Group puts pressure on McDonogh 35 contractor to hire more minorities
8th July 2014 · 0 Comments
A group of community leaders is lauding the removal of a “Not Hiring” sign that once hung on the construction gate at the new site of McDonogh 35 High School.
The sign was posted by Citadel Builders, the general contracting firm hired to build McDonogh 35’s new building on Senate and Davey streets.
The group, comprised of 25 members from both Justice and Beyond Coalition and Stand With Dignity, says the sign is akin to the “Whites Only” historic anniversary on the steps of the Louisiana Supreme Court with the ringing of freedom bells. A reception followed in the Louisiana Supreme Court’s Museum.
“It’s not the legislation that we celebrate the most, it’s the sacrifice of the people who pushed and changed the climate of the country to make it necessary, warranted and justified to a Civil Rights Act,” Congressman Richmond said.
“On this day 50 years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law landmark legislation outlawing discrimination based on race which had for centuries divided our nation,” New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said. “From Plessy v. Ferguson; to Ruby Bridges facing integration at the William Frantz School; to the Freedom Riders and their perilous journey from Washington, DC to New Orleans, our city was at the center of the Civil Rights Movement. We honor the legacy and commitment of the many who faced enormous trials and tribulations in the name of equality.”
“I’m a freedom fighter,” Freedom Rider Jerome Smith said. “Sometimes we used to sit and we would sing this song, ‘This May Be The Last Time,’ because sometimes we thought we were going to die the next day.”
President John F. Kennedy’s call for civil rights legislation was a direct result of a series of boycotts, protests, beatings, pickets and sit-ins in Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama, across Mississippi, in New Orleans and in other Southern cities. It was President Lyndon Johnson who made the legislation’s passage an early priority for his administration. After changing public opinion outside the Deep South paved the way for passage in the House of Representatives, Senators Everett Dirksen, Thomas Kuchel, Mike Mansfield and Hubert Humphrey led the charge in the U.S. Senate.
Some historians say that the inhumane treatment of thousands of African-descended people who came to America and New Orleans as slaves 300 or more years ago set the stage for all future civil rights actions. After the Emancipation Proclamation created a greater economic role for Blacks in U.S., the drumbeat for civil rights became stronger.
Local African-American church leaders (the Rev. A.L. Davis, the Rev. Avery Alexander, the Rev. Skip Alexander, Rev. Uptown, Rev. Morris Burrell, Rev. Lawrence Landrum), and the formation of the NAACP and the Urban League with their leadership Dr. Hank Braden, Arthur Chapital, and A.P. Tureaud also drove the message.
Such white liberals as Rosa Keller, Helen Mervis, Ben Smith and Jim Pate, or those religious individuals with strong convictions such as Father Louis J. Twomey and his student Moon Landrieu whose training ran counter to segregation, also joined in. But it was the young people, the protest generation — Black and white — who really drove the freedom train.
In New Orleans they number too many to remember all but include Rudy Lombard, Jerome Smith, Matt Suarez, Dodie Smith-Simmons, Claude Reese, Dave Dennis, Joyce Taylor, Lois Dejean, Doris Castle and her sister Oretha Castle- Haley, Richard Haley, Corinne Barnwell, and Don Hubbard, Young smart feisty lawyers such as Dutch Morial, Lolis Elie, and Revius Ortique played a vital role. Some people like Diana Bajoie and Henry Julien were too young to ride the Freedom buses but watched from the sidelines.
Wednesday’s anniversary celebration was also important for America’s youth who often take today’s freedoms and liberty for granted. Whether citizens attend Wednesday’s bell-ringing or remember the 50th Anniversary in their own way, it is a day that should be remembered by all.
Freedom Rider Jerome Smith shares the history of the Civil Rights Movement and local connections with his young Tambourine & Fan charges year-round, but Wednesday was a chance for Smith and other civil rights veterans to pass on the legacy of organized struggle and the fight for civil and human rights to a wider group of young people.
New Orleans has a rich civil rights history that included the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the use of Xavier University in New Orleans as a place of refuge after Freedom Riders were violently attacked in Anniston, Alabama. New Orleans was also the city where the largest uprising of enslaved Africans in the United States took place in 1811.
While Jerome Smith is concerned about the scourge of violence that has engulfed New Orleans, he has not given up on the city’s young people.
“So the deal is with our boys they don’t have a sense of self, but one day they will, one day they will,” Smith said. “They’re born without fear..all they’re missing is spiritual consciousness…The worms may be chewing on my teeth, but one day they will definitely turn it around.”
The city and civil rights community also marked the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act with a photo and video exhibit titled “Through the Civil Rights Lens,” who kicked off at the National Park Service’s Visitor Information Center (915 N. Peters and runs through August 28; a “Music of the Movement” performance Saturday at the U.S. Mint and a Gospel Brunch titled “Songs of the Struggle” on Sunday, July 6, at the House of B;its. There was also an offering of civil rights guided tours and panel discussions.
Additional information is available at Liberty’64.com.
This article originally published in the July 7, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
