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Monday, July 15, 2024

Tessie Prevost Williams, unsung hero of school desegregation, dies at 69

From the Washington Post:

But the same morning that Bridges faced fulminating White mobs to enter the first grade at William Frantz Elementary, three other 6-year-old African American girls braved the same gauntlet as they integrated McDonogh 19, another elementary school in the Ninth Ward, just two miles away.

On the Monday in November that was set for their first day at their new schools, the girls were picked up at their homes by U.S. marshals assigned to protect them.

Over the course of the day, the school emptied out of White students. “All of a sudden you see children disappearing,” Mrs. Prevost Williams told Devlin. “Someone would come and just snatch a child out of the classroom.” White families found other schools for their children to attend and in many cases moved away. For all of first grade and half of second, the girls were alone, a classroom of three.

At that point, the marshals were no longer present, journalists had turned their attention away from New Orleans and the girls, in many respects, were on their own. Their experience became “progressively worse as they went throughout their academic career,” said Mark Cave, a senior historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection.

Students kicked and hit the girls, spat upon them, pushed them down the steps, struck them with baseball bats and ripped their clothing. The teachers did nothing to stop the abuse and at times encouraged it. Mrs. Prevost Williams remembered one of them as “the devil’s bride.”

It is a story of incredible dignity and resolve, confronted by appalling hatred and depravity. You should read the entire obituary here.

Posted by Steve Lubet on July 15, 2024 at 04:00 AM | Permalink

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