New Orleans school desegregation crisis
Following the riot, United States marshals began accompanying the four girls to their respective schools, while death threats against them continued.[7] The Compromise of 1877 led to the withdrawal of federal troops in Louisiana and returned Democrats to power, erasing the work done to desegregate schools during the Reconstruction Era.[8] Aubert took action against the OPSB with the aid of A. P. Tureaud, the chief legal counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).It was a 1954 Kansas case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, however, that called for nationwide desegregation of all public schools.[citation needed] Fighting along with the Louisiana State Legislature against integration was the OPSB and board member Emile Wagner.Gerald Rault, assisted by Judge Leander Perez, was the legal counsel in the case against the integration of public schools.The state legislature continued to ignore the integration order, and the NAACP demanded that Judge Wright enforce his ruling.On July 15, 1959, in response to the state legislature's resistance and the NAACP's request, Judge Wright gave a deadline of March 1, 1960, to the OPSB, the date that it would be required to integrate public schools.While many racial separatists disapproved of Wright's decision, organizations such as Save Our Schools and the Committee for Public Education called for the integration plan to be pushed forward.That would give Governor Jimmie Davis and the legislature time to propose 30 bills that would make integration illegal even though Wright had already declared most of them unconstitutional.The day after Perez's meeting, hundreds of teenagers gathered at the school board office and dispersed after the police arrived in riot gear.Stabbing and gas bombing incidents happened throughout the city and a large fight between groups of black and white people broke out.Several Louisiana officials flew to Florida to meet with President-elect John F. Kennedy with the intention to seek his opinion on the situation.The young African American girls who were chosen to be the first to integrate the New Orleans public schools "were largely forgotten".One thing that remains the same, however, is that although the city's population is about 40 percent white, the student bodies at public and charter schools are overwhelmingly African American.