1955-56: UL's landmark desegregation did not go without attracting political retribution. Unable to stop UL/SLI, the Legislature took aim at public high schools in attempt to block black enrollment at UL and the schools that followed suit. But the new laws did not sit favorably with the Catholic Church, nor the courts.
More than a decade before desegregation ripped through southern colleges, UL became the first school in the nation to desegregate following the Supreme Court's Brown v Board of Education decision, as well as the first historically white school in the South to desegregate in any meaningful way. UL's desegregation was carried out peacefully, intentionally avoiding the public eye. As a result, UL's critical rôle in desegregation is largely unknown. UL alumnus Michael Wade, a professor at Appalachian State, has deeply researched the topic, summarized here. This is Part IX in the series. To read from Part I, click here.
Even as the white resistance marshaled its forces, the 1955–56 term brought SLI more African American students, many of them transfers. In all, 125 black students were enrolled in fall 1955, 87 of them in the College of Education. The Lafayette campus seemed to be accepting desegregation as a fait accompli and, according to an optimistic Julius Gassner, "interracial fellowship was coming into existence." ROTC dances had been desegregated, and an interracial meeting of the Gulf States Newman Clubs at the SLI Catholic Student Center in April 1956 was a resounding success. SLI's first black graduate, Christiana G. Smith, received her diploma on May 19, 1956, even though she marched without a partner when the young white woman paired with her refused to march next to a person of color. Smith was a forty-year-old teacher who had graduated in 1937 from the Sacred Heart Normal School and had since pieced together enough college credits that she completed the degree requirements during fall 1955.
In 1956, the state legislature undermined this progress when it passed Bill No. 15, which required that all students submit a certificate of good moral character signed by their high school principal and the local superintendent. A companion act made it a crime punishable by dismissal for any teacher or school official to advocate integration. State Senator Willie Rainach, chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee on Segregation, made it clear that signing a certificate of good moral character for a black student applying to a traditionally white college constituted advocacy of integration.
This new legislation was clearly designed to end the integration already accomplished at Southwestern Louisiana, McNeese State, and Southeastern Louisiana. Not only did the new laws cause consternation among Louisiana blacks who hoped soon to be studying at SLI and other such schools in the state, but also just how these provisions applied to current students was by no means clear. The uncertainty derived from Louisiana attorney general J. P. F. "Jack" Gremillion's successive interpretations of Bill No. 15. First he ruled that the requirement for certificates of good moral character applied to all students, new and returning. Then, in response to a query from the president of Louisiana Tech, he declared that it applied only to new students. That in turn produced vigorous protest from State Senator Willie Rainach, leader of the legislature's segregation forces, and considerable uncertainty among students about which rule would apply. Lafayette District Attorney Bertrand DeBlanc warned President Fletcher that it applied to all students and that he would file charges if SLI violated the law as he understood it.
These laws, part of a segregationist package of legislation designed to thwart the Brown decision, were vociferously opposed by the Catholic Church and a few intrepid legislators. Whatever his own beliefs, DeBlanc's interpretation reflected the powerful segregationist influences in the legislature and in emergent segregationist organizations around the state.
Federal judges Herbert Christenberry and J. Skelly Wright declared both acts unconstitutional in 1957, rulings that the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the next year. But in the short run, the uncertainties and tensions generated by the acts caused a sharp drop in black enrollment. At SLI, McNeese, Southeastern, and LSU, black enrollment dropped by half, from a total of about 400 students to approximately 200. Clayton Arceneaux, a GI mustered out of the service after the Korean War, attended Grambling instead of SLI because Paul Breaux High School principal W. D. Smith could not sign a certificate of good moral character for him without jeopardizing his job. Another SLI student who transferred to Grambling said that he couldn't take a chance about his studies in Lafayette. One applicant in 1956, Thaddus Wilson, was unaffected by the new legislation—he was a graduate that year from Lincoln High School in Port Arthur, Texas. Julius Gassner said that in September 1956, there were so few African American students at SLI "that the campus all but lost the right to be called integrated." In the long run, of course, SLI remained desegregated, its minority enrollment recovered after the offending laws were struck down, and the remaining state colleges were also desegregated in the early 1960s.
Next: Basketball Eases Desegregation
Excerpt from "Four Who Would: The Desegregation of Louisiana's State Colleges / Constantine v. Southwestern Louisiana Institute (1954) and the Desegregation of Louisiana's State Colleges" by Michael G. Wade, in Higher Education and the Civil Rights Movement: White Supremacy, Black Southerners, and College Campuses, Peter Wallenstein, Editor, University Press of Florida (2008), pp 60-91.
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