|
|
 |
 David Zinman, right, walks to school with The Rev. Andrew Foreman and his daughter, Pamela, who was among the very few white students who attended the integrated school. |
Remembering the courage
of a few white families
of TheColumnists.com
This column is about
an interview I did early in my newspaper career--one that started
in the 1950s, spanned four decades, and took me to New Orleans
I remember only a single quote from that long ago interview and
that quote amounted to only four words. Yet, those words have
stayed with me. At the age of 81, I still remember them vividly
and the frightening events leading up to them.
To understand why those words remain relevant, you need to return
to an era that seems totally out of synch in today’s world.
Oddly, what started me on this trip back in time was Hurricane
Irene. In September, its torrential rains flooded the basement
of my Long Island house. All I could salvage were a few cartons
of old newspapers.
I was about to throw them out with the rest of the debris when
I remembered something my Dad told me. He used to talk about
“turning a liability into an asset.” He thought the
secret to life was having the ability to bounce back from a setback.
His advice came to mind when I looked at those faded newspapers.
Instead of tossing them, I decided to save them and use them
to make a scrapbook.
I have three grandchildren. When they have grown up, I thought
they might wonder about their grandfather. All they know was
that I was a newspaperman. The scrapbook could tell them something
about my life as a reporter—particularly my first big story.
That story came back to me when I looked through those old papers.
I came across a photo that showed me alongside a father walking
his little girl to school at the height of the New Orleans integration
crisis.
All alone, without any police escort, they defied a mob of angry
white parents boycotting the first school to be desegregated
in the Deep South. It happened Nov. 29, 1960—51 years ago
this month.
If ever there was an accident waiting to happen, this one stood
at the head of the line. The turmoil that followed was predictable
months in advance.
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling declaring
segregation in public schools unconstitutional. A year later,
it ordered federal district courts to see that public school
integration was carried out “with all deliberate speed.”
Yet, by the end of the decade, not a single school in Louisiana—as
well as in most southern states—acted to obey the ruling.
Finally, in 1961, U.S. Judge J. Skelly Wright of New Orleans
took action. He told the city it had to comply with the law of
the land.
The school board reluctantly issued a plan. The board thought
it would be best to start slowly. In the first year, it limited
integration to two schools and then only to the first grade.
Even so, segregationists would not relent. They called for massive
resistance. “Don’t wait for your daughter to be
raped by these Congolese,” political boss Leander Perez
told a packed meeting of the White Citizens Council. “Do
something about it.” Angry parents marched on City Hall.
Still, the integration order went forward. Schools opened. Four
black first graders enrolled in two elementary schools slated
for integration in the city’s poorest section.
In choosing to begin integration there, the school board ignored
the advice of a Virginia school board that had been able to desegregate
its schools without incident. It told the New Orleans board to
start in an upscale or middle-class area. The board ignored the
suggestion--a misjudgment that set the stage for chaos.
The day the William Franz School was integrated in the working
class section called the 9th Ward, white parents pulled out all
their kids--all but two parents.
One of them, the Rev. Andrew Foreman, a Methodist minister, kept
his 5-year-old daughter Pamela in school. Each day, they ran
a gauntlet of jeering mothers waiting at the street corner.
One raucous group of women jauntily dubbed themselves “The
Cheerleaders.” Like clockwork, they showed up regularly
twice a day to taunt the four children and their parents as they
came and left school.
I was in my first year with the Associated Press. More seasoned
newsmen did the reporting when the story broke. But after a few
days, the bureau chief sent me to the Franz school to see what
was going on.
I went to the Rev. Foreman’s house and persuaded him to
let me join him and his daughter. In my eagerness to do the story,
I had forgotten about the protesters—that is, until we came
in sight of them.
The atmosphere was charged. The protesters bunched in rows four
and five deep. You could almost feel their hatred. I felt a chill
run down my spine. But it was too late to turn back.
In my dark Navy raincoat, I kept walking alongside the minister
and his little girl, trying to appear cool as we approached the
screaming parents.
They yelled: “Nigger lover… Poor white trash,…Communist
bastard…Two, four, six, eight, We don’t wanna integrate…”
Even when we got past the shouting crowd, the epithets echoed
in my head. I wondered what Foreman’s little girl made of
it all. But at least no one harmed her or her father.
 |
|
segregationists who wanted to keep them from integrating the school in New Orleans. |
Once inside the school, I found a lonely scene. There were just two black pupils and only one other white child with her mother. She was Daisy Gabrielle, 42, who had served in the WAC (Women’s Army Corps) in WWII. She brought her 6-year-old daughter Yolanda.
In an interview on the 50th anniversary of the integration crisis last year, Yolanda, then in her 50s, said each pupil was taught in a separate classroom. “This is the irony of it,” she said. “We were still all segregated.”
When I got back to the AP office, I was told I had a scoop. I was the only newsman to get inside the school.
Ken Davis, the bureau chief, told me to get to my typewriter and write a story for the AM cycle (the next day’s morning papers).
My 400-word piece made the A-Wire Budget (spotlighting the top stories to move on the wire) and carried my first national by-line. I ended the piece quoting the mob’s epithets word for word. I wanted readers to get an unvarnished dose of the mob’s crudeness.
That did not happen in New Orleans. When the Times-Picayune ran the story, editors deleted the swear words. The last paragraph just read, “They cursed.”
That night when I went to bed, I couldn’t sleep. It was more than the unnerving experience that bothered me. I felt there was an important element missing from the story.
It was obvious what had motivated Foreman, a man of the cloth, to refuse to go along with the boycott. But Mrs. Gabrielle was not a minister. She was the wife of a meter reader for the electric utility. What led her to stand up to the protesters?
I decided to see her. She lived in a low-rent project. As I walked to her apartment and knocked on her door, I got a lot of scornful looks from neighbors.
Mrs. Gabrielle invited me in and we sat in her sparsely furnished living room. A dark-haired woman with shining brown eyes, she told me about her troubles.
She said her friends had abandoned her. Co-workers taunted her husband. Once, women assaulted her as she came home with her daughter. Other people would try to set fire to their apartment.
Within two months, her husband would be fired, and the Gabrielles would leave and return to their family’s home in Rhode Island.
“Mrs. Gabrielle,” I said, “I have to ask one question, I know you have principles. I know you believe you are doing the right thing. But all your neighbors have deserted you. You are taking on a huge burden. Why are you doing it?”
She was silent. I could hear a clock ticking in the next room. Outside, the afternoon sun was fading.
She spoke four words.
“Neighbors change,” she said. “Principles don’t.”
©2011 by David Zinman. The Zinman caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photos are courtesy of the Associated Press and The New Orleans Time-Picayune. This column first posted Oct. 31, 2011.
TO ACCESS DAVID ZINMAN'S ARCHIVE OF COLUMNS
ON THIS SITE, CLICK HERE: ZINMAN
ARCHIVE
You can comment on this column online via our TALKBACK page. Please address your e-mail message to either "The Editors" or David Zinman at Syndpack @aol.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|