreed to abide by the federal court’s desegregation order. After the desegregation order went into effect, SOS members volunteered to drive white children to 

the desegregated schools. Mary Sand, the director of SOS, faced physical threats on 

her way to the schools and received a funeral wreath at her home. Unlike the parents 

of the white students at the desegregated schools, most of the members of SOS were 

fi nancially independent and immune from the most common sorts of reprisals for 

accepting desegregation. Although membership in SOS reached close to 1,500 individuals, the group’s impact was limited by the intimidation of the Citizens Council 

and the perception among many whites that the group’s leaders were committed to 

integration.

 Another organization committed to keeping public schools open in New Orleans, 

the Committee for Public Education, had little interaction with Save Our Schools. 

The Committee for Public Education was organized by whites who did not support 

integration but recognized the enormous economic and political damage that would 

result if the Orleans Parish School Board or other school districts in Louisiana chose 

to close public schools rather than integrate. The Committee for Public Education 

was organized in June 1960 and gained support from the four school board members 

who were willing to accept desegregation. It also won allies from the Junior Chamber 

of Commerce and several religious groups in New Orleans.

 The Committee for Public Education organized a group of white parents who fi led 

suit in the U.S. District Court in an effort to ensure schools would remain open. The 

suit asked Judge Wright to withdraw his desegregation order or to bar state offi cials 

from interfering with the operation of the public schools. As the parents expected, 

Wright refused to withdraw the desegregation order and merged the Committee for 

Public Education suit with one fi led by A.P. Tureaud, who also asked for an order 

prohibiting state offi cials from interfering with school administration in New Orleans. Wright, writing for a three-judge district court, ordered the state offi cials not 

to interfere with the school board’s plan for desegregation. 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

41

Media Coverage and Public Debates

The New Orleans school desegregation case attracted enormous attention in Louisiana, around the nation, and even internationally. The leading newspaper in New 

Orleans, the Times-Picayune, gave extensive coverage to the legal proceedings. 

Throughout, the Times-Picayune opposed school integration. Many local critics, 

particularly those sympathetic to school integration, accused both the Times-Picayune and the States-Item (the other New Orleans daily newspaper) of downplaying 

the intensity of white resistance to desegregation. Of the local media, only the NBC 

affi liate in New Orleans provided any editorial support for school integration.

Editorial—“New Desegregation Order”

The Times-Picayune published this editorial two days after Judge Skelly Wright 

issued his fi rst order requiring the Orleans Parish School Board to desegregate its 

schools and a three-judge federal court declared various Louisiana state statutes and 

constitutional provisions unconstitutional.

 [Document Source: New Orleans Times-Picayune, February 17, 1956, 12.]

All Louisiana law, including constitutional amendments, which was laboriously 

designed and voted in 1954 to preserve separate and “parallel” school systems was 

declared invalid here Wednesday by a special three-judge federal court.

 Th is action, while disappointing to a large majority of Louisiana citizens, was 

not unexpected. Orders of the supreme court to the lower federal courts are clear 

enough, and the court here, it seems to us, stuck pretty close to the language of the 

orders.

 If the court in saying that Orleans must establish an unsegregated school system 

meant that the school board must mix the white and Negro children, then in our 

judgment it was crediting the school board with super-human power. . . .

 Indications are that federal court actions, like those here Wednesday, will hasten 

legislative counteractions over the South. More resolutions of interposition will 

be passed, pronouncing the desegregation decision invalid on the ground that the 

supreme court exceeded its authority. Such moves should be allowed to take their 

course, and to produce, if possible, an accommodation of views that will prevent a 

chaotic situation in the administration of the schools.

 School departments and boards are already faced with serious burdens and decisions. By such overwhelming actions as the adoption of constitutional amendments 

by votes of three or four to one, these authorities have been told to maintain separate school systems. A federal court order cannot change the public feeling. Th ese 

authorities will need the sympathy and encouragement of their localities and people 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

42

to keep the systems operating smoothly and without interruptions during the period 

of contention.

“Letter from a New Orleans Mother” 

One New Orleans mother, Betty Wisdom, public relations director for Save Our 

Schools and a member of a prominent New Orleans family that included her uncle, 

Judge John Minor Wisdom of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote this letter 

to the Nation in November 1961 in response to an earlier article (September 30, 

1961) in the Nation in which reporter Stan Optowsky had analyzed the role of the 

press in the New Orleans confl ict. Wisdom was sharply critical of the local press in 

New Orleans and the role it played in the controversy. In particular, she blamed 

much of the local press for ignoring the ugly behavior of those resisting integration. 

In contrast, Wisdom lauded much of the national press for providing full coverage of the confl ict. Wisdom also argued that the national press’s attention to white 

resistance in New Orleans helped dissuade other southern cities from engaging in 

similar resistance.

 [Document Source: 193 The Nation (November 4, 1961): 353, 364.]

Dear Sirs:

 . . . It is true, as Mr. Optowsky pointed out, that the crisis might have been covered 

by our local publisher. If past performance is a useful yardstick, the coverage would 

have been poor, and the nation would not have really known what was going on in 

New Orleans. Th e paper is ultraconservative; during the school year of 1960–61 it 

off ered virtually no leadership or pertinent information to the beleaguered community; what information it did off er came too late to change many minds. Its editorial 

position, when that emerged, was that school closing was worse than integration, 

but that both were evils.

 Th is is in no way a refl ection on the reporters who work for the paper. Th ey 

are conscientious men and women, but they do not control what the paper prints. 

When a real racial clash nearly occurred on Nov. 16 [1960], it was reported in Time 

and Newsweek, but not in our paper. When, on stage at a Citizens Council rally [on 

December 15, 1960], tiny white children, half of them made up in blackface, kissed 

each other while the chairman shouted, “Is this what you want for your children?”, 

it was reported in Southern School News but not in our paper. When facts and fi gures 

on a business slump, the result of racial disturbances, were printed, they appeared in 

Th e Wall Street Journal and Th e New York Times, but not in our paper. . . .

 You must remember that we had, literally, no normal support from anyone but 

our close friends and from the reporters. Th e Mayor, the business community and 

the power structure in general ignored us. Th e local paper was indiff erent to our ef-
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

43

forts. Th e legislature was thirsting for our blood. Until we began reading the stories 

and editorials in the outside press (including the Atlanta Constitution), we felt cut 

off from the world. In a crisis like ours, there are few things worse than this feeling 

of isolation. It induces the racists to commit ever more terrible outrages, secure in 

the knowledge that no one but approving fellow citizens will ever see their actions. 

It induces in moderates and integrationists the feeling that theirs is a Sisyphean task 

which no one approves or understands. We had this feeling for months; we did not 

stop working, but our task was twice as hard until the outside world, represented by 

the reporters, suddenly materialized and approved of us.

 What is more, the widespread coverage which gave New Orleans a black eye 

stirred the local power structure to action. Th is year we have a new Mayor [Victor 

Schiro], who stood up for law and order and planned, with the police chief, a program 

which prevented any repetition of last year’s disorders. We have a committee of 300 

businessmen working to restore our tarnished name by means of political pressures 

and public statements. Th e newspaper has at last taken a fi rm stand in favor of law 

and order and public education. We now have six integrated schools and there has 

been little trouble.

 I am told that the pictures and stories of the New Orleans mobs were instrumental in convincing the people of Dallas and Atlanta that such things must not 

happen to them. We, in turn, used the good examples set by Dallas and Atlanta to 

convince our people that integration can be accomplished with no trouble. (Th is year 

New Orleans, taking its cue from Atlanta, did what Morrison should have done last 

year: instead of trying to curb the press, the police barricaded the schools and asked 

potential demonstrators to move on.)

 Th e widespread coverage of 1960, in my opinion, accomplished one thing perhaps 

more important than you realize. It put an end to eff ective resistance to integration in 

urban areas. (I don’t include cities in Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina; those 

states are rapidly becoming anomalies in today’s South.) Th e peaceful integration 

of Memphis indicates to me that the sheer horribleness of the New Orleans racists, 

witnessed by virtually every person who reads a paper or owns a TV set, repelled 

reasonable Southerners. Th e racists’ great mistake has always been that they have 

allowed the press to see the inner nastiness of their souls. Th is was evident at Little 

Rock, more evident in New Orleans. Th ey see nothing wrong in harassing women 

and cursing children, but gradually it has been made clear to them that the outside 

world despises them for being cowardly bullies. Like most of us, they are sensitive 

to disapprobation, and so they have begun to change their tactics. For this we have 

the far-fl ung press to thank.

Betty Wisdom

New Orleans, La.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

44

National media coverage

The New Orleans school desegregation crisis provoked extensive national comment. 

Reporters from the national wire services (AP and UPI), as well the national television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC), and national newsmagazines and newspapers (including Commonweal, Life, the Nation, the New Republic, Newsweek, the

New York Times, and Time) covered the story. The desegregation of the schools in 

New Orleans also provoked international comment. Reporters from Great Britain, 

Australia, and Sweden traveled to New Orleans to cover the story. Other foreign 

newspapers also wrote about the integration fi ght in New Orleans. For example, the 

Ghanaian Times, in Accra, Ghana, ran a story critical of America’s treatment of 

black schoolchildren in New Orleans. The New York Times published the following 

editorial the day after school desegregation began in New Orleans.

Editorial—“The Battle of New Orleans”

 [Document Source: New York Times, November 15, 1960.]

 When a little girl in a white dress with white ribbons in her hair walked into the 

William Frantz Primary School in New Orleans yesterday, it seemed that the United 

States of America had won another battle. Th e little girl in the white dress with the 

white ribbons in her hair was one of fi ve Negro girls who, under the Constitution 

as interpreted by the Supreme Court, were entitled to enter formerly segregated 

schools in their own city and state. Four of them actually did go yesterday to two 

schools which had previously been segregated. Th ey did this in spite of the Governor 

of Louisiana, the legislative majority of Louisiana, and the Louisiana State Superintendent of Schools and a force of state police. Th ey were able to do it because a 

courageous Federal judge, J. Skelly Wright, prohibited the State of Louisiana from 

interfering with the integration of the New Orleans schools.

 Th e New Orleans Board of Education has said this: “Th e feeling of the board, 

as repeatedly expressed, is that it would be in the best interests of the state if the 

schools remained segregated; however, after eight years of court proceedings it has 

been decided that the schools must desegregate, according to the orders of the Federal 

court.”

 Th e Board of Education, in short, has deferred, however reluctantly, to the laws 

and court decisions of the Union of these states. It kept the schools open in spite of 

orders from Baton Rouge to close them. It permitted Federal marshals to protect 

these little girls in their innocent passage into classrooms which Negro taxpayers as 

well as white taxpayers had helped to pay for. Th ere was no serious disorder. If little 

girls in white dresses with white ribbons in their hair were a menace to the State of 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

45

Louisiana or to American civilization as a whole, the fact was not apparent yesterday.

 New Orleans is one of the most relaxed and thoroughly charming cities in this 

country. It has an easygoing, tolerant tradition. It is, therefore, altogether fi tting that 

in New Orleans the law of school desegregation should win its fi rst, however slight, 

victory in the deepest South.

Other accounts

Observations of John Steinbeck on the New Orleans desegregation 

crisis

Esteemed American novelist John Steinbeck traveled through New Orleans in late 

1960 and witnessed fi rsthand the resistance to school desegregation. Steinbeck described his experiences in his 1962 book, Travels with Charley: In Search of America 

(New York: Viking Press, 1962), 189, 193–95.

While I was still in Texas, late in 1960, the incident most reported and pictured in 

the newspapers was the matriculation of a couple of tiny Negro children in a New 

Orleans school. Behind these small dark mites were the law’s majesty and the law’s 

power to enforce—both the scales and the sword were allied with the infants—while 

against them were three hundred years of fear and anger and terror of change in a 

changing world. I had seen photographs in the papers every day and motion pictures 

on the television screen. What made the newsmen love the story was a group of stout 

middle-aged women who, by some curious defi nition of the word “mother,” gathered 

every day to scream invectives at children. Further, a small group of them had become 

so expert that they were known as the Cheerleaders, and a crowd gathered every day 

to enjoy and to applaud their performance. . . .

 As I walked toward the school I was in a stream of people all white and all going in my direction. Th ey walked intently like people going to a fi re after it has been 

burning for some time. Th ey beat their hands against their hips or hugged them 

under coats, and many men had scarves under their hats and covering their ears.

 Across the street from the school the police had set up wooden barriers to keep 

the crowd back, and they paraded back and forth, ignoring the jokes called to them. 

Th e front of the school was deserted but along the curb United States marshals were 

spaced, not in uniform but wearing armbands to identify them. Th eir guns bulged 

decently under their coats but their eyes darted about nervously, inspecting faces. It 

seemed to me that they inspected me to see if I was a regular, and then abandoned 

me as unimportant.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

46

 It was apparent where the Cheerleaders were, because people shoved forward to 

try to get near them. Th ey had a favored place at the barricade directly across from 

the school entrance, and in that area a concentration of police stamped their feet 

and slapped their hands together in unaccustomed gloves.

 Suddenly I was pushed violently and a cry went up: “Here she comes. Let her 

through. . . . Come on, move back. Let her through. Where you been? You’re late for 

school. Where you been, Nellie?”

 Th e name was not Nellie. I forget what it was. But she shoved through the dense 

crowd quite near enough to me so that I could see her coat of imitation fl eece and 

her gold earrings. She was not tall, but her body was ample and full-busted. I judge 

she was about fi fty. She was heavily powdered, which made the line of her double 

chin look very dark.

 She wore a ferocious smile and pushed her way through the milling people, holding a fi stful of clippings high in her hand to keep them from being crushed. Since 

it was her left hand I looked particularly for a wedding ring, and saw that there was 

none. I slipped in behind her to get carried along by her wave, but the crush was 

dense and I was given a warning too. “Watch it, sailor. Everybody wants to hear.”

 Nellie was received with shouts of greeting. I don’t know how many Cheerleaders 

there were. Th ere was no fi xed line between the Cheerleaders and the crowd behind 

them. What I could see was that a group was passing newspaper clippings back and 

forth and reading them aloud with little squeals of delight.

 Now the crowd grew restless, as an audience does when the clock goes past curtain time. Men all around me looked at their watches. I looked at mine. It was three 

minutes to nine.

 Th e show opened on time. Sound of sirens. Motorcycle cops. Th en two big black 

cars fi lled with big men in blond felt hats pulled up in front of the school. Th e crowd 

seemed to hold its breath. Four big marshals got out of each car and from somewhere 

in the automobiles they extracted the littlest Negro girl you ever saw, dressed in shining starchy white, with new white shoes on feet so little they were almost round. Her 

face and little legs were very black against the white.

 Th e big marshals stood her on the curb and a jangle of jeering shrieks went up 

from behind the barricades. Th e little girl did not look at the howling crowd but 

from the side the whites of her eyes showed like those of a frightened fawn. Th e men 

turned her around like a doll, and then the strange procession moved up the broad 

walk toward the school, and the child was even more a mite because the men were 

so big. Th en the girl made a curious hop, and I think I know what it was. I think in 

her whole life she had not gone ten steps without skipping, but now in the middle 

of her fi rst skip the weight bore her down and her little round feet took measured, 

reluctant steps between the tall guards. Slowly they climbed the steps and entered 

the school.

 Th e papers had printed that the jibes and jeers were cruel and sometimes ob-
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

47

scene, and so they were, but this was not the big show. Th e crowd was waiting for the 

white man who dared to bring his white child to school. And here he came along 

the guarded walk, a tall man dressed in light gray, leading his frightened child by 

the hand. His body was tensed as a strong leaf spring drawn to the breaking strain; 

his face was grave and gray, and his eyes were on the ground immediately ahead of 

him. Th e muscles of his cheeks stood out from clenched jaws, a man afraid who by 

his will held his fears in check as a great rider directs a panicked horse.

 A shrill, grating voice rang out. Th e yelling was not in chorus. Each took a turn 

and at the end of each the crowd broke into howls and roars and whistles of applause. 

Th is is what they had come to see and hear.

 No newspaper had printed the words these women shouted. It was indicated 

that they were indelicate, some even said obscene. On television the sound track was 

made to blur or had crowd noises cut in to cover. But now I heard the words, bestial 

and fi lthy and degenerate. In a long and unprotected life I have seen and heard the 

vomitings of demoniac humans before. Why then did these screams fi ll me with a 

shocked and sickened sorrow?

“The Mother Who Stood Alone,” by Isabella Taves

Despite a boycott of the two integrated schools, a few white parents chose to defy the 

boycott. One such parent was Daisy Gabrielle, whose experience was detailed in a 

1961 article in Good Housekeeping magazine. When Gabrielle insisted on keeping 

her daughter in the integrated William Frantz School, vandals attacked her home 

with bricks and made threats on her life and the lives of her husband and children. 

Daisy’s husband, James, eventually quit his job with the city’s sewerage and water 

board and moved his family to Rhode Island. 

[Document Source: Good Housekeeping, April 1961, 31.]

Note: Article contains offensive language.

 In the beginning, Daisy Gabrielle had no idea of becoming either a heroine or 

a martyr. On that fi rst Monday morning, she left her baby with a neighbor and as 

usual walked with her six-year-old daughter, Yolanda, the three short blocks to the 

William Frantz School.

 Th e fact that integration was scheduled to begin that day at William Frantz 

bothered Daisy not at all. Yolanda had attended kindergarten there and had loved it. 

She and most of her friends had developed a crush on Miss Mooney, their fi rst grade 

teacher, and Daisy Gabrielle was sure Miss Mooney could handle the assimilation 

of one little Negro child into the school without diffi culty.

 Within a few hours, Daisy was to hear the taunt of “nigger-lover.” Within a few 

days she was to learn what it was like to be followed three blocks from school—blocks 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

48

that got longer every day—by a mob of snarling, cursing women and teen-aged girls. 

Within a week, she was to fi nd out what it meant to be afraid to leave her apartment 

because a hooting crowd waited outside, armed with rocks and rotten eggs.

 But that fi rst morning things were quiet. Her fi rst inkling of what was ahead did 

not come until after she’d fi nished her housework and had taken the baby outside to 

play in one of the grassy clothes-drying areas that separate the units of the publichousing development where Gabrielle lived. She was sitting quietly, enjoying the 

sunshine when two neighbors approached her.

 “Daisy, you’ve got a child in Frantz, haven’t you? You must be crazy! Don’t you 

know there’s a nigger there? You’d better go get that kid home fast, or she’ll catch 

their diseases.”

 “Th ere’s only one little colored girl,” Daisy said.

 Th ey looked at each other. Th en coldly: “Daisy, we didn’t know you were a nigger-lover.” She watched them turn and walk away; saw them join some other women 

and hurry off in the direction of the school. She could hear excited voices from the 

street. Obviously something was going on. . . .

 At one o’clock on that fi rst afternoon, Maria, the oldest of her six children, 

burst into the apartment. She had gotten herself excused from school because of a 

“toothache” and was as upset at Yolanda’s presence in school as Daisy’s neighbors. 

“Mother,” she announced in that tone peculiar to 14-year-old daughters, “you’ve got 

to go get Yolanda right now.”

 Th e Gabrielles had no telephone—couldn’t aff ord one on the $250 a month Jim 

Gabrielle earned as an assistant meter-reader for the city. But they had a neighbor who 

used to give them messages. While Maria was still speaking her mind, the neighbor 

called Daisy to the phone. It was Jim. “I hear there’s going to be trouble at Frantz. I 

want you to get Yolanda before she gets hurt.” Daisy, frightened for the child now, 

agreed. She sent Maria to walk those three short blocks this time. Yolanda was back 

at home an hour before Frantz let out.

 Th at night Daisy made up her mind. In spite of Jim’s misgivings and Maria’s 

opposition, she decided that Yolanda should continue at school. Th erefore, next 

morning Yolanda was one of 40 white children (out of an enrollment of 575) who 

turned up the second day of integration. By Th ursday of that fi rst week, only four 

children were on hand. Yolanda Gabrielle was among them.

 It was then that the segregationist leaders began to exert pressure on the holdouts 

to make the white boycott of William Frantz School complete. . . . Th at Th ursday, 

the segregationists sent a message to Daisy Gabrielle by 10-year-old Jimmy Jr. 

 “Mom,” he reported, “some women said to tell you to stop taking Yolanda to school 

unless you want to get beat up. Th ey said you’re going to be sorry if you don’t.”

 Th e following day and for three weeks thereafter, the Gabrielles lived with fear. 

Daisy and the one woman in the housing project who had stuck by her (a Californian 

and the wife of a serviceman) walked their children to school together. For security 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

49

reasons, they and the other two white children were taken to the second fl oor for 

classes while federal marshals escorted Ruby Bridges, the Negro child, to a diff erent 

room to be taught by herself. (Yolanda never saw Ruby during her three weeks in an 

integrated school, except once when the door to Ruby’s room happened to be open 

while Yolanda was passing.)

 Th at afternoon when Daisy and her friend went to get their children, about 30 

or 40 women had gathered across the street from the school. “For the fi rst time I 

was scared,” Daisy said later. “We hurried in and picked up the children. When we 

came out, the mob had moved to our side of the street. We had to pass them to get 

home. My friend went fi rst, and they yelled a little at her, but not much. Th en it was 

my turn, and I realized that it was me they were after. Th ey kept calling Yolanda 

‘poor little thing.’ But they cursed me and called me ‘nigger-lover’ and told me they 

were going to beat the ---- out of me.

 “I took Yolanda’s arm and told her: ‘You can’t hate people just because they act 

like animals. You have to feel sorry for them. Keep your head up; don’t run; and don’t 

look back.’”

 All the way home, the crowd followed them, getting more and more abusive as 

Daisy continued to disregard them. As they approached the housing project, Jim 

Gabrielle, who had stayed home from work in case of trouble, heard the noise and 

came outside. When he saw what was happening, he pushed his wife and her friend 

through the door with the children and, white with anger, faced the mob: “Get out 

of here, you white scum. Leave us alone!”

 Th e crowd dispersed, but the segregationists had no intention of leaving the 

Gabrielles alone. On the contrary. During the next three weeks they conducted a 

campaign of terror which fi nally drove the Gabrielle family from the city they loved. 

. . .

Public opinion

Supporters of keeping public schools open 

When Judge Skelly Wright announced his desegregation plan in May 1960, public 

reaction was extensive. Many of those opposed to school desegregation urged closing the schools rather than permit any black children to learn with whites. Others 

feared the consequences of closed schools for the children of New Orleans and urged 

that the schools remain open, even if it required token desegregation. Many groups, 

including religious organizations, issued statements urging the school board to keep 

the schools open, but none of these offered public support for desegregation.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

50

Save Our Schools (a New Orleans organization committed to keeping 

the schools open) (excerpt), May 1960

 [Document Source: Southern School News (June 1960): 2.]

Th e closing of public schools inevitably means an increase in juvenile delinquency, as 

thousands of youngsters are left to their own devices. It means loss of federal funds 

and the shifting of additional tax burdens to all the citizens of Louisiana. It means 

the sacrifi ce of the health-protecting services not available to public school children, 

such as physical examination, immunization and the school lunch program. It means 

economic stagnation, because new industries refuse to move into an area in which 

the public schools have been closed.

New Orleans District of the Methodist Church, resolution (excerpt), 

July 1960

 [Document Source: Southern School News (August 1960): 7.]

Th at an intelligent, informed citizenry of New Orleans would be willing to abolish 

public education is unthinkable to us. Our cherished democracy depends upon a free 

and educated citizenry for its preservation. . . . Furthermore, those who would substitute private schools for public schools are unknowingly and unwittingly advocating 

inferior education for our children. Contrary to what most people think, the public 

schools are doing a better job, on average, than the private schools.

Letter to the editor

Numerous letters to the editor urged that the public schools of New Orleans not be 

closed as a means of avoiding racial integration. For many white residents of New 

Orleans, it was better to have token integration than school closures.

 [Document Source: New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 24, 1960, 10.]

To the Editor:

 To close our public schools would mean disaster to the community. Not only 

would those who live here suff er (how many of us can aff ord or even care to send our 

children to the limited facilities of private New Orleans schools?) but there would 

be little reason to attract new business and industry to this city.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

51

 It’s too easy (and shortsighted) to say “We don’t care about Northern industry” 

or “Go back North if you don’t like it here.” Th is isn’t facing the fact that a wonderful 

city like New Orleans can grow only when it benefi ts from a great melting pot of 

ideas and talents which outsiders can add to our own way of life.

 Th e managerial and engineering talent responsible for the construction and operation of such plants as Kaiser, Shell Oil, American Oil, Avondale, and U.S. Gypsum 

must be drawn more and more from the South.

Mr. and Mrs. B.E. Van Arsdale

New Orleans

Opponents of desegregation

By the same token, many in New Orleans and throughout Louisiana opposed school 

desegregation and expressed their views in the media. Here are some excerpts of opponents of desegregation.

Note: This material contains offensive language.

“Death Stalks Our Land With Black Plague,” Knights of White 

Christians, New Orleans, August 1960

Many segregationist groups emerged in response to the court-ordered school desegregation in New Orleans. One was a group that called itself “Knights of White 

Christians.” They prepared the following leafl et, titled “Death Stalks Our Land 

With Black Plague.” 

[Document Source: J. Skelly Wright Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library 

of Congress, Washington, D.C.]

 We call upon the white Christian manhood and womanhood of our native 

southland to fi ght and prove your loyalty to your forefathers who created this country 

with their courage, work, sacrifi ce and blood. Th e purity of the white race must be 

protected and preserved—Our racial dignity, southern heritages, and traditions as 

well as our rights guaranteed by the Constitution of our country cannot and will not 

perish from this earth. No power on earth can bring death to our white race and the 

southern Legion of Honor cause which we love so well – more than life – enough 

to defy and fi ght communism, tyranny and persecution, spearheaded by the black 

plague of racial integration, without fear of personal sacrifi ce or death.

 Almighty God created segregation and in his name we would prefer to die than 

submit to mulatto mongrelization and the indoctrination, regimentation and mental 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

52

slavery of a government of tyranny.

 You are born alone – must die alone – must face the King of Kings alone – so 

– make your own decision.

 United we stand and lead on to victory – divided we fall victims to black plague 

and Communism. . . .

 Our No. 1 plank in our battle for survival program is the weapon used by the 

N.A.A.C.P. – BOYCOTT NEGROES. Do not employ Negroes – Do not deal with 

or patronize stores, business places, restaurants, churches, T.V. advertised products, 

sporting events, etc., that sponsor or promote racial integration.

Letters to the editor

Scores of letters to the editor were sent to the New Orleans Times-Picayune expressing 

opposition to school desegregation in New Orleans. Here is one such letter.

New Orleans Times-Picayune, November 21, 1960

To the Editor:

 A day that will live in the archives of New Orleans as its “Black Monday” of the 

20th century, engulfed this city of the historic South on the 14th of November.

 In direct violation of the state and federal constitution, a federal judge has assumed dictatorial powers over the city as well as the state of Louisiana. Never in the 

annals of American history has a so-called governing body of the United States, in the 

representation of the federal courts, intervened themselves . . . as in New Orleans.

 If this nation is to enjoy the liberty and freedom of a democracy, then fi rst of all, 

its leaders should renew the ideology of a democracy. . . .

 As Louisiana speaker J. Th omas Jewell, in deliverance of his classic piece of oratory before the House of Representatives, said on the 14th of November:

 “Th e courts are traditionally the guardian of liberty. Th ey have the right to pass 

upon the actions of the lawmakers of Louisiana and every other state. Th ey can render opinions regarding the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress itself. But 

no power on earth – including the federal court – can assume unto itself the right 

to prejudge the actions of the Legislature.”

 Th ese words are symbolic of the very meaning of American democracy. Th is 

nation was built upon foundations of strength, faith and determination – not upon 

the whimsical theories of dreamers. Th e strength of a country lies fi rst of all in the 

patriotic health and moral stamina of that nation, not in an idea of liberalistic philosophy.

Lloyd F. Fricke, Jr.

Metairie, LA
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

53

Telegram from Mayor Jack Howard of Monroe, Louisiana, to state 

legislature

Many Louisianans supported the defi ant posture taken by the Louisiana state legislature and communicated their support. Jack Howard, mayor of Monroe, Louisiana, 

sent this telegram to the legislative delegation from Monroe on Sunday, November 

13, 1960. 

 [Document Source: J. Skelly Wright Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of 

Congress, Box 12.]

“Ouachita Men Strongly Back School Action” 

Monroe Morning Herald, November 14, 1960

Th e white citizens of Monroe and Ouachita Parish are supporting you and the governor one thousand percent. Let’s battle the U.S. courts to the bitter end and learn 

once and for all whether the state of Louisiana, its legislature and its governor are 

going to run the aff airs of our state or whether or not traitors like Skelly Wright and 

a Communist Supreme Court is going to take over, and run our state. We are supporting you all the way and ask that no stone be left unturned in this all important 

fi ght to preserve our traditional way of life. If we lose this fi ght then we have lost it 

all. Keep up the good work.
Blank pages inserted to preserve pagination when printing double-sided copies.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

55

Historical Documents

Original complaint fi led in U.S. District Court for the 

Eastern District of Louisiana, September 4, 1952

A.P. Tureaud represented 35 black students as plaintiffs in this complaint, which 

was the initial step asking the U.S. district court in New Orleans to declare segregated public schools unconstitutional and to order the racial integration of the 

city’s schools. After establishing that the district court had jurisdiction in the case, 

Tureaud’s complaint, in section 4 below, set out the questions that Tureaud wanted 

the court to answer. Much of the complaint was devoted to descriptions of the school 

board policies enforcing the state constitutional requirement for racially segregated 

public schools. In the other excerpts printed here, section 7 asks the court to make this 

a class action suit that would apply to all black students in the New Orleans school 

system, sections 18 and 19 describe the different resources allocated white and black 

schools, and section 21 asserts that only integration of the schools, not just an improvement of resources at black schools, would provide black students with the same 

educational opportunities provided for white students. A.P. Tureaud prepared the 

complaint with the assistance of Robert Carter and Thurgood Marshall of the Legal 

Defense and Educational Fund of the NAACP. Carter and Marshall also signed the 

document presented to the court. Proceedings on this complaint were suspended 

in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s decision of Brown v. Board of Education, 

which consolidated several suits similar to Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board.

[Document Source: Civil Case 3630, Bush et al. v. Orleans Parish School Board, 

RG 21, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, New Orleans 

Division, National Archives and Records Administration, Southwest Region 

(Fort Worth).]

Oliver Bush, Jr., et al., Plaintiffs v. Orleans Parish School Board and 

O. Perry Walker, Acting Superintendent, Defendants

. . .

 4. Plaintiff s further show that this is a proceeding for a declaratory judgment 

and injunction . . . for the purpose of determining questions in actual controversy 

between the parties, to wit:

 a. Th e question of whether the policy, custom, practice and usage of defendants, 

and each of them, in denying on account of race and color to infant plaintiff s and 

other Negro children of public school age, similarly situated, residing in Orleans 

Parish, Louisiana, educational opportunities, advantages and facilities in the public 

elementary and secondary schools of Orleans Parish, Louisiana, including those 

hereinafter specifi ed, equal to the educational opportunities, advantages and facili-
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

56

ties aff orded and available to white children of public school age, in such parish, 

is unconstitutional and void, as being a denial of the equal protection of the laws 

guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United 

States.

 b. Th e question of whether the policy, custom, practice and usage of defendants, 

and each of them, in denying on account of race and color, to adult plaintiff s and 

other parents and guardians of Negro children of public school age, similarly situated, 

residing in Orleans Parish, Louisiana, rights and privileges of sending their children 

to public schools in Orleans Parish, Louisiana with educational opportunities, advantages and facilities aff orded and available to white children of public school age 

is unconstitutional and void, as being a denial of the equal protection of the laws 

guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United 

States.

 c. Th e question of whether Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of 1921 of 

the State of Louisiana which prohibits infant plaintiff s from attending the only public 

schools of Orleans Parish where educational opportunities, advantages and facilities 

equal to those aff orded all other qualifi ed pupils of public school age are available 

and force them to attend secondary schools in Orleans Parish solely because of race 

and color is unconstitutional and void as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment 

to the Constitution of the United States.

. . .

 7. Plaintiff s bring this action in their own behalf and in behalf of other Negro 

children attending the public schools of Orleans Parish, Louisiana, and their parents and guardians similarly situated and aff ected with reference to the matter here 

involved. Th ey are so numerous as to make it impracticable to bring them all before 

the Court. Th ere being common questions of law and fact, a common relief being 

sought, as will hereafter more fully appear, plaintiff s present this action as a class 

action, pursuant to Rule 23(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

. . .

 18. Defendants are maintaining and operating elementary and secondary public 

schools for approximately 34950 white children, having a total plant evaluation in 

excess of $18,000,000; staff ed with approximately 898 elementary teachers, averaging one teacher per 29 plus white elementary school pupils, and approximately 

356 secondary school teachers averaging one teacher per 21 plus white secondary 

school pupils; having available 30,696 seats for 26410 white elementary pupils and 

approximately 11,106 seats available for 8180 white secondary pupils.

 19. Defendants are also maintaining and operating elementary and secondary 

schools for approximately 30740 Negro children having a total plant evaluation in 

excess of $5,000,000; staff ed with approximately 584 elementary school teachers, 

averaging one teacher per 43 plus elementary school pupils, and approximately 188 

secondary school teachers, averaging one teacher per 30 Negro secondary pupils: 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

57

having available 19,172 seats for 25141 Negro elementary pupils and approximately 

4,933 seats available for 5599 Negro secondary pupils.

 Due to overcrowding and insuffi cient facilities for Negro and elementary and 

secondary pupils, defendants are operating “platoon” or part-time classes for approximately 10,000 Negro pupils, while several buildings designated for white pupils’ use 

are being operated by defendants at less than 50% of their capacity. Th ese conditions 

and situations have been well known to defendants for a long period of time, but they 

have continually refused to aff ord to plaintiff s and the class they represent educational 

opportunities, advantages and facilities in the respects above mentioned or in any 

other respect, equal to the educational opportunities, advantages and facilities which 

are aff orded to white children.

. . .

 21. Infant plaintiff s and the class they represent can only secure educational 

advantages, opportunities and facilities equal to those aff orded white children in 

the public schools of Orleans Parish by being allowed to attend the elementary and 

secondary schools set out in paragraphs 13 and 14 above which defendants are now 

unlawfully and illegally maintaining and operating exclusively for white children.

. . . 

Amendment to Louisiana state constitution designed to 

forestall desegration, article XII, section 1 (1954)

In reaction to the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 

the Louisiana legislature approved the following amendment to the state constitution, which was overwhelmingly approved by the state’s voters in a November 

1954 referendum. The amendment sought to justify racial segregation on grounds 

of “health, morals, better education and the peace and good order of the State” as 

a means of avoiding the Brown decision. Pursuant to this constitutional provision, 

the state legislature enacted legislation in 1954 confi rming that all schools in the 

state must be operated on a racially segregated basis.

 In February 1956, a three-judge federal district court declared that these provisions violated the U.S. Constitution. The Louisiana state legislature responded with 

many additional statutory efforts to retain school segregation in New Orleans.

 [Document Source: Race Relations Law Reporter 1 (February 1956): 239.]

All public elementary and secondary schools in the State of Louisiana shall be operated separately for white and colored children. Th is provision is made in the exercise of 

the state police power to promote and protect public health, morals, better education 

and the peace and good order in the State, and not because of race. Th e Legislature 

shall enact laws to enforce the state police power in this regard.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

58

Petition requesting an end to school segregation in 

New Orleans (signed by 17 black parents in New Orleans), 

June 27, 1955

Following the Supreme Court’s May 31, 1955, decision in Brown v. Board of 

Education requiring local school boards to proceed “with all deliberate speed” 

to provide for the desegregation of local schools, a group of black parents in New 

Orleans petitioned the local school board to move forward with school desegregation. Petitions similar to this one were fi led throughout the South during the summer of 1955. Almost all of these petitions were rejected by local school boards, including the New Orleans school board.

 [Document Source: Southern School News 2 (July 6, 1955): 12.]

Th e federal courts are authorized to determine whether local offi cials are proceeding 

in good faith. 

 We ask them to take immediate steps to reorganize the public schools under 

their jurisdiction on a non-discriminatory basis. 

 As we understand it, they (the school board) has [sic] the responsibility to reorganize the school system under its control so that the children of public school age 

attending and entitled to attend public schools can not be denied admission to any 

school solely because of race and color. 

 Our interpretation of the May 31 ruling means that the time for delay, evasion 

or procrastination is passed, and it is the duty of the school board to seek a solution 

in accordance with the law of the land.

Judge J. Skelly Wright’s February 1956 decision requiring 

school desegregation in New Orleans (excerpt)

In February 1956, four years after having fi led their lawsuit, the black plaintiffs 

fi nally received a decision in their desegregation lawsuit from U.S. District Court 

Judge J. Skelly Wright. Judge Wright entered an order requiring Orleans Parish 

School offi cials to end segregation “after time necessary to arrange for admission of 

children . . . on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed.” This 

decision launched a legal struggle to procure the desegregation of the New Orleans 

schools that would last for more than four years. Wright issued his decision on the 

same day that a three-judge court, of which he was a member, declared unconstitutional Louisiana’s statutes and state constitutional provisions requiring racial 

segregation of schools. 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

59

[Document Source: Earl Benjamin Bush et al., Plaintiffs v. Orleans Parish 

School Board et al., Defendants, 138 F. Supp. 337 (E.D. La. 1956).]

United States District Court E.D. Louisiana, New Orleans Division.

Earl Benjamin Bush et al., Plaintiffs, v. Orleans Parish School Board, 

et al., Defendants

Civ. A. No. 3630.

Feb. 15, 1956

J. Skelly Wright, United States District Court Judge:

. . . Defendants also move to dismiss on the ground that no justiciable controversy 

is presented by the pleadings. Th is motion is without merit. Th e complaint plainly 

states that plaintiff s are being deprived of their constitutional rights by being required 

by the defendants to attend segregated schools, and that they have petitioned the 

defendant Board in vain to comply with the ruling of the Supreme Court in Brown 

v. Board of Education of Topeka, supra. Th e defendants admit that they are maintaining segregation in the public schools under their supervision pursuant to the state 

statutes and the article of the Constitution of Louisiana in suit. If this issue does not 

present a justiciable controversy, it is diffi cult to conceive of one. . . .

 . . . Th e granting of a temporary injunction in this case does not mean that the 

public schools in the Parish of Orleans would be ordered completely desegregated 

overnight, or even in a year or more. Th e Supreme Court, in ordering equitable relief 

in these cases, has decreed that the varied local school problems be considered in each 

case. Th e problems attendant desegregation in the deep South are considerably more 

serious than generally appreciated in some sections of our country. Th e problem of 

changing a people’s mores, particularly those with an emotional overlay, is not to be 

taken lightly. It is a problem which will require the utmost patience, understanding, 

generosity and forbearance from all of us, of whatever race. But the magnitude of 

the problem may not nullify the principle. And that principle is that we are, all of us, 

freeborn Americans, with a right to make our way, unfettered by sanctions imposed 

by man because of the work of God.

 Decree to be drawn by the court.

 Decree:

 . . . It Is Ordered, Adjudged and Decreed that the defendant, Orleans Parish 

School Board, a corporation, and its agents, its servants, its employees, their successors 

in offi ce, and those in concert with them who shall receive notice of this order, be and 

they are hereby restrained and enjoined from requiring and permitting segregation 

of the races in any school under their supervision, from and after such time as may 

be necessary to make arrangements for admission of children to such schools on a 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

60

racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed as required by the decision 

of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, supra. . . .

Statement of Louisiana State Senator William Rainach in 

response to the decision of the three-judge district court, 

February 15, 1956

William Rainach was one of the leading segregationists in Louisiana. A state 

senator from Summerfi eld, he was also chair of the legislative Joint Committee 

on Segregation and president of the Louisiana Association of Citizens Councils. 

Rainach issued this statement on the same evening that the three-judge district 

court issued its decision declaring unconstitutional various measures enacted by the 

Louisiana state legislature designed to retain segregated schools in defi ance of the 

Supreme Court’s Brown decision. (Rainach incorrectly states that “two of the judges 

in the Orleans case are native sons of the South.” In fact, all three judges were born 

and raised in Louisiana.)

[Document Source: New Orleans Times-Picayune, February 16, 1956, 5.]

 John Marshall said, “To usurp that which is not given would be treason to the 

constitution.” Th e great chief justice was speaking of “ungranted power” assumed by 

the Supreme Court of the United States.

 When the Supreme Court handed down its “Black Monday” decision on segregation, it usurped powers not granted to the court by the constitution. In the words of 

John Marshall, the segregation decision was treason to the constitution of the United 

States. Unfortunately, the segregation decision is not the only incident of deliberate 

usurpation of unconstitutional power by the federal courts.

 Th e three judges that sat in the Orleans case each took an oath of offi ce to uphold 

the constitution of the United States, not an oath to uphold the palpably unconstitutional decision of the supreme court justices. Two of the judges in the Orleans 

case are native sons of the South. It is a sorry spectacle when a Southerner joins 

the Supreme Court in undermining the constitution of the United States and in 

plunging his own state into sorrow and strife. Th ese two judges did this deliberately, 

knowing well that in any case other than an NAACP case, the plaintiff ’s petition 

would have been thrown out of court because of numerous failures to comply with 

procedural law. Th ey ruled against their own state in the face of massive evidence 

that such a ruling would plunge the white school children of Louisiana into moral 

and intellectual chaos, and would seriously jeopardize their health.

 Th e fact that they put no deadline on their decree in no wise mitigates the heinous nature of the act they have committed. Th e battle is just joined. Th e people of 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

61

Louisiana will not integrate. We serve notice that we [will] organize from the grass 

roots to the skyscrapers. Moves will be met with counter moves, decrees with laws, 

and political court decisions with political strategy. Th ere will be no compromise. 

We will fi ght and fi ght until we have fi nally won.

The Southern Manifesto

On March 12, 1956, in response to the Supreme Court’s decisions in Brown v. Board 

of Education, 101 U.S. Senators and Members of the House of Representatives from 

the eleven states of the old Confederacy—including the entire Louisiana congressional delegation—signed this “Southern Manifesto.” The manifesto characterized the 

“unwarranted” Brown decision as a “clear abuse of judicial power.” South Carolina 

Senator Strom Thurmond, the presidential candidate of the Dixiecrat Party in 

1948, played a major role in drafting the manifesto.

[Document Source: U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, 84thCong., 2d sess., 

1956, 102, pt. 4: 4515–16.]

Declaration of Constitutional Principles

 Th e unwarranted decision of the Supreme Court in the public school cases is now 

bearing the fruit always produced when men substitute naked power for established 

law.

 Th e Founding Fathers gave us a Constitution of checks and balances because 

they realized the inescapable lesson of history that no man or group of men can be 

safely entrusted with unlimited power. Th ey framed this Constitution with its provisions for change by amendment in order to secure the fundamentals of government 

against the dangers of temporary popular passion or the personal predilections of 

public offi ceholders.

 We regard the decision of the Supreme Court in the school cases as a clear abuse 

of judicial power. It climaxes a trend in the Federal judiciary undertaking to legislate, 

in derogation of the authority of Congress, and to encroach upon the reserved rights 

of the States and the people.

 Th e original Constitution does not mention education. Neither does the 14th 

amendment nor any other amendment. Th e debates preceding the submission of 

the 14th amendment clearly show that there was no intent that it should aff ect the 

systems of education maintained by the States.

 Th e very Congress which proposed the amendment subsequently provided for 

segregated schools in the District of Columbia.

 When the amendment was adopted, in 1868, there were 37 States of the Union. 

Every one of the 26 States that had any substantial racial diff erences among its 

people either approved the operation of segregated schools already in existence or 

subsequently established such schools by action of the same lawmaking body which 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

62

considered the 14th amendment. . . .

 In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, in 1896, the Supreme Court expressly declared 

that under the 14th amendment no person was denied any of his rights if the States 

provided separate but equal public facilities. Th is decision has been followed in many 

other cases. . . .

 Th is interpretation, restated time and again, became a part of the life of the people 

of many of the States and confi rmed their habits, customs, traditions, and way of life. 

It is founded on elemental humanity and commonsense, for parents should not be 

deprived by Government of the right to direct the lives and education of their own 

children.

 Th ough there has been no constitutional amendment or act of Congress changing this established legal principle almost a century old, the Supreme Court of the 

United States, with no legal basis for such action, undertook to exercise their naked 

judicial power and substituted their personal political and social ideas for the established law of the land.

 Th is unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the Constitution, 

is creating chaos and confusion in the States principally aff ected. It is destroying the 

amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 

90 years of patient eff ort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and 

suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.

 Without regard to the consent of the governed, outside agitators are threatening 

immediate and revolutionary changes in our public-school systems. If done, this is 

certain to destroy the system of public education in some of the States.

 With the gravest concern for the explosive and dangerous condition created by 

this decision and infl amed by outside meddlers:

 We reaffi rm our reliance on the Constitution as the fundamental law of the 

land.

 We decry the Supreme Court’s encroachments on rights reserved to the States 

and to the people, contrary to established law and to the Constitution.

 We commend the motives of those States which have declared the intention to 

resist forced integration by any lawful means.

 We appeal to the States and people who are not directly aff ected by these decisions to consider the constitutional principles involved against the time when they, 

too, on issues vital to them, may be the victims of judicial encroachment.

 Even though we constitute a minority in the present Congress, we have full 

faith that a majority of the American people believe in the dual system of Government which has enabled us to achieve our greatness and will in time demand that 

the reserved rights of the State and of the people be made secure against judicial 

usurpation.

 We pledge ourselves to use all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this 

decision which is contrary to the Constitution and to prevent the use of force in its 

implementation.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

63

 In this trying period, as we all seek to right this wrong, we appeal to our people 

not to be provoked by the agitators and troublemakers invading our States and to 

scrupulously refrain from disorders and lawless acts.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decision 

affi rming Judge Wright’s desegregation order, 1957

The Orleans Parish School Board appealed Judge Wright’s desegregation order to 

the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, claiming that Judge Wright had 

misconstrued the U.S. Constitution and its application to various Louisiana state 

statutes designed to preserve school segregation. One year later, a three-judge panel 

of the court of appeals unanimously and decisively sustained Judge Wright’s order.

[Document Source: Orleans Parish School Board, Appellant v. Earl Benjamin 

Bush et al., Appellees, 242 F.2d 156 (5th Cir. 1957).]

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

Orleans Parish School Board, Appellant, v. Earl Benjamin Bush et al., Appellees.

No. 16190.

March 1, 1957.

Before Rives, Tuttle and Brown, United States Court of Appeals Circuit Judges.

Tuttle, Circuit Judge:

 . . . Th ere is no merit in the claim of appellant that the court was without jurisdiction 

to try this case as being a suit against the state. Th e substance of this suit is that the 

school board is unconstitutionally forcing them to attend schools that are segregated 

according to race and their prayer is that the board be enjoined from continuing to 

do so. If plaintiff s are right in their contention, then they can obtain complete relief 

from this defendant, because any sanctions compelling it to continue its illegal conduct 

fall when the Court determines that such sanctions are illegal. . . .

 . . . Appellant nowhere in its brief undertakes to explain the process of reasoning 

by which it seeks to have this Court conclude that racial segregation in the schools 

is any less segregation “because of race” merely because the stated basis of adhering 

to the policy is in the exercise of the State’s police power. Nor does the brief fi led 

by the Attorney General of Louisiana discuss the issue. However, the affi davits introduced on the hearing for preliminary injunction make clear what the briefs do 

not. Th ey deal with the alleged disparity between the two races as to intelligence 

ratings, school progress, incidence of certain diseases, and percentage of illegitimate 

births, in all of which statistical studies one race shows up to poor advantage. Th is 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

64

represents an eff ort to justify a classifi cation of students by race on the grounds that 

one race possesses a higher percentage of undesirable traits, attributes or conditions. 

Strangely enough there seems never to have been any eff ort to classify the students 

of the Orleans Parish according to the degree to which they possess these traits. Th at 

is, there seems to have been no attempt to deny schooling to, or to segregate from 

other children, those of illegitimate birth or having social diseases or having below 

average intelligence quotients or learning ability because of those particular facts. 

Whereas any reasonable classifi cation of students according to their profi ciency or 

health traits might well be considered legitimate within the normal constitutional 

requirements of equal protection of the laws it is unthinkable that an arbitrary classifi cation by race because of a more frequent identifi cation of one race than another 

with certain undesirable qualities would be such reasonable classifi cation. . . . 

 . . . Probably the most clear cut answer to this eff ort by the State of Louisiana 

to continue the pattern of segregated schools in spite of the clear and unequivocal 

pronouncement of the Supreme Court in the School Segregation cases is that this is 

precisely what was expressly forbidden by those decisions. Whatever may have been 

thought heretofore as to the reasonableness of classifying public school pupils by 

race for the purpose of requiring attendance at separate schools, it is now perfectly 

clear that such classifi cation is no longer permissible, whether such classifi cation is 

sought to be made from sentiment, tradition, caprice, or in exercise of the State’s 

police power. . . .

 . . . It is evident from the tone and content of the trial court’s order and the willing acquiescence in the delay by the aggrieved pupils that a good faith acceptance by 

the school board of the underlying principle of equality of education for all children 

with no classifi cation by race might well warrant the allowance by the trial court 

of time for such reasonable steps in the process of desegregation as appears to be 

helpful in avoiding unseemly confusion and turmoil. Nevertheless whether there is 

such acceptance by the Board or not, the duty of the court is plain. Th e vindication 

of rights guaranteed by the Constitution can not be conditioned upon the absence 

of practical diffi culties. However undesirable it may be for courts to invoke federal 

power to stay action under state authority, it was precisely to require such interposition 

that the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted by the people of the United States. 

Its adoption implies that there are matters of fundamental justice that the citizens of 

the United States consider so essentially an ingredient of human rights as to require 

a restraint on action on behalf of any state that appears to ignore them.

 Th e orders of the trial court are Affi rmed. 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

65

Interposition resolution and legislation

Louisiana state legislature, November 1960

Faced with a federal court order requiring school desegregation in New Orleans, the 

Louisiana state legislature approved the following “interposition” resolution and 

accompanying legislation implementing this resolution. The essence of the resolution was that the decisions of the federal courts requiring school desegregation 

constituted a “usurpation of power”—an illegitimate interpretation of the U.S. 

Constitution that unduly infringed upon the power of the states. By this resolution, 

the state legislature sought to “interpose” the authority of the state of Louisiana 

against the usurping federal government. This doctrine of interposition had its origins in certain late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century political theories that 

had never gained general approval.

 Seven southern state legislatures in addition to Louisiana passed such resolutions 

during the 1950s. (Louisiana fi rst adopted an interposition resolution in 1956, but 

had not yet sought to use it to prevent school desegregation.) In each instance that 

interposition resolutions were used by a school board or a state to avoid desegregation, a federal court eventually declared them to have no effect. In Louisiana, a 

three-judge federal court on November 30, 1960, declared this resolution unconstitutional. The Supreme Court of the United States agreed in March 1961.

 [Document Source: Race Relations Law Reporter 5 (Winter 1960): 1177–82.]

 . . . Whereas, in any event the original decision in Brown vs. Topeka Board of 

Education exhausted the judicial power of the United States and pursuant to the 

plain provisions of Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment any implementation 

of such decision was confi ded to the Congress and not to the District Courts; that 

the remand of these cases to the District Courts thus constituted a usurpation not 

only of the constitutional power of the State, but also of the legislative power of the 

Congress.

 Whereas, the Fourteenth Amendment is not self-operative by its very terms, and 

grants to the Congress, and not to the Courts, the power to enforce, by appropriate 

legislation, the provisions of this article, and the Congress has enacted no legislation 

purporting or attempting to prohibit the States from maintaining separate schools 

for whites and negroes; as in fact, and in law, the Congress would have no valid power 

to so legislate, because said Fourteenth Amendment contains no provision which 

prohibits, or which could lawfully be construed as granting to Congress the power 

to enact laws to prohibit the States from providing separate schools for diff erent 

races.

 Whereas, further evidence of the deliberate, palpable and dangerous usurpation 

of ungranted power and its violation of the United States Constitution is shown 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

66

by the fact that the United States Supreme Court cited as authority for its decision 

in the Brown v. Topeka consolidated cases so-called modern authority, or books on 

psychology and sociology which had not been off ered in evidence during trial of 

said cases, and which would not have been admissible even if off ered, but were listed 

in an appendix attached to a brief fi led for the fi rst time by the N.A.A.C.P. in the 

Supreme Court; and the very use of such books as authority for its decision in said 

case, without opportunity to the defendants to examine or rebut has been consistently held by the same Court in its previous decisions to constitute a denial of the 

fundamentals of a trial, and a denial of ‘due process of law’ in violation of the Fifth 

Amendment of the Constitution, and would be condemnation without trial (United 

States v. Abilene & S. Ry. Co., 265 U.S. 274, 44 S. Ct. 565, 68 L.Ed. 1016; Ohio Bell 

Tel. Co. v. Public Utilities Comm., 301 U.S. 292, 57 S. Ct. 724, 81 L.Ed. 1093; Saunders 

v. Shaw, 244 U.S. 317, 37 S. Ct. 638, 61 L.Ed. 1163).

 Whereas, forced racial integration of public schools by the Federal Government in 

Washington, District of Columbia, as reported after investigation by the Committee 

on the District of Columbia of the House of Representatives, 84th Congress, 2nd 

Session, 1957, results in continual disturbances of the peace, acts of violence, thefts, 

immoral conduct on the part of negro boys against white girls and negro girls’ immoral propositions to white boys, assaults and rapes by negroes of white school girls 

and teachers, which caused a marked lowering of educational standards, and which 

also caused an exodus of a large part of the white population from the District of 

Columbia to avoid such a situation against the best interests of the health, peace, 

morals, education and good order of the people; all of which is the duty of and within 

the sole power of the state to protect and promote against unlawful usurpations by 

the Federal Government.

 Whereas, said Supreme Court public school integration decision, and the decisions and orders rendered by federal, district and circuit courts decreeing racial 

integration of all public schools in the City of New Orleans beginning with the 

September 1960 session, and in other parishes of the State of Louisiana, constitute 

an unlawful encroachment by the Federal Government and is a deliberate, palpable 

and dangerous exercise of governmental powers not granted by the United States 

Constitution, but specifi cally reserved to the states, by the 10th Amendment, to promote the health, peace, morals, education and good order of the people, therefore:

 Be it enacted by the Legislature of Louisiana:

 Section 1. Th at by substituting the current political and social philosophy of its 

members to unsettle the great constitutional principles so clearly established, the 

federal courts destroyed the stability of the Constitution and usurped the power of 

Congress to submit, and of the several states to approve, constitutional changes as 

required by the Constitution, and since the usurpation of the rights reserved to the 

states is by the judicial branch of the Federal Government, the issues raised by said 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

67

decision and federal court actions there under are of such grave import as to require 

this sovereign state to judge for itself of the infraction of the Constitution.

 Section 2. Th at the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of 

Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, on May 17, 1954, constitutes a deliberate, palpable 

and dangerous attempt to change the true intent and meaning of the Constitution, 

and said decision itself is unconstitutional and in violation of the 14th Amendment, 

and it thereby establishes a judicial precedent, if allowed to stand, for the ultimate 

destruction of constitutional government. . . .

 . . . 

 Section 4. Th at the decisions of the Federal District Courts in the State of Louisiana, prohibiting the maintenance of separate schools for whites and negroes and 

ordering said schools to be racially integrated . . . all based solely and entirely on the 

pronouncements of Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, are null, void and of no 

eff ect as to the State of Louisiana, its subdivisions and School Boards and the duly 

elected or appointed offi cials, agents and employees thereof. . . .

Speech by Governor Jimmie Davis on statewide television, 

November 13, 1960

Hours before the New Orleans schools would be desegregated for the fi rst time, 

Louisiana Governor Jimmie Davis gave this statewide address expressing his opposition to school integration but also his unwillingness to close the schools to prevent 

racial mixing.

[Document Source: New Orleans Times-Picayune, November 14, 1960, 19.]

 . . . Because the United States constitution makes no reference to a system of 

public education, the operation of schools has traditionally been reserved to the states. 

Neither the constitution nor the Congress of the United States award the federal 

government the responsibility of administering schools. But, today in Louisiana we 

face the peculiar dilemma of having had this responsibility delegated to the federal 

government, not by the constitution, and not by the Congress, but instead by the 

courts.

 For more than 85 years prior to 1954, the supreme court had taken the position 

that providing separate but equal facilities for education complied with the fourteenth 

amendment. Many of the states in the nation had established school systems based 

on this separate but equal doctrine, but these states saw the validity of their system 

being challenged by the sweeping supreme court decision in 1954.

 Th e right to trial by jury is a civil right; it is protected by the constitution; the 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

68

right to free speech is a civil right; this too is protected by the constitution. Th ese 

rights do not change with the color of a man’s skin. But the right to attend a mixed 

school is a social right, and governments have always met with failure when they 

have attempted to legislate customs or morals.

 Th e constitution has not changed because the interpretation in some quarters 

has changed. Th ere is but one way to amend the constitution and this procedure is 

clearly spelled out. It must be amended by the people themselves, and ratifi ed by the 

legislatures of three-fourths of the states. Any other course is extra-legal.

 Th is is the offi cial position of the state of Louisiana. It is my own personal position, 

and I am convinced it is the position of the overwhelming majority of our citizens. 

As citizens of the United States we must jealously guard our rights and we cannot 

abdicate our responsibility. If these rights are in jeopardy we must avail ourselves of 

all lawful avenues to correct what we consider are the wrongs. . . .

 . . . I believe the supreme court, in attempting to prohibit the state of Louisiana 

from using its powers to operate schools, has clearly usurped the amendatory power 

that is constitutionally vested in the states and their citizens.

 Assuming that this is so, the state of Louisiana is entitled to use every local means 

to resist this usurpation of its powers. And this, my friends, is what your Legislature 

and your offi cials are attempting to do. We are living up to the pledges we took when 

we campaigned successfully for offi ce. We are availing ourselves of the legal remedies 

that off er themselves to re-establish ourselves as masters of our fate in internal affairs. . . .

 . . . Th e monuments we will have erected by our action can be landmarks for the 

future. But if we are not equal to the challenges that lie ahead, then the landmarks will 

become tombstones, and upon them it will be written: “State Sovereignty Breathed 

its Last in Louisiana.”

Through My Eyes, by Ruby Bridges (excerpt)

The fi rst black student to integrate William Frantz Public School, on November 14, 

1960, was Ruby Bridges. In a book that Bridges published in 1999, she described her 

experiences—both on that fi rst day and throughout the 1960-1961 school year—as 

the lone black student attending a white school. The following excerpt from Bridges’ 

book describes her fi rst day at the William Frantz School.

 [Document Source: Ruby Bridges, Through My Eyes (New York: Scholastic 

Press, 1999), 15–20.]

 My mother took special care getting me ready for school. When somebody 

knocked on my door that morning, my mother expected to see people from the 

NAACP. Instead, she saw four serious-looking white men, dressed in suits and 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

69

wearing armbands. Th ey were U.S. federal marshals. Th ey had to come to drive us to 

school and stay with us all day. I learned later they were carrying guns.

 I remember climbing into the back seat of the marshals’ car with my mother, 

but I don’t remember feeling frightened. William Frantz Public School was only 

fi ve blocks away, so one of the marshals in the front seat told my mother right away 

what we should do when we got there.

 “Let us get out of the car fi rst,” the marshal said. “Th en you’ll get out, and the 

four of us will surround you and your daughter. We’ll walk up to the door together. 

Just walk straight ahead, and don’t look back.”

 When we were near the school, my mother said, “Ruby, I want you to behave 

yourself today and do what the marshals say.”

 We drove down North Galvez Street to the point where it crosses Alvar. I 

remember looking out of the car as we pulled up to the Frantz school. Th ere were 

barricades and people shouting and policemen everywhere. I thought maybe it was 

Mardi Gras, the carnival that takes place in New Orleans every year. Mardi Gras 

was always noisy.

 As we walked through the crowd, I didn’t see any faces. I guess that’s because 

I wasn’t very tall and I was surrounded by the marshals. People yelled and threw 

things. I could see the school building, and it looked bigger and nicer than my old 

school. When we climbed the high steps to the front door, there were policemen in 

uniforms at the top. Th e policemen at the door and the crowd behind us made me 

think this was an important place.

 It must be college, I thought to myself.

 Once we were inside the building, the marshals walked us up a fl ight of stairs. 

Th e school offi ce was at the top. My mother and I went in and were told to sit in the 

principal’s offi ce. Th e marshals sat outside. Th ere were windows in the room where we 

waited. Th at meant everybody passing by could see us. I remember noticing everyone 

was white.

 All day long, white parents rushed into the offi ce. Th ey were upset. Th ey were 

arguing and pointing at us. When they took their children to school that morning, 

the parents hadn’t been sure whether William Frantz would be integrated that day 

or not. After my mother and I arrived, they ran into classrooms and dragged their 

children out of the school. From behind the windows in the offi ce, all I saw was 

confusion. I told myself that this must be the way it is in a big school.

 Th at whole fi rst day, my mother and I just sat and waited. We didn’t talk to anybody. I remember watching a big, round clock on the wall. When it was 3:00 and 

time to go home, I was glad. I had thought my new school would be hard, but the 

fi rst day was easy.

 When we left school that fi rst day, the crowd outside was even bigger and louder 

than it had been in the morning. Th ere were reporters and fi lm cameras and people 

everywhere. I guess the police couldn’t keep them behind the barricades. It seemed 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

70

to take us a long time to get to the marshals’ car.

 Later on I learned there had been protestors in front of the two integrated schools 

the whole day. Th ey wanted to be sure white parents would boycott the school and 

not let their children attend. Groups of high school boys, joining the protestors, paraded up and down the street and sang new verses to old hymns. Th eir favorite was 

“Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in which they changed the chorus to “Glory, glory, 

segregation, the South will rise again.” Many of the boys carried signs and said awful 

things, but most of all I remember seeing a black doll in a coffi n, which frightened 

me more than anything else.

 After the fi rst day, I was glad to get home. I wanted to change my clothes and 

go outside to fi nd my friends. My mother wasn’t too worried about me because the 

police had set up barricades at each end of the block. Only local residents were allowed on our street. Th at afternoon, I taught a friend the chant I had learned: “Two, 

four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate.” My friend and I didn’t know what the 

words meant, but we would jump rope to it every day after school.

 My father heard about the trouble at school. Th at night when he came home 

from work, he said I was his “brave little Ruby.” . . .

Joint resolution of Louisiana state legislature urging 

boycott of desegregated schools, November 16, 1960

In an effort to forestall desegregation in New Orleans, the Louisiana state legislature approved a joint resolution on November 16, 1960, urging all white parents 

to boycott the two desegregated schools. The resolution, set out here, appeared as 

a paid notice in all New Orleans newspapers. Support for the boycott was widespread, as very few white children attended the two desegregated schools during the 

1960–1961 school year.

 [Document Source: Southern School News 7 (December 1960): 10.]

“To the Parents of the Students Enrolled at McDonogh No. 19 and Frantz, Both 

Public Schools in the City of New Orleans”

 On motion of Mr. Jack, State Representative, Caddo Parish, Louisiana, the Clerk 

of the House of Representatives is directed to have printed in each and every daily 

newspaper published in the City of New Orleans, Senate Concurrent Resolution 

No. 1, that said Resolution be printed on three consecutive days and at the earliest 

possible date and, that said Resolution be printed in such a manner as to cover at 

least one-fourth of a page of said newspapers, and, that the expense of said printing 

be paid by the House of Representatives, State of Louisiana. By Messrs. Long, Blair, 

Jones, Harris, Cleveland, Friedman, and Gravolet.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

71

 Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 1

 A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

 WHEREAS, a Federal District Court in the City of New Orleans has ordered 

the integration of schools in that city, and 

 WHEREAS, the parents of the children attending the schools ordered to be 

integrated manifested their indignation at the attempt to integrate their schools by 

removing their children from said schools and have shown conclusively thereby their 

intention to assert their rights as citizens of this state and have demonstrated their 

will to support the constitution and laws of this state, and

 WHEREAS, the action of these parents and their children is a courageous step 

on their part to maintain our customs and our traditions and our way of life, and 

 WHEREAS, positive action of this nature is essential by all who desire to preserve our democracy from those who seek to destroy it and to call attention to the 

oft neglected democratic principle that the will of the majority of the people cannot 

and should not be fl outed with impunity.

 THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Legislature of the State 

of Louisiana, the House of Representatives thereof concurring, that the parents who 

withdrew their children from the schools sought to be integrated and the children 

who were withdrawn are commended for their courageous stand against the forces 

of integration and those who seek to destroy all that we hold near and dear.

 Be It Further Resolved that this Legislature does hereby urge these parents and 

their children to continue their courageous stand and refrain from attendance at said 

schools.

 Be It Further Resolved that this Legislature does assure these parents and their 

children that it is standing behind them and will do all in its power to assist them in 

their brave fi ght, which will long be remembered by the Legislature and the citizens 

of this state.

C. C. Aycock

Lieutenant Governor and President of the Senate

J. Th omas Jewell

Speaker of the House of Representatives
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

72

Decision and order of U.S. District Court, November 30, 

1960

The three-judge district court convened yet again to consider the constitutionality 

of various laws passed by the Louisiana state legislature at its emergency session in 

early November. Judge Wright had already issued a temporary injunction barring 

various state offi cials from enforcing these laws. Finally, on November 30, the threejudge court issued its opinion concerning the constitutionality of these measures.

 In this opinion, the court paid particular attention to the state’s argument concerning interposition. The court decisively rejected this argument as grounds for 

refusing to engage in school desegregation.

 The various state offi cials who opposed school desegregation in New Orleans 

sought a stay from the Supreme Court of the United States to prevent enforcement 

of this order of the three-judge court. On December 12, the Supreme Court denied 

that stay application, thereby delivering a signifi cant blow to the efforts of Louisiana 

segregationists to circumvent Judge Wright’s desegregation order.

 [Document Source: Earl Benjamin Bush et al., Plaintiffs v. Orleans Parish 

School Board et al., Defendants. Harry K. Williams et al., Plaintiffs v. Jimmie 

H. Davis, Governor of the State of Louisiana et al., Defendants. United States of 

America, Plaintiff v. State of Louisiana et al., Defendants. 188 F. Supp. 916 (E.D. 

La. 1960).]

United States District Court E.D. Louisiana, New Orleans Division.

Bush et al., Plaintiff s v. Orleans Parish School Board et al., Defendants

November 30, 1960.

 . . . Without question, the nub of the controversy is in the declaration of interposition. If it succeeds, there is no occasion to look further, for the state is then free 

to do as it will in the fi eld of public education. On the other hand, should it fail, 

nothing can save the “package” of segregation measures to which it is tied.

 Interposition is an amorphous concept based on the proposition that the United 

States is a compact of states, any one of which may interpose its sovereignty against 

the enforcement within its borders of any decision of the Supreme Court or act of 

Congress, irrespective of the fact that the constitutionality of the act has been established by decision of the Supreme Court. Once interposed, the law or decision 

would then have to await approval by constitutional amendment before enforcement within the interposing state. In essence, the doctrine denies the constitutional 

obligation of the states to respect those decisions of the Supreme Court with which 

they do not agree. Th e doctrine may have had some validity under the Articles of 

Confederation. On their failure, however, “in Order to form a more perfect Union,” 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

73

the people, not the states, of this country ordained and established the Constitution. 

Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 1 Wheat. 304, 324, 14 U.S. 304, 324, 4 L.Ed. 97. Th us the 

keystone of the interposition thesis, that the United States is a compact of states, 

was disavowed in the Preamble to the Constitution. . . .

 . . . Interposition theorists concede the validity, under the supremacy clause, of 

acts of Congress and decisions of the Supreme Court except in the area reserved 

for the states by the Tenth Amendment. But laws and decisions in this reserved 

area, the argument runs, are by defi nition unconstitutional, hence are not governed 

by the supremacy clause and do not rightly command obedience. Th is, of course, is 

Louisiana’s position with reference to the Brown decision in the recent Act of Interposition. Quite obviously, as an inferior court, we cannot overrule that decision. 

Th e issue before us is whether the Legislature of Louisiana may do so.

 Assuming always that the claim of interposition is an appeal to legality, the inquiry 

is who, under the Constitution, has the fi nal say on questions of constitutionality, 

who delimits the Tenth Amendment. In theory, the issue might have been resolved 

in several ways. But, as a practical matter, under our federal system the only solution short of anarchy was to assign the function to one supreme court. Th at the fi nal 

decision should rest with the judiciary rather than the legislature was inherent in 

the concept of constitutional government in which legislative acts are subordinate 

to the paramount organic law, and, if only to avoid “a hydra in government from 

which nothing but contradiction and confusion can proceed,” fi nal authority had to 

be centralized in a single national court. . . .

 . . . From the fact that the Supreme Court of the United States rather than any 

statute authority is the ultimate judge of constitutionality, another consequence of 

equal importance results. It is that the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts and the 

correctness of their decisions on constitutional questions cannot be reviewed by the 

state governments. Indeed, since the appeal from their rulings lies to the Supreme 

Court of the United States, as the only authoritative constitutional tribunal, neither 

the executive, nor the legislature, nor even the courts of the state, have any competence in the matter. It necessarily follows that, pending review by the Supreme Court, 

the decisions of the subordinate federal courts on constitutional questions have the 

authority of the supreme law of the land and must be obeyed. Assuredly, this is a 

great power, but a necessary one. See United States v. Peters, supra, 5 Cranch 135, 

136, 9 U.S. 135, 136. . . . 

 . . . Without the support of the Interposition Act, the rest of the segregation 

“package” falls of its own weight. However ingeniously worded some of the statutes 

may be, admittedly the sole object of every measure adopted at the recent special 

session of the Louisiana Legislature is to preserve a system of segregated public 

schools in defi ance of the mandate of the Supreme Court in Brown and the orders 

of this court in Bush. What is more, these acts were not independent attempts by 

individual legislators to accomplish this end. Th e whole of the legislation, sponsored 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

74

by the same select committee, forms a single scheme, all parts of which are carefully interrelated. Th e proponents of the “package” were themselves insistent on so 

labelling it, and expressly argued that the passage of every measure proposed was 

essential to the success of the plan. In view of this, the court might properly void 

the entire bundle of new laws without detailed examination of its content. For, as 

the Supreme Court said in Cooper v. Aaron, supra, 358 U.S. 17, 78 S. Ct. 1409, “the 

constitutional rights of children not to be discriminated against in school admission 

on grounds of race or color declared by this Court in the Brown case can neither be 

nullifi ed openly and directly by state legislators or state executive or judicial offi cers, 

nor nullifi ed indirectly by them through evasive schemes for segregation whether 

attempted ‘ingeniously or ingenuously’.” . . . 

 . . . For the foregoing reasons, this court denies the interposition claim of the 

State of Louisiana and declares Acts 2, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 

23, 24, 25, 26 and 27 and House Concurrent Resolutions 10, 17, 18, 19 and 23 of 

the First Extraordinary Session of 1960 unconstitutional. Th is court will prepare the 

decree enjoining their enforcement. Th e motions to dismiss are denied. Th e motion 

to vacate, or delay the eff ective date of, the order requiring desegregation of the New 

Orleans public schools is likewise denied.

Letters sent to Judge Skelly Wright during the 

desegregation controversy

Critics

Judge Skelly Wright received considerable correspondence from the public during 

the New Orleans school controversy. Most of the letters were extremely negative, 

and they indicate the level of hatred directed at him and his family. Wright received 

many supportive letters as well, some from as far away as Australia. He carefully 

preserved the letters among his private papers. Below is a sampling of some of the 

negative letters he received. 

 [Document Source: J. Skelly Wright Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of 

Congress, Box 12.] 

[No salutation]:

 Th is is a note to let you know as a teacher of Caddo Parish, I will teach my classes 

that you are the sole cause of integration in Louisiana. You should have heard them 

discuss you today. Lots of them called you a Castro in America and I agreed with 

them. Only one child seemed to think you were doing the only thing you could do 
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

75

and she was almost laughed out of the room.

 In talking to one of our local attorneys, he said he knew you personally and you 

would sell your mother’s birthright if it would further your own fi nancial security 

and so far as character you had none. I am indeed sorry Louisiana has such a man 

as its federal judge. From what we can learn you have always loved . . . Negroes and 

have associated with them even more than whites during the past few years.

 Th is is to let you know I will continue teaching my classes how unAmerican you 

are and how you hate the white school children of this State.

A teacher that hates you

Shreveport

November 16, 1960

Wright: (Perhaps I should greet you as “Red” or “Negro-Lover”)

 Now that you’ve made history, I, as a “white” father, teacher, taxpayer, and citizen 

advise you to go to your kind—perhaps to Castro, perhaps to the Congo, or better 

yet—to Moscow and Siberia. If you do so, all Louisianians will be delighted, particularly the people you so shamefully have jurisdiction over and are so repulsive to.

 Don’t forget that you are a “despised” man (no doubt your “white” wife shares or 

feels as we do) and you are directly responsible for the stabbing, shooting, and raping 

now taking place in New Orleans. Why not disappear?

A white man

Albert DuPre

Eunice, LA

November 17, 1960

Your honor;

 I am wondering if you are part of a plan to turn our Republic into a dictatorship? 

Are you planning to take over the reins in Louisiana? Who, then, will rule Mississippi? 

Is Adam Clayton Powell to be the ruler of New York? Unthinkable? Well I tell you 

it seems to be shaping up. Your dictatorial decisions of recent weeks are appalling. 

I don’t know why our offi cials haven’t arrested you and committed you to an insane 

asylum. Why don’t you resign your position? Or better still, Drop dead!

Ralph L. Pippins

Jones, LA

November 21, 1960
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

76

Supporters

Here is a sampling of some of the positive letters Wright received during the fi rst 

week of desegregation in New Orleans. 

 [Document Source: J. Skelly Wright Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of 

Congress, Box 12.]

Dear Sir:

 Th e tremendous amount of infl ammatory mail which I am sure is fl ooding your 

offi ce makes the possibilities of you ever reading this slim indeed. But, since I know 

of no other way of letting you know that you are not alone in your actions, and that 

there are those who heartily endorse the stand you have taken, admire your courage, 

and pray daily for your welfare and success, I am writing this in the hope that you 

may somehow read it.

 I was born and raised in the South with all the prejudices and hatred of the negroes 

that the South bestows upon her sons who are of the white race, but I know that 

segregation is not moral and must somehow be rooted up and cast out as a noxious 

weed. Weeds do not come up easily, and they are very diffi cult to destroy. However, 

if the fl ower of liberty is to grow the weed of segregation must be destroyed. I salute 

you sir for your courage to try.

 I know that the sentiments expressed are not those of all the members of my 

faith. I doubt that even a majority of the people would agree with me, and so this 

letter must speak for me alone.

 May God guide you through this dangerous time.

Rev. Carl H. Stolley, Jr.

Grace Episcopal Church, New Orleans, November 16, 1960

Dear Judge Wright:

 As a white southern citizen, believing in the traditions of the South, I would like 

to take this opportunity to commend you for your recent actions in the school crisis 

at New Orleans.

 I know that in the past several months you have received numerous letters, telephone calls and so forth condemning you, and I have listened with feelings of dismay 

and revolt to the statements made by the press, T.V., and radio condemning you and 

your actions. I feel that a letter of this type might compensate in some small measure 

for the abuse and derogatory statements made regarding you and your actions.

 I would like to say it is my opinion, and I am sure this opinion is shared by nu-
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

77

merous other citizens of Louisiana and the South, that some day it will be said that 

you performed your duty as you saw it in defending the Constitution of the United 

States, preserving law and order, and fostering the democratic process. I think, too, 

you are to be congratulated for standing between demagogues and the responsible 

citizens of this community.

 With admiration for your past actions, and with hope that God will give you the 

strength to continue preserving the law, I am, 

J.C. Pierce

New Orleans

November 16, 1960

Dear Judge Wright:

 Having formerly served in the State Legislature and therefore, with some 

knowledge of the present actions of the State Legislature, I believe I am somewhat 

cognizant of the situation in which you presently fi nd yourself. 

 As a practicing attorney and one who is deeply interested in the preservation of 

our freedoms by law and not by mob action, I must commend you for the courageous 

manner in which you have handled the situation.

 I deeply deplore the unwarranted, scandalous and vituperative attacks which 

have been made upon you personally and as a United States Judge. I thought that 

you might be interested in knowing that you do have friends who believe in you 

and who will stand by you. I know this because many have made the expressions to 

me even though they may not have taken the time, as I have done, to inform you of 

their thoughts. But, as one who has had similar experiences, I am sure it will make 

you feel more comfortable, as it did me, to receive such expressions. . . .

J.D. De Blieux

Baton Rouge, LA

November 17, 1960
Blank pages inserted to preserve pagination when printing double-sided copies.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

79

Bibliography and Resources

Secondary sources

Baker, Liva. The Second Battle of New Orleans: The Hundred-Year Struggle to Integrate 

the Schools. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Bass, Jack. Unlikely Heroes: The Dramatic Story of the Southern Judges of the Fifth 

Circuit who Translated the Supreme Court’s Brown Decision into a Revolution for 

Equality. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981.

Bridges, Ruby. Through My Eyes. New York: Scholastic Press, 1999.

Coles, Robert. Children of Crisis: A Study of Courage and Fear. Boston: Little, Brown 

and Company, 1964.

Crain, Robert L. The Politics of School Desegregation: Comparative Case Studies of 

Community Structure and Policy-Making. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 

1968. (Part III of this book deals with New Orleans.)

Crain, Robert L., and Morton Inger. School Desegregation in New Orleans: A 

Comparative Study of the Failure of Social Control. Chicago: National Opinion 

Research Center, 1966.

Fairclough, Adam. Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 

1915–1972. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995.

Giarrusso, Alfred Peter. “Desegregation of the Orleans Parish School System.” Ed.D. 

dissertation, University of Arkansas, 1969.

Inger, Morton. Politics and Reality in an American City: The New Orleans School 

Crisis of 1960. New York: Center for Urban Education, 1969.

Jeansonne, Glen. Leander Perez, Boss of the Delta. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State 

University Press, 1977.

Klarman, Michael J. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the 

Struggle for Racial Equality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board

80

Louisiana State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil 

Rights, Report of the New Orleans School Crisis. Washington, D.C., 1961.

Miller, Arthur S. A “Capacity for Outrage”: The Judicial Odyssey of J. Skelly Wright. 

1984.

Muller, Mary Lee. “The New Orleans Parish School Board and Negro Education.” 

M.A. Thesis, University of New Orleans, 1975.

Read, Frank T., and Lucy S. McGough, Let Them Be Judged: The Judicial Integration 

of the Deep South. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1978 [Chapter Three].

Rogers, Kim Lacy. “Humanity and Desire: Civil Rights Leaders and the Desegregation 

of New Orleans, 1954–1966.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 

1982.

Wieder, Alan. “The New Orleans School Crisis of 1960: Causes and Consequences.” 

Phylon 48 (2d Quarter, 1987): 122–31.

Court records

Case fi les for Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board are in RG 21, U.S. District Court 

for the Eastern District of Louisiana, New Orleans Division, National Archives 

and Records Administration, Southwest Region (Fort Worth).
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Director

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