After three-year push by BE NOLA, schools establish Black Education History Week in New Orleans

On Nov. 14, 1960, Leona Tate was escorted by U.S. Marshals into McDonogh 19 elementary school in the Lower Ninth Ward. On Tuesday, nearly 66 years later, Tate stood inside the same building — now named the Tate, Etienne and Prevost center — to celebrate the inaugural Black Education History Week in New Orleans public schools.

The week’s lessons could be transformational for New Orleans students, Tate said: “When children know the history of the people who came before them, they begin to understand that they, too, have a place in the spirit.”

One of the first Black children integrating all-white New Orleans schools, Tate is part of the “New Orleans Four” alongside Tessie Prevost, Gail Etienne and Ruby Bridges. At 6 years old, the four girls became the first Black students at McDonogh 19 and William Frantz elementary schools, desegregating the first elementary schools in the Deep South. White crowds boycotted the schools, yelling epithets at the girls as they arrived each day.

“We walked through hatred, threats, angry crowds, and uncertainty because our parents believed that we deserved an education that was equal to every other child in America. That moment changed New Orleans,” Tate said on Tuesday.

In front of an audience of several dozen community organizers, members of local government, advocates and supporters, she emphasized the importance of connecting New Orleans students with the history of education in their city, including her own story.

“This is not about looking backward simply for the sake of looking backward,” Tate said. “This is about understanding where we have been so that we can have a clearer vision of where we’re going.”

After more than three years of effort by Black Education for New Orleans (BE NOLA), a local nonprofit, the Orleans Parish School Board passed in July a resolution cementing Black Education History Week in the calendars of New Orleans schools. The week is inspired by the work of Carter G. Woodson, who established “Negro History Week,” which later became Black History Month, in 1926, one century ago.

Running from Nov. 15 to 20, this year’s Black Education History Week will be observed by 17 schools and a total of more than 2,000 students, said Adrinda Kelly, the founding executive director of BE NOLA.  

The week will feature a wide range of programming, including film screenings, yoga and field trips to museums and historical sites, including a reenactment of the 1811 Slave Revolt, one of the nation’s largest insurrections of enslaved people, who marched along River Road from St. John Parish toward New Orleans. The initiative is sponsored by local and national organizations including the Institute of Mental Hygiene and the New Orleans Tourism and Cultural Foundation.

For Kelly, the goal of Black Education History Week is to make New Orleans’ “living legacy” come alive, particularly as Black history is being erased at the national level.

“Local record-keeping matters,” Kelly said, explaining how students respond to Tate’s story. “When kids see themselves not as people who survived a thing but built schools in nearly impossible conditions, they start to have a different relationship to what comes next.”

Gabriela Biro, an Orleans Parish School Board member representing District 2, which includes parts of New Orleans East, Gentilly and the Upper 9th Ward, stood in front of  the crowd at Tuesday’s press conference and read the school board’s resolution, which permanently adds the new week into the school calendar. 

“As this effort continues each year, I hope to champion this cause and get more schools involved,” Biro said.

Many children may not know about these parts of Black history and the history of education in New Orleans, said Vera Triplett, a former administrator of the Recovery School District and the founder and CEO of the Noble Minds Institute for Whole Child Learning. She emphasized the impact that learning these stories can have. 

“I think it’s important to know that you live in a city that is rich in history not just for Mardi Gras and marching bands … not just for food and architecture but for fighting back, fighting against a system,” Triplett told The Lens. “There are people who have been standing up for what they believe is right for centuries, and they look like you.”