In May 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown versus the Topeka Board of Education that “separate but equal” public schools were not in fact equal in the 21 states where segregation was mandatory.

Fifty years later, the situation is still a hot topic. Three men who watched integration attempt to find its way into New Orleans public schools gave their views on the past and present for the forum discussion, “The Integration of New Orleans Schools: From Those Who Were There,” Wednesday evening.

The College of Arts and Sciences sponsored the lecture to help promote academic discourse about issues in the world. A video on integration in New Orleans was shown before the discussion, with images of Ruby Bridges entering Franz Elementary School in New Orleans and protesters holding signs printed with racial slurs.

Moon Landrieu, one of the few white legislators who voted against bills to overturn integration, described his adolescence as a time of myths.

“Blacks were lazy. Blacks were smelly,” Landrieu said, describing some of the myths he accepted.

Landrieu said these myths did not start to dissolve until he became friends with Norman Francis, the first African American student accepted at Loyola University, in 1952.

Calvin Johnson, the first African American chief judge in New Orleans, recalled people who protested integration, chanting, “Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate.”

Johnson said he wants to know where the people who protested are now. He suggested that the issue has never been dealt with, and that is the first step to solving racial issues is discussion.

Johnson said New Orleans had better schools available to African Americans, and that they owned more businesses.

“Integration was the worst thing that happened to New Orleans,” Johnson said, claiming that schools for African Americans are not as good as they used to be and that there are fewer African American business owners.

Lolis E. Elie, an attorney who has represented the NAACP, countered that there are more African American lawyers and doctors than there were before segregation.

He said there were schools that wanted to integrate in New Orleans, but they were not selected for integration.

Elie suggested this is because “people wanted the system to fail.”

Landrieu countered that it was more a question of trying to integrate school where the neighborhoods were equal between blacks and whites, based on action in Arkansas, but that this quest for equality was the wrong plan.

Perhaps one of the biggest causes for resistance of integration was an underlying fear of what would happen with “black boys going to school with white girls.”

The plan to integrate was supposed to start in the first years of elementary school and gradually work itself out.

The first black students to integrate into white schools were girls.

Following integration, many Orleans Parish residents moved to Jefferson Parish where they would pay less in taxes and their children would not have to go to an integrated school.

Professor Larry Lorenz moderated the discussion, with questions for panel members followed by several questions from the audience.

“It was a very spirited discussion,” audience member Ann Sale said. The panel was part of a discussion series on integration in the U.S.

Savannah Brehmer can be reached at [email protected].