Fight over legacy of civil rights leader’s former home reaches city council
21st October 2024 · 0 Comments
By John Gray
Contributing Writer
(Veritenews.org) — An application to turn the home of civil rights legend Oretha Castle Haley into a museum and community space brought a yearslong feud in front of a New Orleans City Council meeting earlier this month on Oct. 10.
Candice “Devine” Henderson, a Chicago native, owns the house at 917-919 North Tonti St. which belonged to the Castles, a prominent Black family in New Orleans, for 58 years. At the house, Haley, a co-founder of the New Orleans chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), organized with the Freedom Riders in 1961.
After buying the home in 2021, Henderson started a nonprofit called Friends of the Freedom House, which uses the home as a museum and gathering place centered around the Black community in the city. Henderson wanted to celebrate the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement in New Orleans.
“I didn’t know about the history at first,” Henderson said, explaining that her real estate agent informed her about the Castles while they were inspecting the home. “From there, I took [it] upon myself to learn more about the house and the people who purchased the house during the Civil Rights Movement.”
Henderson says she was inspired to make the home into a museum after speaking with New Orleans civil rights icons such as Jerome “Big Duck” Smith and Dodie Smith Simmons, fellow members of the New Orleans chapter of CORE.
“It was Mama Dodie who gave me the charge to say, ‘I’ve done my fighting, it’s your generation’s turn, and you are now responsible for taking this house,’” Henderson said.
But several members of Haley’s family, three of her sons and one of her grandsons, are adamant that Henderson has no claim to define the civil rights leader’s legacy. Last year, they filed a lawsuit against Henderson claiming she was using Oretha Castle Haley’s name, image and likeness illegally.
“You don’t buy a piece of real estate, and then are given the rights to tell the story of the people who lived in that house,” said Blair Haley, Oretha Castle Haley’s grandson and one of the plaintiffs in the suit. “How would you feel if somebody bought your family house and then decided they were going to be the arbiters of your family story?”
After buying the house, Henderson briefly used the house as a short-term rental property. Court transcripts obtained by Verite News also show that Henderson is drawing a salary from the nonprofit, which sells merchandise ranging from $10 to $75 and memberships that cost up to $1,500 per year.
Haley described the monetization of his grandmother’s home as “disheartening and frustrating.”
“This is not an unusual occurrence that vultures try to attach themselves to something that they think can be profitable,” Haley said.
A brief legal history
The home, which belonged to Oretha Castle Haley’s parents, went to their middle child, Doris-Jean Castle, and was subsequently passed to their son John Castle, after his sister’s death in 1998. John Castle, who supports Henderson’s museum, owned the property until 2011, when he lost it in bankruptcy proceedings.
No member of the Haley family attempted to buy the house. Blair Haley said that is because Castle did not inform the Haleys that he had lost the property. Castle told Verite that he was not on speaking terms with the Haleys when he lost the house.
Michael and Okyeame Haley, sons of Oretha Castle Haley, and Blair Haley filed suit in June 2023 seeking a temporary restraining order against Henderson and the Friends of the Freedom House to prevent Henderson from using Oretha’s name, image and likeness. The suit was based on the Allen Toussaint Legacy Act, a 2022 law that prohibits third parties from using the name, image and/or likeness of an individual without consent from the individual, their heirs or representative for commercial purposes.
Representatives of an individual lose identity rights if they have not used their likeness for commercial purposes for a period of three consecutive years after their passing or fifty years after their passing, whichever occurs first.
Attorney Sundiata Haley, Oretha’s youngest son, is representing the family members in the suit. The family filed the lawsuit after sending multiple cease and desist letters to Henderson, which they claim were ignored.
A judge granted a temporary restraining order against Henderson shortly after the suit was filed, which is still in effect.
Bill Aaron, Henderson’s attorney, argues that the order was unfounded due to a misinterpretation of the Legacy Act.
“The act basically says you can block using the image or likeness or signature of a person, if the family has timely made a commercial use of the name, image, likeness,” Aaron said. “And our position is that Mrs. Haley died in the 1980s and so by the time the act came into being, more than three years had elapsed, and unless they were clairvoyant, they wouldn’t know what the act basically said.”
In August, Judge Monique Barial denied a motion by Henderson to dissolve or modify the temporary restraining order. Last month, Henderson’s attorneys sent notice that they plan to take the case to the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal.
Who controls the legacy?
Henderson applied with the city to turn the property into a museum in August and the application was considered by the city council last week.
At the meeting, Councilmember JP Morrell commented on the nature of this dispute, raising questions of who benefits from the legacy of New Orleanians.
“How we treat this property sends a message [to] all the people in the city about that underlying rage people feel about people who are not from here profiting off the legacy of peoples that are here,” Morrell said during the meeting.
Still, there are a number of supporters of Henderson and her mission.
“The historic home is a local and national treasure,” wrote Eric Seiferth, curator and historian at The Historic New Orleans Collection in a letter to the New Orleans City Planning Commission, which considered Henderson’s application before it went to the council and recommended that it be approved. “I strongly recommend the approval of the conditional use permit and look forward to the possibilities for engagement that will come of it.”
Smith-Simmons, who worked closely with Oretha Castle Haley in the 1960s and urged Henderson to start the museum, likewise wrote a letter in support.
“It has always been a dream of mine to purchase the Castle House and turn it into a museum similar to the Medgar Evers House Museum in Mississippi,” Smith-Simmons wrote. “Once I was made aware that Candice “Divine” purchased the Castle House in 2021, I encouraged her to check out the Medgar Evers House on her road to preserve the home’s history and share the space with the community.”
Blair Haley told Verite that the larger issue is not isolated to the city.
“I would say this is bigger than New Orleans,” Haley said. “This is about gentrification. This is about the culture vulturing that Black people feel even from our own. The thing that we as Black people have to recognize is that sometimes the vultures look like the culture.”
The council moved to defer the vote on the status of the house to this week on Oct. 24.
This article originally published in the October 21, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
