The New Orleans Adult Education Center

It was a reunion to mark a major landmark in the Civil Rights struggle, the Adult Education Center and its work to teach both professional skills and Black history at a time when neither were encouraged. And quite a few of the alumni who gathered honored The Louisiana Weekly with a “shout-out” (as they put it) for this newspaper’s role in establishing a school which led the charge to integrate corporate offices in the City of New Orleans.

On October 16, thirty graduates of New Orleans’ Adult Education Center gathered for a Reunion at the Historic New Orleans Collection Williams Research Center, just blocks from the AEC’s former home at 431 Exchange Place in the historic French Quarter. Founded in December 1965, the small vocational school known as the Adult Education Center welcomed an integrated class of mostly Black underemployed women to begin training to become the first secretaries who would integrate the all-white businesses of New Orleans.

“During its period of operation from 1965 to 1972, the school placed 94 percent of its 431 graduates in jobs with salaries above the national average, thus making it one of the most successful programs of its kind in the War on Poverty,” Jeanne Geoffray, daughter of the Adult Education Center Founder/Director Alice Geoffray told the Weekly.

The effort triggered a firestorm of controversy at the time, with the first pilot program shut down after neighbors in uptown New Orleans objected to the school’s integrated student population. Resolute, the founders went looking for a new home, yet sixty landlords turned them down. Finally, one brave landlord, James J. Coleman, agreed to rent them a space in a series of converted bars on Exchange Place in the French Quarter.

Controversially for the 1960s, AEC taught African-American history and culture as well as English as a second language, ultimately publishing a textbook on teaching English as a second language to native English speakers. It also pioneered teaching African-American makeup and hairstyles to help prepare its students for working in some of the city’s most high- profile offices. Last, but not least, the school was a champion of taking a humanistic approach to vocational education. So, in addition to typing and shorthand, the students worked on writing, speaking and communication skills to help strengthen their critical powers and self-image.

“The school was shut down a second time in 1967 for political reasons. But my mother and a group of New Orleans businessmen and leaders rallied to keep it alive,” said Jeff Geoffray, son of Alice Geoffray. “The school was brought back to life in 1968 as a private-government partnership that was unique in its day and became a model for other such partnerships around the country.” The story of the school closing and reopening was the subject of an Emmy Award winning documentary entitled, “The School That Would Not Die” written and narrated by Mel Leavitt. Eventually, the program’s success gained recognition from President Lyndon B. Johnson and a U.S. Senate sub-committee welcomed Dr. Alice Geoffray and three students to testify in Washington about the reasons why the school was so successful when so many other jobs programs in the War on Poverty failed. The late Congressman Hale Boggs, the father of Cokie Roberts, who recently passed away, was a great supporter of the school.

Even after it closed, Dr. Geoffray documented the successes of her students, many who went on to earn advanced degrees and become prominent New Orleans change agents. Scholarships in the name of the school are being awarded to encourage new generations of success through adult education. At the event, longtime Louisiana Weekly staff writer Gwen Shepherd, ’68, led her fellow alumni in singing the Adult Education Center’s school song. Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman awarded four scholarships in the amount of $1,431 each. Hilda Mosely Smith, Class of 1970, presented another two scholarships to adult students related to the alumni. The program also included a tribute to General Kemper Williams of the Historic New Orleans Collection. General Kemper Williams was one of the businessmen who rallied to save the school in 1967 and later became one of its largest private contributors.

More than thirty local alumni of the Adult Education Center attended the reunion, including speakers Raphael Morgan, ’71; L. Vee McGee Drake, ’70; Pamela Cole Wimbley, ’71; Sandra T. O’Neal, Ph.D. ’69; Connie Payton-Nevels, ‘70 and Gwen Shepherd, ’68. Among other notables at the celebration were Civil Rights Pioneer Leona Tate, Sheriff Marlin Gusman, Councilmember Cyndi Nguyen, Councilmember Jared Brossett, Clerk of First City Court Austin Badon, Judge Dale Atkins and Judge Rachel Johnson. Read more about the center here: www.431exchange.com www.facebook.com/The431Exchange.

This article originally published in the October 21, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.