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’AGE 10—JANUARY 1961—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
Two New Orleans Parents Become
Heroes and Villains in School Crisis
intimidation, and violence which have
resulted against him and his family.
But, unable to cope with economic
pressures and attacks upon their pub
lic housing project apartment, Mr. and
Mrs. Gabrielle moved their family of
six children to Rhode Island 30 days
after desegregation began.
Shunned Interviews
Foreman, bom in Crowley, La., rice
producing center of the state, has
shunned most interviewers but told
one:
“My fight is one to take my child
to school. It is for the right of public
education. If other people want to keep
their children home, that is their privi
lege. But I want the privilege of tak
ing my child.
“I’ll continue to take her, if she con
tinues to want to go. This is her right.
I’m concerned, of course. But Tm not
afraid. I cannot help but think that
those people out there do not represent
this city.”
“Those people out there” was a ref
erence to the segregation demonstra
tors who pushed him and his five-
year-old daughter Pamela Lynn, at
tempting to block their path to the
school; the vandals who smashed win
dows at his home and smeared it with
red paint; the people who stood outside
his church screaming at him as he
left services.
From the other side have come com
mendations of ministerial groups; sup
port of Save Our Schools, an organiza
tion dedicated to keeping schools in
New Orleans open; and protection of
U. S. deputy marshals who stepped in
to provide motor escort service to white
children who wanted to go to Frantz.
Gabrielles Leave
Mrs. Gabrielle, whose husband quit
a $248 a month city job because of
harassment by fellow workers, an
nounced on Dec. 8 she and her family
would move to her husband’s home
town, North Providence, R. I.
She said:
“I don’t want them to get the im
pression that we’re leaving after try
ing to stir up trouble in the school.
“I knew I had to look at this thing
as a true Christian. I fought with fear,
then reached the final decision. But
we intended to leave long before this
thing ever happened. Jim had to get
a better job.”
Stones were thrown through the
windows of the Gabrielle apartment;
Mrs. Gabrielle was attacked by angry
white mothers one day as she walked
home from school with six-year-old
Yolanda; shouting demonstrators stood
outside their apartment at night and in
early morning.
“They never leave me in peace,” said
Mrs. Gabrielle, bom in Costa Rica,
“but nobody is going to tell me how
I should believe.”
Others Encouraged
Encouraged by the acts of Foreman
and Mrs. Gabrielle other parents re
turned children to classes until on
Dec. 6 white attendance reached a peak
of 23. Enrollment was 573 before de
segregation began.
A stepped up program of harass-
ments and threats—principally through
impossible-to-trace telephone calls—
forced the attendance back down.
As the wavering attendance leveled
off at eight, school officials were en
couraged and looked for a turn up
ward when tensions further ease.
No white parent has since Nov. 18
broken the boycott at McDonogh No.
19 school, only other New Orleans
school desegregated by the Orleans
school board under an order from U.
S. District Judge J. Skelly Wright.
McDonogh No. 19 has three Negro
girls in the first grade. # # #
NEW ORLEANS, La.
rpwo white parents—a young
-*■ Methodist minister and the
wife of a low-income city worker
—have become both heroes and
villains to New Orleans.
Independently of one another, the
Rev. Lloyd A. Foreman and Mrs.
James Gabrielle decided to keep their
children in desegregated William
Frantz elementary school, which ac
cepted one Negro child Nov. 14 under
a pupil placement program.
The actions of the minister and the
housewife broke the back of a segre
gationist attempt at a complete white
boycott of Frantz. Gradually and cau
tiously a few other white parents sen,
their children back to the school.
Foreman declared his intent to keep
nis child at the school despite threats,
The deputy U.S. marshal caught in
he middle of the heated House action
iver condemning the federal judges
vho cited three state officials for con-
empt was Dick Smith.
He started down the aisle to serve
Speaker Jewell but was quickly hustled
jack outside by sergeants-at-arms after
jutcries from the lawmakers to “get
hat man out of here.”
The House and Senate have rules
prohibiting anyone except members,
heir families and press representatives
on the floor during debates and actions.
Smith waited for Jewell outside the
chamber and served the papers.
NEW ORLEANS WOMAN RESTRAINED BY POLICE
Mrs. James Gabrielle was shoved against tree behind school zone sign as she was
walking daughter Yolanda home from desegregated William Frantz School.
MINISTER AND DAUGHTER AT PICKET LINE
The Rev■ Lloyd A. Foreman escorts child to school in face of opposition.
Louisiana
(Continued From Page 9)
Despite legislative actions, court bat
tles, a strangling school financial crisis
and a program of harassment and
threats against all who refuse to agree
with segregationists, two facts stood out
as 1960 drew to a close in New Or
leans:
1. The five men elected to run the
118-public schools of Orleans Parish
remain in office and under court di
rective to implement desegregation
in the face of seven direct actions by
state officials to remove board mem
bers, or strip them of all their pow
ers.
2. Two New Orleans public schools,
desegregated on Nov. 14 under a pu
pil placement law adopted in 1958 by
Louisiana’s Legislature, continue to
house four Negro first graders; and
one of the schools, William Frantz,
has a handful of white pupils re
maining in defiance of a boycott
sponsored by the Legislature and
segregationists.
Boycott Incomplete
Reasonably orderly demonstrations at
Frantz and McDonogh No. 19 schools
between Nov. 14, the day both were
desegregated, and Nov. 18, the day they
closed for a nine-day Thanksgiving
holiday, failed to accomplish the total
white boycott of both schools sought
by the Legislature (in a published
appeal to parents) and by segrega
tionist leaders.
McDonogh parents had withdrawn
the 463 white children who previously
attended the school, and by Nov. 17
only three Negro girls remained in the
building with 18 white teachers, the
principal, and other employes. The
white boycott remains unchanged.
But at Frantz, two white parents—
Methodist Minister Lloyd A. Foreman
and Mrs. James Gabrielle—ran a
rowdy, egg-throwing segregationist
blockade and, with police protection,
safely escorted their children to classes.
Both Foreman and Mrs. Gabrielle were
pushed around by screaming demon
strators—mostly women—but neither
was injured.
Priest Decoy
Vandals attacked both their homes
with bricks. Threats were made on
their lives as well as the lives of their
children. On one day a Catholic priest,
the Rev. Jerome Drolet, acted as a
decoy at one side of the school while
Foreman took his five-year-old daugh
ter, Pamela Lynn, out another door.
Frustrated in their efforts to stop
Pamela Lynn Foreman and Yolanda
Gabrielle, 6, from attending the school,
the women demonstrators on Dec. 1
turned on bystanders and manhandled
a university student and a New Or
leans attorney. The attacks were upon
Sydney Goldfinch, a Tulane student
who was a leader in sit-in demonstra
tions at New Orleans, and George
Dreyfous, president of the Louisiana
Civil Liberties Union. Neither was in
jured.
Police also hustled from the Frantz
school area several newsmen, some of
them accused of provoking the dem
onstrators.
Save Our Schools
Save Our Schools, an organization
dedicated to keeping the public schools
open even though desegregation was
ordered, began transporting children to
school.
“We realized the danger when we
offered the rides,” said Mrs. N. H.
Sand, president of SOS. “We aren’t
afraid and will find rides for any
mothers who need them.”
Police cleared a wide area around
the school, each day blocking off dem
onstrators until finally, on Dec. 3, only
a handful of white women went to the
school silently to watch the white chil
dren and the lone Negro enter the
building for classes.
By Dec. 6 the number of whites had
reached 23, and a new program began
to force white children to leave the
school.
Citizens Councils Active
The Citizens Councils published and
distributed names of SOS workers and
others breaking the boycott; and a
wave of threats, harassments, and eco
nomic pressures toppled white attend
ance to eight. It remained at about that
figure daily during December.
The Citizens Councils said some SOS
leaders were pro-Communist.
Gabrielle was forced to quit his job
as a maintenance man for the city’s
sewerage and water board because of
harassment, and he moved his family
from the city.
Marion McKinley, Baptist seminary
student, withdrew his children from
Frantz because of telephone threats on
the lives of his family and a warning
that he was going to lose his part-
time job.
Marvin Chandler, another Baptist
student living in a public housing
project near McKinley, was threatened
with loss of his job; he took his chil
dren from Frantz.
Withdrawals Continue
Police established 24-hour guards at
the homes of others threatened, but
withdrawal of white children from the
school continued.
One of the police guards was placed
at the home of Everett L. Poling, who
said that threats were made on his
family and that the tires of the family
car were slashed by vandals.
Foreman told police on Dec. 7 his
life was threatened in the street as he
approached the school with his child.
He pointed out a man who got away
in the crowd.
On Dec. 9, U. S. deputy marshals
stepped in and began escorting white
children to school as they had escorted
the lone Negro student since Nov. 14.
Harassment Lets Up
The handful of white children among
the 573 who once attended the school
continued going to classes. The tele
phone harassment program let up to
ward the end of the fourth week of
desegregated operations.
With police and federal marshals
handling the violence, the four mem
bers of the school board who voted for
use of pupil placement to comply with
the desegregation order appealed with
out success to white parents to return
their children to Frantz and McDonogh.
The majority of the white children
withdrawn by their parents from
Frantz and McDonogh 19 schools are
attending schools in adjoining St.
Bernard parish.
Some 400 of them in the fourth, fifth
and sixth grades are now in the regu
lar, segregated public schools of St.
Bernard, a parish dominated by strong
segregationist Leander H. Perez, who
won acceptance of Orleans children in
the schools beyond the New Orleans
city limits.
Private School Prepared
At the same time, first, second and
third graders from Frantz and Mc
Donogh began attending classes in a
one-time automobile motor assembly
plant intended to be opened as a pri
vate school.
Immediately upon opening its doors
to 275 white children, the school—pre
pared by volunteer workers using do
nated materials—was formally leased
by the St. Bernard Parish school board
and made a part of the public school
system.
Joseph Davies Jr., superintendent,
said the parish, already operating its
schools in the red, would find a means
of paying the certified teachers em
ployed to teach the displaced children.
The galvanized metal building lies
between two industrial plants and
fronts on the Mississippi River. It was
converted by constructing partitions
within the factory framework.
Parish school officials proudly
showed off the eight classrooms, a
panelled teacher’s lounge, an “audi
torium” and other school facilities on
Dec. 8, the day after classes began.
Inspection Permitted
Parish deputies had kept newsmen
away from the building until it was
ready and then permitted them in for
only one inspection.
Children are being transported by
private buses leased by parent co
operative efforts. The school board is
leasing the structure itself for $600 a
month until June.
The state is supplying free textbooks
and other materials as it does for pub
lic schools of the 67 school systems in
the state. A lunch program is being
operated on the same basis as for reg
ular public schools, with the cost be
ing borne through state and federal
and some contribution from each child
who takes hot meals at school. Indigent
children are given free lunches.
New Officers
During the month, both the Orleans
Parish school board and the state board
of education elected new officers.
Louis G. Riecke Sr., hardware and
lumber company executive, was named
president of the Orleans board to suc
ceed Lloyd J. Rittiner, whose term ex
pired.
A native of New Orleans, Riecke is
one of the four board members who
voted to use the state’s pupil place
ment law as a means of complying
with the federal court order that pub
lic schools of New Orleans be deseg
regated.
He has been a board member for
four years and long has been active
in the field of reform government and
civil affairs.
First Effort Fails
Riecke launched immediately into a
program of gaining public acceptance
of the board’s position that “token in
tegration” in schools is better than no
public schools at all. His initial efforts
to gain state cooperation with the
board failed.
Rittiner, who headed up the board
in the 11 months prior to desegregation
and a month after the first Negroes
were accepted in previously all-white
schools, said on stepping down from
the presidency:
“This last year has been a trying
one. But it also has been a rewarding
one. It takes a crisis such as this to
separate the men from the boys. I cer
tainly know now the men who believe
in public education.”
Emile A. Wagner Jr., only board
(Continued on Next Page)
LOUIS G. RIECKE
Trying year, but rewarding
ROBERT H. CURRY
‘Segregation . . . ideal way’